Who’s in charge? Following the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, 404 Media reports that several big insurance companies have taken down web pages listing their executive leadership.
■ The AP: The case spotlights the challenges of protecting corporate leaders.
■ Columnist Ken Klippenstein: In an internal memo, “UnitedHealthcare tells employees to ‘shut up.’”
■ Updating coverage: The hunt for the killer points to Atlanta.
■ Ronny Chieng at The Daily Show: “The cops just need to narrow down the list of suspects to anyone in America who hates their health care plan and has access to guns.”
■ Widely criticized, another major health insurer has reversed a policy change limiting coverage for anesthesia …
■ … and another has decided to take its Investor Day virtual.
■ Jack Mirkinson at Discourse: “If you are running a company that prides itself on denying people medical care, you have blood on your hands.”
■ Assessing the social media reaction, columnist Taylor Lorenz observes, “thousands of Americans (myself included) are fed up with our barbaric healthcare system and the people at the top who rake in millions while inflicting pain, suffering and death on millions.”
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson sees “a cultural moment in which popular fury over the power big business has over ordinary Americans’ lives exploded.”
‘Unprecedented, mind-boggling wealth.’ Axios ranks Donald Trump’s emerging “government of billionaires” team by net worth.
■ Rolling Stone: Disclosure forms released only after the election reveal that a last-minute ad campaign falsely claiming that Trump’s position on a national abortion ban matched that of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was bankrolled by Elon Musk.
■ Justice Democrats executive director Alexandra Rojas: “Democrats will keep losing until they cut ties with billionaires and corporations.”
■ In an open letter, comedian Francesca Fiorentini offers President Biden a to-do list: “The Supreme Court effectively deemed presidents to be above the law. … So for the next two months, give or take, you can DO CRIME. Crime for good. You could be Batman, Mr. President. Only slower. Much slower.”
In his defense. Pentagon chief-designate Pete Hegseth today finally got a public show of support from Trump in the face of burgeoning scandals.
■ Columnist Evan Hurst: “We’re supposed to stop asking questions, because Pete and Mommy say Jesus has saved and redeemed and changed him.”
■ In the problems Trump’s cabinet picks have faced, Pod Save America cohost Dan Pfeiffer sees “a sign that his second term will be more incompetent than his first” …
■ … but former Labor Secretary Robert Reich fears a second Civil War.
Rays of Hope Dept. Public Notice columnist Lisa Needham sees them in Democrats’ Wisconsin showing last month.
■ Greg Sargent at The New Republic: “Suddenly, Trump’s ugliest threats are facing surprise GOP resistance.”
■ The American Prospect’s David Dayen: “Republicans have given no real indication that they have the capacity to govern.”
Hanging up on landlines. AT&T, which for years has steadily been pushing up the price of traditional phone lines for those hanging onto their copper connections, says it plans to eliminate the service once and for all by 2029 …
■ … except (maybe) California.
‘It’s real and dangerous.’ Platformer Casey Newton cautions against those who say artificial intelligence tech is “fake and sucks.”
■ Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Jack Ohman surveys the work of an AI-powered site faking his style.
■ Bloomberg perceives AI anxiety behind vandalism committed against Google-sibling Waymo’s self-driving cars.
■ Yeah, but credit AI with an app that turns Roku devices into karaoke machines.
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke on bitcoin’s surge: “I haven’t been this excited about obtaining oil-baron-level wealth since the Beanie Babies boom of the mid-1990s.”
‘Fishy.’ That’s a word the chair of the Chicago City Council Police Committee uses to describe an undisclosed settlement with the family of a man killed by Chicago cops in March after he’d shot and wounded one of them during a traffic stop.
■ The family of a 10-year-old girl killed in a police chase is seeking at least $100 million from the city.
■ Better Government Association chief David Greising celebrates the council’s “unprecedented” resistance to the mayor’s budget proposal.
■ Center for Tax and Budget Accountability executive director Ralph Martire explains why Chicago’s always facing a budget crisis.
Pot puzzle. Go figure: A new ruling from the Illinois Supreme Court means that—even though smoking pot in a vehicle is against the law—drivers are protected from searches based just on the smell of burnt cannabis, but not from a search based on the smell of raw marijuana.
■ A federal appeals court has granted a reprieve to the state’s ban on assault weapons.
‘I don’t want to continue to work for a paper that is appeasing Trump.’ In what Poynter’s Tom Jones calls “a scathing piece,” a prominent legal columnist for the formerly Tribune Co.-owned Los Angeles Times is quitting after 15 years …
■ … protesting actions by owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, who plans to submit the paper’s news articles to an artificial intelligence-powered “bias meter.”
■ Press Watch proprietor Dan Froomkin on MSNBC host Joe Scarborough’s pickle: “No self-respecting journalists should be going off-the-record with Trump, ever.”
■ Northwestern’s State of Local News Project: In news deserts, Trump won in a landslide.
■ A journalism professor’s prediction for 2025: “Young journalists will reimagine a better press.”
Happy birthday, Mavis. Chicago-born Blues and Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Mavis Staples celebrates her 85th (which actually fell in July) with a concert tonight at the Auditorium Theatre.
■ Can you top your Chicago Public Square columnist’s 7/8 score? ✅✅✅✅✅❌✅✅
Non-obviously honored. The book Everybody Needs an Editor, to which your columnist contributed (Page 172!), has made the Non-Obvious Book Awards Longlist …
■ … and yet, never satisfied when it comes to honors, Square continues to seek your votes in the Reader’s Best of Chicago poll.
Have a warm weekend.
