'This is treason' / Sun-Times showdown / Navy Pier's newest

… Aaaaaand we’re back.

‘THIS IS TREASON.’ Several legal experts say what Donald Trump Jr. says he did with a Russian lawyer may be evidence of a crime.

New York’s Jonathan Chait: Trump Jr.’s “denials” are actually confessions.
… That contradict a bunch of White House denials.
Washington Post: Trump Jr.’s statement to The New York Times is “stunningly compromising.” (Photo: Gage Skidmore.)
ABC News’ The Note: Fire peers out from Trump-Russia smoke.
Timeline: The Trump-Russia connection, day by day.
In an early-morning tweet, the president accuses the FBI director he fired of illegally leaking classified info. But, the Post reports, the president’s tweet was based on an erroneous report from Fox News.
Computer voice analysis of Friday’s U.S.-Russia meeting finds Trump “disappointed, feeling of missed opportunity,” Vladimir Putin “in control.”
The New York U.S. attorney Trump fired is trolling him on Twitter.

HEY, WITHOUT INSURANCE, IT HAPPENS. Sen. John McCain says his party’s health care overhaul is “probably going to be dead.”
The health care bill’s tax cuts, cartoonsplained.
Millennials have bumped Baby Boomers as America’s largest generation.

DO CHICAGO COPS HAVE TO FOLLOW TRAFFIC LAWS? WBEZ’S Curious City tackles a listener’s question.
Chicago’s former top cop—and potential candidate for mayor—did some work for a troubled River North bar.

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SUN-TIMES SHOWDOWN. The end of the day brings a deadline for purchase of Chicago’s No. 2 newspaper by a union-backed coalition. Ex-Ald. Edwin Eisendrath says he’s confident they’ll make it.
Sinclair Broadcasting—the company positioned to buy WGN-TV and WGN Radio as part of Tribune Media—is tripling down on orders its stations run commentary from former Trump White House official Boris Epshteyn.
Media critic and journalism professor Jeff Jarvis sees a “news cartel” danger: “We need the news business to watch the politicians, not plot with them.”

HE TOLD REPORTERS ABOUT HIS ILLEGALLY LONG 20-HOUR WORKDAYS. THEN HE WAS FIRED. USA Today relates what happened after it published the story.
Uber drivers, too, are taking on dangerously long shifts.

RAIN’S RETURN. After causing a rough morning on Chicago’s roadways, storms could be back this afternoon.
40 percent of Cook County’s surface is incapable of absorbing rain.
Earth could be too hot for humans much, much sooner than you might imagine.

NAVY PIER’S NEWEST. A showing of Sharknado tonight marks the first public presentation at the lakefront Polk Bros Performance Lawns.
Tribune editorial: What will the revamp of Jackson Park—to accommodate the Obama Presidential Center and a Tiger Woods-designed golf course—really cost?
In Chicago’s suburbs, bicyclists are pedaling an uphill battle.

SPOTIFY FAKES? It faces charges of jamming its most popular playlists with “fake artists”—songs it doesn’t have to pay much to play.
Spotify denies it—a little.

‘CREEPING ANTI-SEMITISM AMONG … THE POLITICAL LEFT.’ The CEO of the Anti-Defamation League says a decision by organizers of a Chicago gay pride parade to eject three people carrying pride flags emblazoned with a Jewish Star of David is just one example.
A Chicago gallery exhibit revisits U.S. internment camps for Japanese citizens during World War II.
Coloradans who maintain Earth is flat and gravity is a hoax say they’re being persecuted.

R.I.P., MARVEL COMICS’ MOM. Without Stan Lee’s wife, Joan, who died last week at 95, the Marvel Comics universe might not exist—because Stan was ready to quit.
As he told me in 1998: “I was 40 years old and … I wasn’t writing the kind of stories I wanted to write—because the publisher didn’t want those kinds of stories. So my wife said to me, ‘You know, Stan, instead of quitting, why don’t you do one book the way you’d like to do it?’” Thus were born the Fantastic Four. (8:30 in this raw audio.)

THANKS. To journalist Jody Brannon for a tip that fueled this issue of Square.

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