‘A stunning landslide’ / Give him … your upper classes willing to bend knee / Things to do

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‘A stunning landslide.’ Scandal-scarred Dolton Mayor Tiffany Henyard went down to defeat in yesterday’s primary …
■ … drawing the curtain on a term in office that earned her widespread comparison to the principal on the TV show Abbott Elementary. (January 2024 link.)
■ Updating Cook County election results here.

‘Uh, how’d that happen?’ That’s a puzzled Southwest Airlines pilot yesterday, moments after averting a disastrous collision with a business jet at Midway Airport.
■ Here’s video.
■ California Sen. Adam Schiff: “The near miss on a tarmac in Chicago is small part of a much, much bigger problem.”
■ A Metra train struck and killed a person in Downers Grove yesterday—the second fatal accident at that crossing in less than 24 hours.

Give him your rich, your foreign, your upper classes willing to bend knee. President Trump says he’s launching a program offering a path to citizenship for people who pay $5 million for what he calls a “gold card.”
■ Trump’s words: “They’ll be wealthy and they’ll be successful, and they’ll be spending a lot of money.”
■ Historian and On Tyranny author Tim Snyder sees “the ennoblement of oligarchy” as central to Trump and Elon Musk’s dismantling of the federal government.

What, no yellow star? The Wall Street Journal: “Trump proposes fines, prison time for migrants who don’t join registry.”
■ Wonkette: Texas’ attorney general wants genetic testing for 220,000 athletes.

‘Republican rip-off.’ That’s Democrats’ take on a budget advancing in the House—with $4.5 trillion in tax breaks and $2 trillion in spending cuts.
■ USA Today’s Chicago-based columnist Rex Huppke: “Trump no longer needs MAGA voters, so he’s gutting Medicaid and laying off veterans.”
■ Politico: Gov. Pritzker’s trying to pry $2 billion in federal funding cut by the Trump administration.
■ Capitol News Illinois: Pritzker’s deliberately positioning himself at the forefront of Trump opposition.

Departures dog DOGE. Close to two dozen civil service workers— engineers, data scientists, designers and product managers—have quit Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” …
■ … asserting in a letter, “We will not use our skills as technologists to … jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data or dismantle critical public services.”
■ Trump’s press secretary: “Don’t let the door kick you on the way out.”
■ Wired: DOGE’s working on software to automate government workers’ dismissal.
■ Jimmy Kimmel says Musk’s bollixed-up demand that federal employees justify their employment has left them “as confused as Elon’s kids were when they realized their father named them after a phone number.”
■ Greg Sargent at The New Republic: Musk’s assault on the U.S. Agency for International Development is putting starving kids at risk.

‘Trump wants (white) generals who’ll follow his unlawful orders.’ But Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch says racism isn’t even the worst part of the Pentagon coup. (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
■ The Bulwark: “It IS happening here. Trump’s autocratic project isn’t some threat on the horizon.”
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich: Trump’s overnight posting of an AI-generated video envisioning “an ethnically-cleansed Gaza … checks every fucking crazypants box imaginable.”

Truth in transcription? Apple says it’ll stomp an iPhone bug that briefly suggests the word Trump when someone dictates the word “racist” …
■ … a thing caught in video posted online.
■ An Apple alumnus tells The New York Times, “this smells like a serious prank.”
■ Apple’s shareholders have rejected a plan to end its diversity programs.
■ Wired: As bosses summon remote employees back for in-person work, warehouse-style tracking tech is coming for office workers.

Things to do.
■ Indivisible Chicago’s convening a rally downtown Thursday to support the endangered Consumer Financial Protection Bureau …
■ … whose shutdown, American Prospect editor David Dayen says, “is entirely about payment apps: Elon Musk and other Big Tech CEOs want to manage your money without any regulatory protections.”
■ The Chicago Headline Club’s hosting its annual open-to-the-public FOIA Fest next month, teaching how to get access to government records—“particularly as Chicago governmental bodies are less cooperative and as the Trump Administration, which has proven to be hostile towards the press, begins its second term.”
■ Columnist Andy Borowitz shares a list of things “keeping me sane during Elon Musk’s flaming Cybertruck of a presidency.”

‘A stunning move that should trouble all Americans.’ Poynter’s Tom Jones sounds an alarm about the Trump administration’s announcement that it, and not the White House Correspondents’ Association, will assemble the press pools covering the president at times when the full press corps can’t be accommodated.
■ Esquire’s Charlie Pierce sees MSNBC’s layoffs as “an orgy of bad faith and bad ideas.”
■ Amazon and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos’ plan to overhaul the Post’s opinion section—to focus on “personal liberties, free markets”—prompted an editor’s resignation.
■ The Wall Street Journal on CNN refugee Oliver Darcy’s startup email newsletter about the media biz: “It has quickly become a must-read for the power brokers of publishing and entertainment.”
■ Media watcher Simon Owens on a wave of news-org alumni building their own businesses: “CNN has 3,500 employees, so if they managed to create anywhere near the same amount of value as Darcy, then that would result in $3.5 billion in subscription revenue.”
■ Five years ago, Owens was kind enough to spotlight Chicago Public Square as a pioneer in this space.

Election Day?! / ‘5 bullets’ mess / (MS)NBC ya later

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Welcome back. Assuming you’ve been following the Chicago Public Square Bluesky account these last few days, let’s dive right into the latest.

Election Day?! You’d be forgiven if today’s suburban primary elections snuck up on you.
■ Enter your address and the League of Women Voters will show you who and what’s on your ballot.
■ The ACLU: Know your voting rights.

Axis of … us? The Trump administration joined those of (other?) dictatorships—including North Korea, China and Belarus—in rejecting a UN resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “Donald Trump has embraced Russian propaganda about its invasion.”
■ Columnist Eric Zorn: “This country is on a shameful, frightening path.”

‘Warning: If you have kids … get them in here to see how great this is.’ Someone hacked monitors throughout the Housing and Urban Development D.C. headquarters to loop an AI-generated video of Trump kissing Elon Musk’s feet, with the caption “Long live the real king”—a thing that delighted Stephen Colbert.
■ A Trump administration spokesperson pledges “appropriate action … for all involved.”

‘5 bullets’ mess. Law Dork Chris Geidner: Musk’s demand that all federal employees detail “what they got done last week” has turned Trumpsters against Trumpsters.
■ Rolling Stone: Musk’s getting a flood of “very rude” replies …
■ Columnist Mary Schmich answers Musk’s call: “Hello, Your Royal Highness …”
■ Pod Save America cohost Dan Pfeiffer: “The angry townhalls are back. This time, voters are furious about the chaotic, clumsy and counter-productive cuts.”

‘It’s like confiscating used ammunition after it’s been shot.’ The Associated Press: Of the contracts canceled by Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” almost 40% won’t save taxpayers a penny.
■ Politico: “The Trump administration keeps citing an untrue stat as it targets federal workers.”
■ Daily Show host Jon Stewart last night showed Musk how to save “billions of dollars in 11 seconds” …
■ … after, in a moment of (maybe feigned) outrage, he smashed a mug and cut his hand.
■ NPR: A new document undercuts Trump administration denials about a deal to spend $400 million with Musk’s Tesla.
■ The American Prospect: “Don’t expect corporations to save us from Trump.”

‘A Trump sycophant whose focus has been delegitimizing any and all legal steps taken against the president.’ Wired takes a critical look at Dan Bongino, the Infowars alumnus who’s now Trump’s No. 2 guy at the FBI.
■ Patricia Marx at The New Yorker envisions a call to a federal agency in the months to come: “You have reached the U.S. government. We are currently unable to answer your call, because everyone has been fired except Bob …”

Law school shift. The American Bar Association’s at least temporarily suspending enforcement of its diversity and inclusion standard for law schools.

‘I like to trash Trump some, so there’s a lot of things to keep it off my mind.’ Former Republican Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar talks to Politico’s Shia Kapos about his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.
■ The AP spotlights former Illinois Republican Adam Kinzinger in a report headlined “The few Republicans who still oppose Trump gather in search of a path to oppose him.”

‘The way we run public transit in Chicagoland is really, really weird.’ Columnist Richard Day scrutinizes the byzantine scheme governing how we get around—especially troublesome after the pandemic “blew a hole in ridership numbers.”
■ A Tribune editorial: “Why did Metra pay a team of outside lawyers $1.57 million to investigate its Police Department?” (Gift link, courtesy of Chicago Public Square supporters.)
■ WTTW: Chicago’s sitting on $142 million in federal pandemic relief funds.

‘That ‘nothing-baby’ was … responsible for this laptop I’m writing on, the phone that’s in my pocket, the iPod shuffle that I’ve had for a decade and holds 1,000 of my favorite songs.’ Author and filmmaker Michael Moore shares a cautionary tale of Trump’s obsession with immigration.
■ Evanston’s City Council has passed a first-in-the-state law giving service workers—at Northwestern University, in particular—job protection if the contractor they work for gets replaced.

Not paczki! Not paczki! Rising egg prices threaten the price and supply of dough for Chicago’s regional seasonal treats.
■ Northwestern University research: “Brewing tea naturally adsorbs heavy metals like lead and cadmium, effectively filtering dangerous contaminants out.”

‘A move driven largely by spite.’ Advisorator Jared Newman walks you through how to download your Kindle ebooks—and explains why you might want to do the same before Amazon strips away that right tomorrow.
■ ProPublica: “As Facebook abandons fact-checking, it’s also offering bonuses for viral content … pouring accelerant on the kind of false posts the company once policed.”
■ Platformer: Google’s quietly turned off a feature warning searchers that they might be getting unreliable results.

(MS)NBC ya later. NBC Nightly News host—and former Chicago news anchor Lester Holt—is stepping down from that job to contribute more to Dateline NBC.
■ As part of what The Daily Beast calls a “bloodbath of non-white anchors,” soon-to-be-severed-from-NBC channel MSNBC’s canceled Joy Reid’s show.
■ Rachel Maddow, arguably MSNBC’s biggest star, slammed the decision: “It is a bad mistake … and it drops the bottom out of whether … this is a good place to work.”
■ Jimmy Fallon joked: “I got an email from NBC asking what I accomplished last week.”

‘Journalism shouldn’t look like feeding time at the aquarium.’ Stop the Presses columnist Mark Jacob sees an upside to Trump’s White House ban of the AP—“if it makes the news media … less dependent on news items that politicians dole out.”

Thanks. Mike Braden made this edition better.

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