Hey, newbies. Chicago Public Square’s gained hundreds of readers who learned of this newsletter in Friday’s edition of The Conversation’s news quiz. Welcome, one and all. Please know that your feedback’s always welcome here.
■ And now, the news:
ICEy runways. As President Trump prepared to deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to airports today to help with security during the budget standoff over Homeland Security funding, at least one Republican senator is pronouncing that a “bad idea” …
■ Concerned about your digital privacy as ICE steps into airports? The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s June list of tips may help.
■ See also TidBITS’ survey of when Apple’s FaceID helps—and when it doesn’t.
Mullin’ Mullin. The Republican-controlled Senate was poised today to confirm Trump’s benighted pick (March 5 link) to head Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin.
■ Block Club Chicago: “ICE killed a man outside Chicago last year. Little has been done to investigate.”
■ ICE has asked Illinois not to release a Venezuelan migrant accused in the shooting death of a Loyola University freshman …
■ … a suspect who the Sun-Times notes arrived in Chicago with the wave of migrants bused here from Texas in Gov. Greg Abbott’s protest of then-President Joe Biden’s border policies.
■ Two Illinois State University students and four others were wounded in a shooting in Normal early Sunday.
‘Stop, Truck 1. Stop.’ The collision of a jet and a firetruck at New York’s LaGuardia Airport killed an Air Canada flight’s pilot and copilot.
■ Control tower audio: “Stop, stop, stop.”
‘Make a deal.’ Updating coverage: Trump said Iran is proposing to end the war—but Iran denied it.
■ Columnist Neil Steinberg: “The president said the war will end when he ‘feels it in his bones.’ Is that reassuring? His bone-deep feelings are what got us here.”
■ The Sun-Times: Chicago-area Lebanese Americans are mourning more than a thousand dead and a million displaced in Israeli strikes on Lebanon.
■ As the war propels fuel prices up, Consumer Reports offers 10 tips to get the most out of a tank of gas.
‘A victory not just for the protesters, but anyone in this country who cares about the First Amendment.’ An attorney for protesters at the Chicago area’s immigrant detention center in Broadview hails as “heartwarming” a federal judge’s rejection of a curfew on demonstrations there.
■ Organizers of Saturday’s third “No Kings” rallies across the country are looking to top the more than 6 million who turned out in October.
■ The flagship rally: St. Paul, with Sen. Bernie Sanders.
■ Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury spared no sarcasm in a “No Kings” call to action.
Administration aggravation. The leaks are proliferating, as insiders tell The New York Times (in a pair of gift links) about the turmoil inside the Trump/Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-controlled Centers for Disease Control …
■ … and the Homeland Security operations overseen by Kristi Noem paramour Corey Lewandowski (link fixed).
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich invites you to watch Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent “explain that it was totes acceptable for Dear Leader to gloat over the passing of Robert Mueller, because Mueller was very very very very very very very mean to him.”
‘I’m the gov who put gov in Wegovy.’ Amid talk of a presidential run, Gov. Pritzker got some laughs Saturday as he addressed reporters and dignitaries at Washington’s Gridiron Club dinner.
■ Pritzker’s wrestling with a thorny question: Should Illinois join Trump’s program of tax breaks for donations to scholarship organizations that could benefit private schools promoting discriminatory views?
‘Bullshit stings.’ Taking a critical look at police and federal agents’ undercover operations, John Oliver found plenty of reason for concern—in Chicago and elsewhere.
■ See his report here.
‘Standards of excellence are so out.’ Pulitzer winner Jack Ohman mourns the impending death of CBS News Radio.
■ News watchdog Margaret Sullivan blames “the awful new management at CBS News—under the thumb of Trump-friendly CEO David Ellison and his handpicked editor Bari Weiss.”
■ … but it’s not gonna help.
■ Democratic senators are demanding the FCC investigate foreign entanglement in CBS parent Paramount’s proposal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery.
‘It could have been a lot worse.’ That’s The Guardian on Saturday Night Live UK’s premiere—which showed up in the U.S. last night on Peacock.
■ Elsewhere, the show’s getting fair-to-middlin’ reviews.
■ It got off jokes about Trump and Epstein …
■ … prompting Trump to share a clip.
■ The Ukraine-born and Chicago-raised owner of the OnlyFans adult-content digital platform, Leonid Radvinsky, is dead of cancer at 43.
‘Why do you stay in Chicago?’ Returning to the pages of the Tribune, Pulitzer-winning columnist Mary Schmich tackles that question with gusto (gift link).
■ Plus: Axolotls!
■ … a word that readers of a certain age may have first encountered in the pages of Mad Magazine (2014 link).
Thanks for reading. Your support keeps this service coming.
■ Mike Braden made this edition better.
