‘This president is going to try to steal this election.’ Joe Biden tells Trevor Noah on The Daily Show that if Donald Trump doesn’t cede power peacefully in defeat, “You have four chiefs of staff coming out and ripping the skin off of Trump. … I’m absolutely convinced they will escort him from the White House with great dispatch.”
■ Columnist Steve Chapman: Biden’s stuck in the middle—which may not be a bad spot right now …
■ … but The New York Times reports Biden’s reaching out to 100 left-leaning economists and researchers on the down-low.
‘He’s reveling pathetically in the chaos like a pig in mud.’ Columnist S.E. Cupp assesses the president’s reelection strategy.
■ Vice President Pence has deleted a photo showing a room full of Trump campaign staffers jammed together and not wearing masks.
Trump’s Tulsa troll. The president’s planning a return to pre-pandemic-style campaign events with a rally June 19—Juneteenth, a day commemorating slavery’s end in the United States …
■ … and it’ll be in Tulsa, site of a racist massacre 99 years ago …
■ … which provided the opening scenes for HBO’s Watchmen, honored yesterday with a Peabody Award that the series creator is dedicating to the massacre’s victims.
■ Video shows Tulsa cops last week handcuffing two black teenagers for jaywalking.
‘I am a direct descendant of slave owners.’ But ESPN’s Ryan McGee welcomes NASCAR’s decision to ban the Confederate flag from its racetracks.
■ US Soccer is repealing its requirement that players stand during the national anthem.
■ Richmond, Virginia, protesters toppled—and splattered with paint—a statue of Confederate president Jefferson Davis …
■ … a day after a Christopher Columbus statue in town met a similar fate.
■ A Sun-Times editorial: Time to rename two Chicago parks that honor a slaveholder and a slavery equivocator.
■ A 20-year military veteran in National Review commentary: “America Begins to See More Clearly Now What Its Black Citizens Always Knew.”
| Help keep Chicago Public Square coming |
‘The discussion was gut-wrenching.’ Politico recaps Illinois Democratic state senators’ tearful conference call to talk about racism and police brutality—a session that one senator says “was so powerful that … the chamber could get a supermajority … to pass whatever legislation comes forward.”
■ Senate Republicans want to force the state’s reopening during the pandemic by tomorrow—a thing Gov. Pritzker rejects because science …
■ … but Pritzker says Illinois is on track to move to Phase 4 of the reopening’s five phases before the end of the month.
■ COVID-19 cases are spiking again in 21 states.
$1,000 checks. Later this month, as many as 300,000 Chicagoans—including undocumented residents—who didn’t get a federal stimulus check will be able to apply for cash from the Chicago Resiliency Fund.
■ Mayor Lightfoot is pushing a moratorium on eviction of tenants whose finances have been crippled in the pandemic.
■ Lightfoot’s condemning an alderman for leaking a recording of an obscenity-laced exchange she had with City Council members.
‘Up to and including expulsion.’ Chicago’s police union president is threatening to discipline cops who take a knee in alliance with protesters.
■ Tribune columnist John Kass has had it with kneeling: “You’re witness to neo-Marxist appropriation of Christian symbolism.”
■ Chicago’s inspector general reports “complex and monumental” problems with Chicago police record-keeping, crippling lawyers’ ability to get documents in lawsuits involving the department.
■ Trump is demanding Seattle police reclaim protesters’ self-declared “autonomous zone”—threatening, “If you don’t do it, I will.”
■ The Conversation: TV and movies’ positive portrayal of cops for close to a century is no accident.
‘Chicago now has many broken places.’ And yet Trib columnist Rick Kogan finds “an unexpected kind of therapy” in a walk along Wabash under the CTA tracks.
■ As the CTA and Metra return to life, the Trib’s Mary Wisniewski reports, riders are finding lots of seats … and fewer stains.
‘Fear and despair.’ Workers are sounding the alarm about job cuts at the Field Museum …
■ … whose CEO has rejected a pay cut for himself as “a meaningless gesture.”
■ Under fire for a tepid response to protests against police violence and racism, leadership at the Chicago-based Poetry Foundation is stepping down.
‘Deep in the world tonight our hearts beat safe and sound.’ Wang Chung has recut a classic: Everybody Stay Safe Tonight …
■ … for a benefit concert to stream this weekend.
■ A star-studded musical tribute to late Maywood-born singer-songwriter John Prine hits the web tonight at 6:30.
Comp-U-Dopt is a Chicago Public Square public service partner.
Thanks to Mike Braden for noting a word missing above.