Divvy + CTA deal / ‘The ceasefire doesn’t exist’ / R.I.P., Kindles / Happy Local News Day

Divvy + CTA deal. If you buy a 30-day CTA or Pace bus pass, a pilot program launching this month will give you a $5 credit for Divvy bike and scooter rentals.

■ Here’s how.

■ Mayor Johnson’s picked a bike-lane champion to head Chicago’s Transportation Department.

■ Also: A former Cook County public defender to serve as deputy mayor for community safety …

■ … who may be called on to deal with a new city inspector general report that finds “inconsistency” in the Chicago Police Department’s practice of stripping enforcement powers from cops under investigation.

■ Block Club: Police say Chicago’s infamous “Puffy Coat Bandits” are part of a crime ring that’s been targeting downtown diners for years.

‘Farewell to foam.’ That was one of the appeals to Illinois lawmakers as hundreds of environmentalists traveled to Springfield to push passage of bills to save the planet.

■ Also under consideration: Legislation to legalize a “green death option,” human composting …

■ … and a proposal to give those convicted of reckless driving an alternative to losing their licenses: Installation of devices that would limit their vehicles’ ability to exceed speed limits.

‘A program that is being proposed by this president with his intentions to destroy the Department of Education.’ The Chicago School Board’s OK’d a resolution calling on Gov. Pritzker to reject a federal program to divert taxpayer dollars to cover private school tuition.

■ Dentists caring for needy Chicago public school students are asking the state to take control of a program they say the city has mismanaged.

‘The ceasefire doesn’t exist. The future is awful.’ The American Prospect’s David Dayen: “Iran taking operational control of the Strait of Hormuz has enormous ripple effects.”

■ Jeff Tiedrich at Everyone is entitled to my own opinion: “Donny … agreed to a ceasefire without really understanding what the terms were—which is pretty much Donny’s entire business model, to act first and think never.”

‘A president shouldn’t be able to walk away from threatening to wipe out an entire civilization.’ USA Today’s Chicago-based columnist Rex Huppke: “If Vice President JD Vance were smart—and I very much don’t think he is—he would use this disgraceful moment to turn on the president and position himself as a less insane choice to lead the country.”

■ Dan Froomkin at Heads Up News: The imperative to remove Donald Trump from power is going viral.

■ The AP: Democrats are growing bolder on talk of deposing Trump.

■ Republicans across the country are coming to grips with a wave of election routs, in Wisconsin and elsewhere: “We got our butts kicked.”

‘The last person who should be running the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.’ Columnist and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich says the woman with that job now—and a leading candidate to become the next U.S. attorney general—“is intent on reversing civil rights” …

■ … witness her investigation of the star witness against Trump in congressional hearings about the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot (New York Times gift link).

■ In the Justice Department’s declaration that the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional, former U.S. prosecutor Joyce Vance sees the Trump administration “killing history.”

■ Popular Information: Trump’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission is going to war with states—to protect his family’s business partners.

MAD about late night. The venerable satire magazine’s June issue turns its sights on TV’s end-of-day shows …

■ … including a eulogy for Stephen Colbert’s Late Show.

■ That follows a “MAD about DC” satire that former DC Comics editor Mike Gold declares the magazine’s funniest issue in years.

R.I.P., Kindles. In a move that Wired says will spur a new wave of electronic trash, Amazon’s planning to cut off support—including the ability to download new e-books—for Kindle readers released before 2012.

■ Here are the 11 models affected.

■ ZDNet explains how to jailbreak one of those forlorn devices to become “the ultimate open-source reader.”

Mind those Ns and Qs. Yesterday’s Chicago Public Square misspelled Iran—an error identified by several helpful readers, of whom the first was Barry Koehler.

■ Mistakes hurt, but having readers who take the time to set things straight eases the sting.

■ Journalism critic Dick Tofel: “Starting long news stories with anecdotes may have outlived its usefulness.”

Happy Local News Day … a national day of action conceived by the founder of the Montana Free Press and being observed nationwide—by organizations including MS NOW (the former MSNBC), the Sun-Times and Investigate Midwest …

■ … which makes this an apt day to thank readers such as Vidas Germanas, Mark Dean, Clive Topol, John O’Connell, Ann Fisher, Maureen King, Peter Kuttner, Judy Hoffman, Geoff Anderson, Fritz Holznagel, Dave Kraft, Peggy Conlon-Madigan, Susanne Riedell, Heather Alger, Jon Lederhouse, Bob Back, Joan Berman, Robert A. Shipley, Brent Brotine, Ricky Briasco, Nancy and Barney Straus, Keelin Wyman, John Gilardi, Jessica Mackinnon, Susan Gzesh, Rosalind Rouse, Deirdre Walton, Avery Cohen, Geraldine Delaney, Clifford Johnson, Ian Morrison, Julie Martin, Steve Johnson and Louise Kiernan, Matt Griffin, Liz Meisterling, saknrad, Kathy Catrambone, Marianne Goss, Glenn Jeffers, Tim Colburn, Jerry Role, Debbie Becker, Bill Oakes and Carollina Song—who, over the last 9+ years, have pitched in to help cover the cost of producing Square.

■ Join their ranks today—for as little as $1, just once—and see your name atop tomorrow’s roll call.

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Thanks. Mike Braden made this edition better.

Civilization gets a pass / Badger ’bout-face / Food Awards voting time

Civilization gets a pass. Retreating from his threat to wipe out Iran’s “whole civilization,” President Trump’s settled for a two-week ceasefire.

■ Bill Kristol at The Bulwark: “It’s a surrender. Iran 1, Trump 0.”

■ Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman: “The world’s greatest military power went to war with a poor, medievalist theocracy. It was an incredibly uneven match. … Yet Iran won.”

■ Trumpwatcher Aaron Rupar: “Trump went from making insane genocidal threats … to hyping the ‘golden age’ of Iran hours later, and he received no concessions in between.”

■ Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich calls it “the latest in a host of examples revealing how to defeat Trump.”

■ Not everyone got the memo.

■ Pulitzer winner Gene Weingarten: “Whenever Donald Trump is caught by his own bullshit and trapped without a coherent plan, he resorts to his specious ‘two week’ formulation”—or, as Weingarten dubs it, a “fartnight.”

■ Former AP D.C. bureau chief Ron Fournier: “Trump is still a clear and present danger.”

The leaks are coming from within the White House. A gripping New York Times account (gift link) drawn from reporting for a forthcoming book reveals that, ahead of the war, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Israeli intel on the prospect of “regime change” in Iran “bullshit.”

■ The Times breaks it down with six takeaways from its own story.

■ Jeff Tiedrich’s synopsis is typically unrestrained: “Donny blundered into an unwinnable war because his despot bestie Netanyahu goaded him into it, and his piss-drunk Secretary of Death convinced him that his warfighting warfighters would warfight the shit out of Iran, and it would be over in an afternoon.”

■ Poynter’s Tom Jones: “The Times story is one you can’t read fast enough, and yet you feel like reading it through the cracks of your fingers because of how disconcerting it all is.”

‘Trump’s not just pretending to be a madman. He actually is one.’ Stop the Presses columnist Mark Jacob: “Trump’s election … put nuclear weapons in the hands of a lunatic.”

■ Dan Froomkin at Press Watch: “Our country’s news organizations can no longer afford to beat around the bush.”

■ Charlie Savage at the Times (another gift link): “Trump’s Iran threats look like self-incrimination for potential war crimes.”

■ Popular Information reminds the military: “Just following orders” isn’t a defense for war crimes.

■ Gov. Pritzker and dozens of other Democrats say it’s time to force Trump out of office.

■ Not just Democrats: Right-winger and conspiracy champion Alex Jones asks, “How do we 25th Amendment his ass?” and ex-U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweets: “25TH AMENDMENT!!!”

■ Pod Save America cohost Dan Pfeiffer dismisses the notion as fantasy: “The 25th Amendment isn’t coming to save us.”

■ Law prof Joyce Vance: “Congress, which hasn’t done its job, needs to step up, and that largely means members of the president’s party.”

‘He might be better off asking for Melania’s job.’ Jimmy Kimmel reflects on acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche’s profession of love for Trump.

■ Democracy Now! founder Marc Elias: Blanche is “an unusually good liar.”

■ Live on the web this afternoon at 3 p.m. Chicago time: The Freedom of the Press Foundation and other groups convene a panel discussion on Trump’s successes recasting political dissent as domestic terrorism.

Badger ’bout-face. In what Progress Report columnist Jordan Zakarin calls “a remarkable 180-degree turnaround from the majority held by conservatives less than a decade ago,” a liberal judge yesterday easily won a Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

■ Democrats also flipped a longtime Republican mayor’s seat in Waukesha.

■ In a Georgia House district Trump carried by 37 points two years ago, a Republican won a special election for Marjorie Taylor Greene’s old seat by just 12 points.

■ Early voting’s on for Indiana’s May primary.

‘It is really akin to Please put some seat belts in your car before you sell the vehicle.’ A bill pending before Illinois lawmakers would require gun manufacturers to ensure their pistols can’t be easily converted into automatic weapons.

■ Used-car shopping? Carfax now can rate a specific vehicle’s future reliability.

‘Power your phone completely off before you reach the customs area.’ As airport security ramps up device searches, Kim Komando’s Current newsletter ticks off ways to protect travelers’ digital privacy.

■ Borderless: What Chicago immigrants should know before traveling.

Tired of your Gmail address? Google’s letting you change it—without losing access to your old address or logins tied to that account—but you could get more spam …

■ … and Gmail’s getting more AI-ish.

Food Awards voting time. The polls are open in the Tribune’s 15th annual Readers’ Choice Food Awards.

■ Block Club: 15 Chicago theaters are cutting ties with the Joseph Jefferson Awards after the organization honored a director accused of abuse.

Thanks. Barry Koehler made this edition better.

If you’re reading this for free … Thank those readers—including John Cain, Lynne Stiefel, Christopher Comes, Deborah J. Wess, Shruthi Kannan, Miriam Beams, Tom Revord, Ryan Ver Berkmoes, John Powers, Jill DeVaney, Tom Wethekam, Deborah J. Wess, Jeff Baker, Michael Cornfield, Diane Meiborg, Amy Parker, Paul Wedeen, Barb Powers, Jason Sherman, Orin Day, Paul Herrick, Sherry Nordstrom, Spring Belasich, David Weindling, Tanya Surawicz, Lisa Mettler, Michael Conway, Kathy Manofsky, Maggie Ellsworth, Michael Boyd, Arnie Weissmann, Heather O’Reilly, Stephen Brown, Chris Rhodes, J. Michael Williams, Martin Fischer, David Hammond, Cheryl Foertsch, Carole Barrett, Janice Marsh, Janean Bowersmith, Stephan Benzkofer, Anne Rowan, Dave Connell, Kermit Carlson, Judith Krzysko-Jakubowska and Ken Paulson—whose generous support has kept Chicago Public Square coming for all, paywall-free.

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