A new day. After days of violence and months of pandemic lockdowns, downtown Chicago is much closer to open today.
■ Offices can reopen—within some tight limits.
■ Restaurants are cleared to open—in the open air …
■ … maybe with new COVID-19 surcharges.
■ Divvy bikes are back—for part of the day.
■ In her State of the City address, Mayor Lightfoot called on insurance companies to cut the red tape for devastated businesses and “start cutting checks.”
‘It’s not gonna happen. Not in my city.’ Lightfoot says she’s ready to fight President Trump in court if he follows through on his threat to send the U.S. military in to quell violence in Chicago.
■ Trump’s defense secretary says he doesn’t support the president’s threat, either. (Update, end of the day: He caved.)
■ At protests across the country, more than 11,000 people have been arrested.
■ Stephen Colbert, explaining that the Posse Comitatus Act requires that Trump obtain Congress’ permission before using the military on domestic soil: “Unfortunately… Trump never asks before he grabs us by the posse.”
‘Let’s get it done.’ The mayor’s calling for massive police reform within 90 days.
■ See her State of the City address.
■ The Beachwood Reporter’s Steve Rhodes says Chicago Police Supt. David Brown “is in over his head.”
‘The gangs took matters into their own hands.’ A Chicago liquor store owner says criminals have stepped in to fill a gap in the city’s police coverage during the unrest of recent days.
■ A Columbia College journalism professor writes, “I’m a black man in America, and my heart is now a ticking time bomb.”
■ Kenosha’s Mars Cheese Castle has joined the resistance.
■ An appeal to North Side protesters: Help clean up the South and West Sides today.
White Guys, Black Hats Dept. A white supremacist group created a tweeted call to violence that it attributed to antifascists—and that Trump’s benighted son Don Jr. retweeted as an example of how dangerous the left is.
■ Supt. Brown: “Stay off social media.”
■ The jamming of Chicago police radio frequencies over the weekend is now part of a federal investigation into claims extremist groups set out to undermine otherwise peaceful protests.
■ Nebraska Gov.—and brother to the Cubs’ chairman—Pete Ricketts stepped into racist territory with his choice of words.
‘If Trump is against antifascists, then what is he for?’ Washington Post columnist Ishaan Tharoor reflects on “the erosion underway during his presidency.”
■ A Sun-Times editorial condemns the thug in the White House.
■ In one of his most aggressive moves yet, Joe Biden warns that Trump’s “narcissism has become more important than the nation’s well-being.”
‘The most racist congressman in America just got beat.’ Mother Jones notes the defeat of Iowa’s Steve King …
■ … but, The Atlantic notes, his defeat seems not to have been a consequence of his racism—and that may not bode well for the Democrats.
Pwned. Web sleuth Troy Hunt reports a fresh—and mysterious—breach of close to 69 million online accounts’ email addresses, genders, IP addresses, names, phone numbers and physical addresses.
■ Find out if yours is among them: Enter your address at haveibeenpwned.com.
■ And check here to see if your passwords themselves are secure.
■ CNN’s Brian Stelter sees “an indication of something sinister at work.”
■ A University of Southern California prof: “Citizens may have been lulled into thinking that these acts of [journalist] intimidation couldn’t possibly happen on American soil. And then they did.”
■ Media watcher Robert Feder recounts hazards Chicago’s TV news crews faced while covering unrest in Chicago.
■ Tribune editorial board member Lara Weber: Protesters who try to ban cameras from their protests are missing the point.
■ High-tech journalism incubator Civil is dead …
■ … but Chicago owes it for helping birth Block Club Chicago …
■ … speaking of which, at Square’s email deadline, this fundraising campaign in support of Chicago’s independent media organizations was nearing the $60,000 mark—in celebration of which your publisher has committed to doing something mildly amusing:
Thanks to Mike Braden for some punctuational hygiene in this edition.