Check your checkbook / Death on the Metra / Secrets in the basement

Check your checkbook. Twitter was alive with celebration today from some of the more than 1.6 million Illinoisans now $397 richer—with cash deposited by Facebook under settlement of a lawsuit filed against it under the Illinois Biometric Privacy Act …

 … which Axios calls the state’s “uniquely strong facial recognition law” …
 … which has also prompted Facebook and Instagram to turn off their augmented reality filters.
You know whom you can thank for that law? A couple of disgraced Illinois politicians: Sen. Terry Link, who sponsored it, and Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who signed it.

Black Tuesday. Two mass shootings in Chicago left two dead and 19 hurt.
An 18-year-old was under arrest after large groups of people crowded streets downtown and in Lincoln Park last night.
A Sun-Times editorial: “Stopping the violence must be leaders’ top priority.”

Death on the Metra. BNSF trains were skipping the Clarendon Hills stop this morning after a train collided with a truck there yesterday, killing one passenger and injuring four others.

‘The victim was scared and called 911.’ The Sun-Times reports that a 10-year-old girl accused her father, a Chicago police officer, of sexually abusing her—but he was charged with just a misdemeanor.
A Streets and Sanitation ward superintendent reported by his alderman for leaving voicemail referring to a rabbi as a “f__king Jew” quit before he could be fired.

We’re No. 1—again. For the third year in a row, the University of Illinois at Chicago ranks Chicago the nation’s most corrupt city.

Biden’s water pledge. Speaking to a union convention yesterday in Chicago, the president promised to replace the city’s 400,000 lead service lines within a decade.
Poynter’s Tom Jones: Departing White House press secretary Jen Psaki is one of the best ever.
Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “In the last year, the Republican Party has transformed” into an entity “using the power of the government to enforce the beliefs of a radical minority on the majority of Americans.”

Welcome back. Supreme Court justices were to meet privately today for the first time since leak of that draft opinion that would reverse the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide.
Columnist Eric Zorn’s memo to protesters outside justices’ homes: “You’re not helping.”

Mum’s the word. Some of the nation’s most prominent news organizations are telling their reporters to keep their opinions on abortion rights secret.
Rolling Stone editor Noah Shachtman: “I don’t understand the logic of telling your staff to stay quiet while their rights are being taken away.”
Your Chicago Public Square columnist has for decades been a fan of the “Call it as you see it, but make sure you look at it good and hard” school of journalism.
Columnist Dick Tofel mourns BuzzFeed News’ retreat.

Your new favorite black hole. Astronomers have released the first image of a supermassive one at the center of our Milky Way galaxy …
 … or, more precisely, of the glowing gas that surrounds it. (Photo: The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration.)

Secrets in the basement. City Cast Chicago reports the Chicago Covenants Project is digging in at the Cook County clerk’s office to identify the racially restrictive documents that shaped Chicago’s neighborhoods of today.
You can join training sessions over the next few weeks to help with that work …
 … and high school kids can attend a “covenants camp” this summer.

America’s ‘twisted priorities.’ Popular Information says the nationwide baby formula shortage exposes the U.S. economy’s failure to offer support or protection for new parents.
A Chicago doctor warns parents not to try making their own.

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‘The five o’clock shadow says I’m drinking, but the T-shirt says Because I know what’s going on in this fakakta world!’ Square reader Joe Hass shares a shot of himself sporting his new Squarewear.
Get yours here.
Correction: Yesterday’s Square misattributed one of its most-tapped items. It was the work of ZDNet.

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