Mayoral race twist / ‘Prepping D.C. for invasion’ / Not so welcome

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Mayoral race twist. Candidate Bill Quinlan is suing to keep Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, Congressman Mike Quigley and Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas from running for mayor while also seeking reelection to their current jobs.
■ Before the City Council today: Dueling plans to rewrite apartment rental rules.
■ Mayor Johnson’s top lawyer is the latest administration official to depart.

‘Symbol of billionaire power’ or ‘a dangerous trope’? Crain’s Judith Crown (gift link) analyzes what Johnson stands to gain—or lose—by criticizing Jewish Democratic megadonor Michael Sacks.
■ The Tribune (free link): Sacks has dispatched a legal letter demanding an ad firm stop paying “influencers” to create videos spotlighting his political activity.
■ WBEZ: A nonprofit funded with Sacks’ cash is under fire for electioneering at a back-to-school festival on school grounds.

‘Who’s afraid of a big, bad debate?’ A Trib editorial (gift link) dings Illinois candidates dodging appearances alongside their opponents.
■ Patrick Pfingsten at The Illinoize: Gov. Pritzker’s revelation of his diabetes diagnosis “has raised further questions about what the 61-year-old governor does, or should, release to the public about his health.”

■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson notes that, as Trump threatened to “annihilate the Islamic Republic … much of the Iranian delegation walked out.”
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich: “What part of United Nations does Donny need explained to him? You’re not supposed to stand up and casually threaten to send another member nation to hell.”
■ Iran’s president was to get his turn today.
■ Press Watch columnist Dan Froomkin: “Trump is an idiot, and the mainstream press is covering up for him.”
■ The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch (gift link) on a July column in which he compared Trump to mad emperor Caligula: “I need to apologize to Caligula.”

‘Trump is prepping D.C. for invasion.’ CNN’s Zach Wolf sees that as one possible reason the president’s describing a rebuilt White House ballroom as a military complex and declaring that his triumphal arch would feature snipers and drones.
■ The Atlantic (gift link): Key Trump allies are urging him to declare martial law for the midterms.
■ Columnist and former Tribune reporter Charlie Madigan: “Somewhere in the vast ballroom of empty space that is Donald J. Trump’s brain, there are enemies who deserve being sniped at. Heck, a good sniper could take out a whole CNN crew. … That would show them who is in charge!”
■ Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman on Trump’s “downward spiral into sundowning”: “It’s ‘Underwear on the Outside’ Time.”

‘Eye-popping stuff.’ Law prof Joyce Vance says yesterday was “a bad Tuesday in Maine if your name is Susan Collins” …
■ … because ProPublica reported that the Republican senator—who’s up for reelection in November—was the subject of an FBI bribery investigation “until Trump got in the way.”

Whoops. Block Club: In the face of student protest on a campus that describes itself as one of the nation’s most ethnically diverse, the University of Illinois at Chicago career fair will no longer feature Customs and Border Protection recruiters.
■ A federal judge has struck down Trump administration rules blocking noncitizens’ access to publicly funded health, education and social service programs.
■ Project Salt Box: The company that brokered ICE’s warehouse deals has a new deal to build … things … at seven sites from Honolulu to Guantánamo Bay—including Broadview, Illinois.
■ The Washington Post (gift link): The ICE officer in a Texas shooting was a new recruit who wasn’t wearing a bodycam.

‘We hacked the FBI.’ The cybercrime group ShinyHunters says it’s stolen data “on all FBI employees and applicants”—and 404 Media says it’s seen a sample including names, addresses, phone numbers and details on FBI employees’ spouses.

‘Humans making calls to other humans.’ A.V. Club salutes 404 for exposing Facebook parent Meta’s artificial intelligence product, Muse, as “a cover for cheap human labor.”
■ The Post (another gift link): Researchers are sounding an alarm about a University of Chicago professor who used AI to write or co-write more than 200 papers and more than a dozen books this year alone.
■ 404 again: People training OpenAI’s AI have been fired for using AI to train the AI.
■ Gov. Pritzker’s assembling an “AI cabinet” to figure out what new laws Illinois needs.

Not so welcome. Illinois is closing its eight state-run welcome centers along interstate highways—although the restrooms will stay open.
■ Citing skyrocketing beef prices, the owner of more than 300 Wendy’s franchises is filing for bankruptcy.

Nazi wrong righted. The Art Institute is giving a 1913 painting back to the heirs of its original Jewish owners, who were forced to sell it by the Nazis.
■ Key to the resolution: Faint handwriting in pencil on the back.

‘$50 billion in debt just to simply mash together two mediocre media companies.’ Media watcher Simon Owens says oligarch David Ellison’s court victory to combine Paramount and Warner is just the next step in “a strategy that hasn’t worked for literally every other Warner Bros acquisition.”
■ Puck (gift link) is unimpressed by Ellison’s pledge to create an “editorial independence board”—to be chosen by … Ellison and his board.
■ Popular Information sums it up: “Democrats capitulate to MAGA media mogul.”

Thanks. Chris Koenig and Mike Braden made this edition better.

‘Trump’s evil plan is backfiring’ / ‘Happy Oligarch Day’ / A ‘mud ocean’

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‘Trump’s evil plan is backfiring.’ That’s columnist Heather Delaney Reese on the repercussions of the president’s decision to ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House press pool.
■ Former USA Today editor-in-chief Ken Paulson, now director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, sees journalists and the president playing “high-risk chess with much at stake.”
■ A Tribune editorial (free link): “If Donald Trump won’t listen to this reason, those with thicker skin around said president should gang up on the boss and do all in their power to make him reverse course.”
■ In an occasion New York Times reporter Peter Baker calls “unprecedented,” Trump left the White House yesterday with no TV cameras tracking him …
■ … resulting in laughable video that even sycophantic Newsmax conceded shows Trump’s attack “backfiring.”
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich: “Silenced-by-the-media Donny is my favorite Donny.”
■ The New York Times (gift link): “Trump, for whom television is better than any narcotic, finds himself for the first time at least partially deprived of the major networks that have covered nearly every movement and utterance he has made for more than a decade.”
■ Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer praises journalists for fighting back, but wonders if it’s too little, too late. (Cartoon: Jack Ohman, who separately posts on “The State of American Political Cartooning, 2026.”)
■ All this could make for interesting coverage of Trump’s first Chicago-area visit of his second term—for the Presidents Cup golfing thing at the Medinah Country Club.
■ PolitiFact rates “mostly false” assertions that President Biden “cut off 440 reporters’ credentials.”

Weight, weight—he told us. Gov. Pritzker’s gone public with his use of the weight-loss drug GLP-1 to address his diabetes and lose 80 pounds …
■ … elaborating in his (yes, he has one) Substack email newsletter: “If you have struggled with type 2 diabetes or being overweight, I hope this can be the push you need to talk to your doctor again.”
■ Pritzker’s also dropped a bit in Forbes’ list of the world’s wealthiest people.
■ Columnist Eric Zorn mocks Pritzker’s use of the word focus “to avoid giving straight answers to perfectly reasonable questions” …
■ … and instead commends former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s approach.

‘There’s not one person more qualified.’ Visiting last night’s Daily Show—with Jon Stewart, who’s one of his clients—talent agent Ari Emanuel stopped short of saying his brother Rahm will run for the White House, but nevertheless said “he’d make an incredible president.”
■ Tribune columnist Rick Kogan calls Ari’s new memoir—in which he discusses, among other things, his ties to Elon Musk—“lengthy, if ultimately unsatisfying” (free link).
■ Popular Information: Musk “is blanketing the internet with digital ads falsely accusing Democratic Senate candidates of supporting ‘taxpayer-funded sex changes for kids.’”

‘Happy Oligarch Day.’ Columnist and monopoly monitor Jeff Stoller says a decision by the states (not including Illinois) that were suing to block the merger of Paramount and Warner Brothers cleared the way for Trump-aligned billionaires to take over Hollywood.
■ Tech watchdog and science fiction author Cory Doctorow: California’s attorney general “sold us out.”
■ A veteran studio exec tells The New York Times (gift link) the deal makes David Ellison “the Hollywood equivalent of Superman”—a character over which he’ll have control …
■ … if a judge signs off on the deal …
■ … which LateNighter says would put much of political late-night programming under one corporate banner.

Same joke, two ways.
■ Jon Stewart assembles evidence that Donald Trump is an AI entity …
■ … and Jimmy Kimmel suggests Melania Trump’s one, too.
■ Seth Meyers returned to NBC after a record seven-week break.

‘Say so if you’re not sure.’ Tech columnist Kim Komando recommends adding that phrase to artificial intelligence inquiries—to keep chatbots from inventing answers …
■ … specifically as you check smart-home gadgets like doorbells, thermostats and fridges for Chinese-made chips that “may enable data collection and remote access.”
■ Amazon’s blocking Facebook parent Meta’s AI agent Muse from doing users’ shopping.
■ Media critic Simon Owens warns media companies cutting staff right and left: “AI slop will not save legacy newspapers.”
■ Columnist and former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger: “AI could be dangerous. I am just as wary of the tech CEOs.”

‘If my children needed to be disciplined … as a Black father, I had to address it.’ A candidate for president of Chicago’s first fully elected school board is defending himself against—but not denying—charges he engaged in physical discipline that left his son scratched and bruised.
■ WBEZ, the Sun-Times, Chalkbeat and Block Club have teamed up to create a voter guide for November’s historic school board election.

A ‘mud ocean.’ A neighbor says Riot Fest 2026 left Chicago’s Douglass Park a quagmire.
■ Organizers say they’ll make things right.
■ At least fest-goers got outta town before a threatened strike by thousands of Chicago hotel workers.
■ Block Club: Chicago sewer overflows are on the rise as extreme weather piles on.

That’s three. Another beluga whale rescued from a failed Canadian theme park has died at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium.

■ … ending this season’s run of the phenomenon we’ve come to know as Chicagohenge.

Square mailbag. A reader troubled by a passage in yesterday’s Chicago Public Square writes: “Why didn’t you use the word neighborhood? This use of ‘the ’hood’ dogwhistle is surprising and quite disappointing.”
■ That reader’s note graciously ends, “I enjoy this newsletter and appreciate every one of them.”
■ Mike Braden made this edition better.

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