Locked doors, no answers. As feared, Chicago’s Weiss Memorial Hospital was closed today—with no explanation from its absentee owner.
■ Lyz Lenz’s Dingus of the Week: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose defunding of mRNA vaccine research “is really good news if you are longing for the sweet release of death.”
■ The Onion: “New Death With Indignity Law Lets Terminally Ill Be Crushed By Falling Vending Machines.”
‘A nuclear war that will end representative democracy.’ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch says Donald Trump’s efforts to remap Texas’ congressional districts is “a way to hold the 2026 midterms, yet effectively … canceling out your vote” (gift link, underwritten by those who support Chicago Public Square).
■ Columnist Harold Meyerson (no relation) calls it “The War Between the States, Part II.”
■ Stephen Robinson at Public Notice: “Trump’s Confederacy rises again.”
■ Marking today’s 100th anniversary of a Ku Klux Klan march through Washington, the Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg hears those footsteps echoing today.
‘He’s a warning.’ Columnist/lawyer Mitch Jackson: A guy who screamed “Kill them!” at police on Jan. 6, 2021, now has a key job with the Justice Department.
■ The New York Times (another gift link): A senior agent who helped oversee the FBI’s response to that insurrection has been fired.
‘Little more than political theater.’ Courier correspondent Camaron Stevenson dismisses the threat that FBI agents will hunt down Texas lawmakers taking refuge in Illinois.
■ Gov. Pritzker: “I hope they take in the State Fair … but they won’t be arresting anyone because there is no U.S. federal law that prohibits those Texas House Democrats from being here.”
■ Civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill: Blame this redistricting mess on the Supreme Court.
■ The Lever: “By fighting gerrymandering with gerrymandering, Democrats are betraying their own democratic principles.”
■ David Dayen at The American Prospect: “We need many more members of Congress”—and proportional representation for individual districts instead of “winner-take-all elections for single seats.”
■ NOTUS: A Republican representative from Pennsylvania has a secret helicopter he’s been hiding from financial disclosure.
Hotel-turned-prison. Injustice Watch and The Intercept: An Immigration and Customs Enforcement contractor locked an immigrant and her baby at an O’Hare-area hotel for five days.
■ The American Prospect: Private prisons are cashing in on Trump’s mass deportations.
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke: “You might recognize Immigration and Customs Enforcement from its recent appearance on the popular cartoon South Park. Don’t watch that episode. It might turn you into a lib.”
■ Protesters yesterday disrupted a downtown Chicago job fair where ICE was offering $50,000 signing bonuses, student loan forgiveness and “enhanced” retirement benefits.
■ Make it now four federal judges blocking Trump’s move to withhold citizenship from kids born to people who are in the U.S. illegally or temporarily.
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “Trump has no power … to declare that undocumented immigrants won’t be counted.”
■ Sen. Dick Durbin and Rep. Mike Quigley were among those celebrating the almost 1,000 people sworn in as U.S. citizens yesterday at Wrigley Field.
■ Durbin: “We are a better country because you’re here.”
‘Set your clocks back to More Expensive.’ Stephen Colbert marked the arrival of President Trump’s new tariffs—the highest since the Great Depression.
■ The AP surveys what to expect.
‘In less than 24 hours … more than 600 people unsubscribed.’ Columnist and former Illinois U.S. Rep. Marie Newman recounts the response to her labeling of Israel’s assault on Gaza as “genocide.”
■ Israel’s planning to take over Gaza City.
■ To do better than your Chicago Public Square columnist, you’re gonna have to be perfect.
Stroke! Stroke! After years of bureaucratic struggles, organizers have won clearance for the first Chicago River Swim in almost a century.
■ You can apply to do it through 10 p.m. Monday here.
■ After a sellout first event, tickets were going fast for Sun-Times columnists Lee Bey and Neil Steinberg’s architectural boat tour, “Roast of the Chicago Skyline.”
Itching to go solar? With a federal tax credit set to disappear at year-end, Consumer Reports explains how to do your homework on a tight deadline …
■ … in part with an online solar panel savings calculator.
Square mailbag. Reader Cate Plys writes: “Just saw your reader’s comment that you can’t tell from looking whether a district is gerrymandered. I suppose that’s technically true, but nobody has to figure it out for themselves. See the Princeton Gerrymandering Project for all the information you might need—along with the Electoral Innovations Lab. … The project home page … has a map showing that Illinois gets an F in every possible category.”
Square’s free for all thanks to the generosity of a few. This publication would’ve disappeared long ago had readers including Justin Gerak, Deborah Murphy, Amy Reynaldo, Charles Pratt, Judy Davy, Stephen Brenner, Gil Herman, Joseph Pesz, Andrew Stancioff, Kevin Shotsberger, Graham Greer, Josh Mogerman, Zarine Weil, Dave Connell, Daniela Dolak, David Green, Paul Teodo, Debbie Becker, Thomas Yoder, Ann Marie Testa, Michael Collins, Dawn Haney, Beth Bales Olson, Patricia Winn, Jan Czarnik, Deborah Spector, Lucy Smith, Phil Huckelberry, Lawrence Perlman, Margaret Brennan, Sherry Nordstrom, Becky Brofman, Gregory Dudzienski, Russ Williams, and Laurie and Mark Jolicoeur not stepped forward to underwrite the cost of producing and delivering the news via email.
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