Colbert’s out / ‘This is absolutely insane’ / Death by AI / Quizzes!

Colbert’s out—next year. Days after he accused corporate parent Paramount of settling a Donald Trump lawsuit to win government approval for a merger, Stephen Colbert told his audience that CBS is canceling his show as of next May.
A statement from Paramount’s corporate overlords doth protest too much: “This is purely a financial decision. … It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters” …
 … but long-time late-night observer Bill Carter says “the timing tells a different story.”
CNN’s Brian Stelter: “The incoming owner wants a big change made, but doesn't want the blame, so the outgoing owner does the dirty work.”
Chicago-born journalist and friend of Colbert Jonathan Alter: “If you think The Late Show got torched just for ‘financial reasons,’ I’ve got swampland to sell you.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren: “America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons.”
David Graham at The Atlantic: “The network that once made Cronkite the most trusted man in America no longer gets the benefit of the doubt.”
Trump’s gleeful: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired.”
Let us not forget Colbert’s career was forged in Chicago—at Northwestern University and Second City.
Amid speculation his Daily Show could be next in Paramount’s sights, Jon Stewart says: “Let me tell you something—I’ve been kicked out of shittier establishments than that. We’ll land on our feet.”
ABC host Jimmy Kimmel: “Fuck you and all your Sheldons CBS.”

Elsewhere on the dial … The House has sent Trump that bill to strip a billion bucks from public radio and TV stations.
As bad as that is for Illinois public media—including Sun-Times and WBEZ owner Chicago Public Media—it stands to devastate the rural U.S.
Columnist Neil Steinberg: “Enjoy the national museums while they’re still here.”

Game on. It’s Trump vs. longtime enabler Rupert Murdoch as Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal reveals that Trump—who’s struggled mightily to deny a relationship with now-dead sex offender Jeffrey Epstein—in 2003 sent Epstein a bawdy 50th birthday greeting that concluded, “May every day be another wonderful secret” (gift link, courtesy of Chicago Public Square supporters).
Trump’s promising (another) legal action against Murdoch: “I’m going to sue his ass off.”
Stelter observed early today: “And yet … Murdoch’s Fox News has not mentioned the story once.”
Law prof Joyce Vance: “The Epstein scandal is starting to look like an albatross around this administration’s neck that can’t be removed.”
Men Yell at Me columnist Lyz Lenz’s Dingus of the Week: The Epstein Files.
After Coldplay leader Chris Martin called out a couple canoodling at a concert Wednesday, internet sleuths ID’d them as a tech CEO and his head of human relations.

‘This is absolutely insane.’ Sen. Cory Booker and other Democrats—including Illinois’ Dick Durbin—walked out of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday …
 … after Iowa’s Chuck Grassley cut off their comments on the nomination of one of Trump’s former criminal defense lawyers to a lifetime appointment on a federal appeals court.
The federal prosecutor who helped convict Epstein—Maurene Comey, abruptly fired this week—writes to her colleagues: “If a career prosecutor can be fired without reason, fear may seep into the decisions of those who remain. Do not let that happen. Fear is the tool of a tyrant.”

Chicago’s ‘good trouble.’ The turnout paled in contrast to last month’s “No Kings” rally, but hundreds showed up downtown last night for another round of Trump protests.
Mayor Johnson told demonstrators the city won’t cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. (Photos: A Square fan.)
Columnist Robert Hubbell: “It is no cause for disappointment that every new protest is not the largest in history; indeed, it would be unrealistic to expect otherwise.”

Know someone on Medicaid? Now so will ICE—under what the AP says is an agreement that’ll give the agency access to personal data— including home addresses and ethnicities—of the nation’s 79 million recipients.
The Tribune reports that Cicero residents are demanding the town president take action after yet another stop by unidentified federal agents.
Public Notice columnist David Lurie: “The U.S. for the first time will have a massive federal police force with its own rapidly growing concentration camp system.”
PolitiFact: Trump’s assertion that the “worst of the worst” have been detained at Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” internment center is off the mark.
WBEZ’s Chip Mitchell reports: An ex-Guantánamo Bay detainee will get to testify about alleged torture by an ex-Chicago detective.

Death by AI. Pulitzer-winner Dave Barry writes: “I found out about my death the way everybody finds out everything: From Google.”
In what their firm concedes was a “serious lapse,” lawyers hired by the Chicago Housing Authority confess to having used ChatGPT to write a post-trial motion that cited a non-existent Illinois Supreme Court case.
Having secured an upgrade in Chicago’s ethics ordinance, Inspector General Deborah Witzburg says she’s hanging it up after this term.

‘All you have to do is fill in the blanks from recent headlines.’ The Conversation’s quizmaster, past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel, pronounces this week’s news quiz so easy.
Your Chicago Public Square columnist nevertheless blew two answers …
 … but nailed a perfect score in City Cast’s latest Chicago news quiz.

With corporate media bending the knee daily … Independent news sources—like many you’ll find linked here in Squareneed your support more than ever.
Your contribution—as little as $1, once—helps keep this newsletter coming.
Ron Schwartz made this edition better.

‘Stupid’ / Sorry, Elmo / Powerless

Hey, look! For the ninth year in a row …

And now the news:

‘Stupid.’ That’s Donald Trump, condemning his own supporters for pressing him on the case of his ol’ pal, dead sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
 Also: “Weaklings”—prompting USA Today’s Rex Huppke to conclude, “Whatever’s in those Epstein files must be white hot and devastating for the Lord of MAGA Manor. Even a weakling can connect these dots.”
 Those adjectives apparently apply to Trump’s former political partner, Elon Musk, who yesterday ripped into Trump’s Epstein defense.
 Curiouser and curiouser: Trump’s Justice Department has fired ex-FBI director James Comey’s daughter Maurene—a prosecutor who just happens to have worked on the Epstein case.
 Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “Trump seems to be in full panic mode.”
 Stephen Colbert translates Trump: “If you insist on asking me about Jeffrey Epstein, please turn in your MAGA hat, your golden shoes, your golden watch, your Trump golden guitar. … Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
 Charlie Warzel at The Atlantic:Nobody (not even Trump) can control the Epstein story.”
 Seth Meyers’ snarky reaction to Trump’s insistence those files were created by Democrats: “Makes total sense to me. Everyone knows the number one rule when you manufacture dirt on a political opponent is: Do not release it to the public!”
 Earworm of the day: Wonkette’s Evan Hurst recommends singing “Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, Epsteeeeeeeeeeeein” to the tune of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)

‘Who among us hasn’t accidentally told people that our uncle taught the Unabomber?’ The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper takes a shredder to Trump’s completely false story …
 … which CNN explains “could not possibly be accurate.”
 Popular Information calls out “a massive Trump scandal” that has gotten “miniscule media attention”: His financial entanglements with foreign nationals.

‘One company just forced the state of Illinois to fork over $1.3 million for a detention center it never built.’ The American Prospect introduces you to “the disaster capitalists behind ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’
 Law prof Joyce Vance explains the dangers of politicizing the military.
 Investigative reporter Ken Klippenstein: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has issued new “grooming standards”—banning eyelash extensions and offering government-funded laser hair removal procedures.

 That’s two years’ of federal cash for NPR, PBS and more than 1,500 local stations—probably killing off some of them …
 … with some cherished kids’ shows hanging in the balance.
 ProPublica founder Dick Tofel: Whatever happens next, public broadcasters need to focus now on “innovation, not just restoration.”

Supreme Court mystery. New York Times reporter Adam Liptak (gift link, underwritten by Chicago Public Square supporters like you) says justices keep ruling in Trump’s favor, but don’t say why.
 Columnist and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich: “The high court is allowing Trump … to fire over half the people who work for the Department of Education until there’s a full hearing. … But by then it will be too late.”
 Now in the court’s hands, according to Law Dork Chris Geidner: The future of the Voting Rights Act …
 … legislation dear to the heart of the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis, in whose honor today’s nationwide “Good Trouble” protests will be held.
 Chicago’s begins at 5:30 in Daley Plaza.
 The unbylined Closer to the Edge: “Lewis was … a living, breathing, fire-blooded example of what happens when the human spine refuses to bend—even when batons come down hard enough to fracture it.”

Things undone. The City Council has put off action on an ordinance to legalize “granny flats” and coach house residences in Chicago.
 In what one 15-year-old activist calls a win, the council failed to override the mayor’s veto of an ordinance that would have let cops impose youth curfews with as little as a half-hour’s notice …
 … but, in a victory for public transit fans, the council removed a bunch of parking requirements for residential properties …
 … it OK’d a fresh round of ethics reforms …
 … and spent two hours praising retiring council member Walter Burnett.

Back to the future. Chicago’s Ford City Mall—a retail center born as a manufacturing facility in World War II—could again become an industrial complex.
 City Cast reviews the Chicago area’s roster of shopping malls that endure.
 For the first time since the Rauner administration, Illinois now has a vehicle emissions testing location within Chicago city limits—but just barely—at 6959 W. Forest Preserve Dr. (You may remember it as a COVID testing station.)

Powerless. Yesterday’s storms toppled trees and downed power lines serving thousands of Chicago-area customers.
 ComEd’s $10 million summer heat relief fund is almost empty after just a week.

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