This issue of Chicago Public Square is certified Blagojevich-free. (Except for that sentence right there.) And now, the news:
Bloomberg bloodied. In the fiercest Democratic presidential debate of the campaign so far, rich guy Mike Bloomberg got the worst of it …
■ … and his groan-inducing refusal when Warren asked that, right then and there, he release women who’d worked for him from sexual harassment nondisclosure agreements …
■ … prompting a rash of “Bloomberg terminal” jokes.
■ The Daily Beast: “Bloomberg Spent Hundreds of Millions to Get His Ass Kicked.”
■ RealClearPolitics: “What did he expect?” (Cartoon: Keith J. Taylor.)
■ Warren had plenty of ammo for her other rivals, as a supercut of her “candidate roast” makes clear.
■ Ronald Brownstein in The Atlantic: “Compared with the hazing Bloomberg received, Sanders escaped with many fewer bruises and bumps.”
■ The New York Times’ David Leonhardt: Sanders’ rivals “are strangely hesitant to attack him.”
■ Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg mixed it up, too.
■ Protesters who disrupted Joe Biden’s closing remarks were chanting “No kids in cages!” and “Don’t look away!”
■ Politico’s Jack Shafer: With so many presidential contenders in their 70s, vice presidential candidates will really matter this time.
■ Your Chicago Public Square voter guide stands ready to help.
Screws turning. Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and some of his political chums are named in a federal subpoena seeking records on a former ComEd lobbyist and his work for a teensy suburb.
■ An email exchange sheds light on how a suburban mayor who’s also a Cook County commissioner squeezed campaign cash out of a factory owner.
Pritzker’s ‘unwelcome surprise.’ Chalkbeat says the governor’s Illinois budget address isn’t sitting well with education leaders—because he’s threatening to hold up education spending increases set for July until after voters approve a state income tax overhaul.
■ He says his goal is “to make Illinois the best state in the nation to raise young children.”
■ A Sun-Times editorial likes his presentation of alternate budgets—one with and one without the overhaul.
Catcall of duty. A Chicago alderman wants to criminalize verbal harassment of people in a public place …
■ … but Mayor Lightfoot is wary of “incarcerating people on the basis of their words.”
■ Lightfoot wants to expand Chicago’s authority to ticket vehicles parked or standing in bike or bus lanes.
■ The mayor’s convening a Solutions Toward Ending Poverty Summit today.
Pitchfork reveal. Here’s the lineup for July’s music fest in Chicago.
■ After almost half a century, Evanston’s summertime Custer Fair is moving to Whiting, Indiana.
■ With little notice, the Indiana Beach amusement park in Monticello has closed, ending a 94-year run.
‘Airlines: Kids should sit with their parents!’ Consumer Reports has launched an online petition demanding American, Delta and United Airlines stop charging extra fees to keep families together on a plane.
■ From CR in November: Family travel horror stories.
■ The climate crisis threatens to destroy all Earth’s coral reef habitats by the end of the century.
Copy and paste much? Then you owe a debt to programmer Larry Tesler, who invented computer commands like “cut,” “copy,” “paste,” “find” and “replace”—and who is dead at 74.
■ Before that, he helped found an Oregon hippie commune.
‘One of the most egregious offenses ever committed by a major news organization.’ Esquire’s Charlie Pierce is appalled at a decision by The Wall Street Journal and NBC to exclude Elizabeth Warren from hypothetical questions about head-to-head matchups with Trump.
■ A Chicago alderman is calling on vampiric hedge fund Alden Global Capital to appear before the City Council to explain its intent with regard to Tribune Publishing.
■ A headline that practically wrote itself: “Victoria’s Secret is going private.”
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