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TOWN HALL SQUALLS.
■ Fairview, Tenn. (AP): “Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn … was met with protests.”
■ Nottoway, Va. (WWBT): “A huge crowd erupted Tuesday night—shouting at Congressman Dave Brat during a town hall style meeting”—held 60 miles from most of his constituents’ homes.
■ Politico: “But … Brat offered his colleagues a potential blueprint for defusing tense constituent town halls …”
■ Chicago-area Rep. Peter Roskam changes the rules for his “telephone town halls.”
■ Journalism prof: Elected officials’ “urge to control access is getting worse.”
■ FiveThirtyEight: Five special House of Representatives election over the next few months offer “a decent thermometer reading on … how voters are responding to President Trump.”
■ But a conservative group is gearing up to provide Republicans with campaign air cover.
MUSLIMS ♥︎ JEWS. A Muslim-led fundraiser to pay for repairs to a St. Louis-area Jewish cemetery scarred by vandalism beat its $20,000 goal so quickly it’s going nationwide, to help Jewish community centers that have been similarly targeted.
■ Former presidential candidate Rick Santorum, with no evidence: “A lot of the anti-Semitism that we’re seeing … is coming from the … Muslim community.”
■ Trump finally condemns antisemitism: “It’s going stop and it has to stop.”
■ Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce on the Trump administration’s Russian connections: “I will read any story anywhere that contains the phrase, ‘once stabbed a guy in the head with a broken margarita glass.’”
NOT-WELCOME SIGN. Chicago Public Schools principals are under orders to keep out U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who don’t have a criminal warrant.
■ Trump’s revised immigration order sweeps aside almost all restrictions on removal of the estimated 11 million people in the U.S. illegally.
■ But it would exclude immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally as kids.
■ Because, according to his former campaign manager, “the president’s a person with a big heart.”
■ New Yorker writer Amy Davidson: “The question is whether the neighbors of the undocumented will stand up for them, or look away.”
‘A CRUEL JOKE.’ As Chicago wrestles with a plague of violence, aldermen are blasting Mayor Emanuel’s plan to spend a multimillion-dollar windfall on a roster of items that includes the planting of trees.
■ More gunshot sensors coming to Chicago’s streets.
McDONALD’S TROLLED. In a full-page Chicago Tribune newspaper ad, White Castle offers employees of McDonald’s—which is testing a crab sandwich in California—free White Castle Crab Cake Sliders.
■ Macy’s considers downsizing its State Street store, making room for offices.
‘SUNLIGHT IS THE BEST DISINFECTANT. YOU’RE WELCOME.’ HBO’s Bill Maher, who took flak for having Breitbart lightning rod Milo Yiannopoulos on his show, is taking credit for Yiannopoulos’ downfall.
■ The Chicago Reader’s Michael Miner: “Journalists will never be loved. … But we’re useful, and much more easily scorned than abandoned.”
MOST-CLICKED LINK IN YESTERDAY’S SQUARE? As of this morning, it was a tie between this link in yesterday’s issue and yesterday’s link to the most-clicked link in the issue before that.