Readers Ralph Sherman, Reed Pence, Richard Milne, Robert Clifford, Ron Schwartz and Roy Robert Lagemann have pledged at least $5 a month to keep Chicago Public Square going. You can join them here. And now the news:
Trump’s warning. The president told fans in Montana yesterday it’ll be their fault if he’s impeached …
■ … in a speech during which he condemned The New York Times for “treason” in publishing that anonymous essay from someone in his administration …
■ … and struggled mightily—but failed—to pronounce the word “anonymous” properly. (Cartoon: Keith Taylor.)
■ Barack Obama was reportedly set this morning to roll out something like a campaign speech at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
A Watergate veteran’s red flag. John Dean, who helped end Richard Nixon’s presidency, is warning the U.S. Senate that confirmation of Trump’s nominee Brett Kavanaugh would create “the most pro-presidential powers Supreme Court in the modern era.”
■ Mother Jones: Five times Kavanaugh seems to have lied to Congress under oath.
Not quite an endorsement, but … Mayor Emanuel says he’s told his big-money backers to hold off on backing a candidate to replace him until at least four big names come off the fence.
■ Also maybe in the hunt: Former Chicago school and park board member Gery Chico.
■ The park district is moving its headquarters from downtown to the Southwest Side.
Checked out. Picket lines bloomed outside downtown Chicago hotels today as workers launched a strike for better benefits.
■ Carpenters are calling time out on nonunion work to renovate the Bears’ Halas Hall.
■ Ailing Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis has been formally replaced.
‘No cause or motive.’ What we know about a man who opened fire in a Cincinnati bank yesterday, killing three people before cops killed him.
■ A Chicago teenager involved in the anti-violence movement has been shot and killed on Chicago’s South Side.
■ Chicago police have agreed to radio in a report anytime they point a gun at someone.
■ The Trib’s Eric Zorn: “No one has yet tallied … the lies that followed” the 2014 police killing of Laquan McDonald.
■ A Cook County sheriff’s police squad car killed two women in a suburban crash.
He’s in the house! The Sun-Times says a bishop who knew 25 priests had broken the law over the years by molesting children—but didn’t tell the cops—is living in the Chicago Archdiocese’s Gold Coast mansion.
■ New York State’s attorney general has reportedly subpoenaed all the state’s Catholic dioceses about their handling of sex abuse allegations.
■ One year in, the Tribune updates Chicago’s quest to land Amazon’s HQ2 project.
■ The Times: Finalists see clues everywhere.
Rage against _____. Chicago’s home to a business that’s part of a phenomenon spreading across the country—to the misgiving of some mental health experts: “Rage rooms,” where people pay to break things.
■ Conspiracy-minded blowhard Alex Jones—whom Sen. Marco Rubio this week called “a clown”—and Jones’ hateful InfoWars account have been banned “permanently” from Twitter.
‘It was like a tornado of fire.’ A truck driver describes being trapped in California’s fast-moving Delta fire, which surrounded hundreds of drivers on California’s Interstate 5.
■ Southern Wisconsin—including Madison—is dealing with severe flooding from this week’s storms.
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Corrections. Zealous reader Mike Braden was first to note two errors in yesterday’s edition of Square: A misspelling of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ last name and an extraneous up in the phrase “… has passed