Trump smells a rat / 440+ Fifths / ‘Leftist claptrap’

Trump smells a rat. Politico reviews reporting from Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal suggesting the presence of “a government informant inside Trump’s inner circle.”

‘I see a rope around his neck.’ Extremists have been leveling violent threats against the judge who reportedly cleared the FBI to search Mar-a-Lago.
The director of the FBI—a guy appointed by Trump in 2017—calls threats against his agents and the Justice Department “deplorable and dangerous.”
Some officials at Justice are pushing for an end to the administration’s silence on the unprecedented search.
A coalition of superstar historians has warned President Biden that the present threats to American democracy are as serious as any that arose before the Civil War and World War II.

440+ Fifths. Trump yesterday invoked his Fifth Amendment right, refusing to answer hundreds of questions in the New York attorney general’s investigation of his family’s business practices.
In a rare concession, he reversed himself: “I once asked, ‘If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?’ Now I know the answer.”
An incredulous Trevor Noah on The Daily Show: “Trump decided not to talk? … Now we know something shady’s going on, right?

‘Liz Cheney’s kamikaze campaign.’ The New Yorker’s Benjamin Wallace-Wells: “Unlike most of her Republican colleagues, the Wyoming representative is willing to lose her seat to take down Donald Trump.”
Gov. Pritzker is calling for an apology from his Republican challenger, Darren Bailey, for asserting that abortion has been worse than the Holocaust.
Crain’s: Bailey’s internet history finds him asserting “that Islam ‘is not a religion of peace,’ that CPS’ decision to let children use the bathroom that conforms to their sexual identity is ‘sickness,’ and that a young person born as a biological woman who thinks she may actually be a man needs to accept ‘reality.’”

‘We’d hate to think this is another case of a whistleblower being shown the door.’ A Sun-Times editorial raises concern that the dismissal of the official in charge of Chicago Police Department reforms reflects a lack of seriousness about the program under Mayor Lightfoot.
Columnist Eric Zorn: Lightfoot’s “sweet deal” with NASCAR exemplifies her evolution into “something of an autocrat.”
Lightfoot’s budget calls for increasing property taxes—but not as much as she could.

‘These matters have to be fixed.’ A Tribune editorial says that, before the CTA pours billions into the Red Line’s extension south, it needs to address crime on its buses and trains.
Over the course of 24 hours, prosecutors say Chicago cops arrested four men with guns at the CTA’s Roosevelt station.
The CTA’s embattled president, Dorval Carter, was set to address the City Club at noon today in a sold-out session to be streamed live to the web.

Walgreens in trouble. A federal judge has found the company “substantially contributed” to San Francisco’s opioid epidemic—dispensing, in the judge’s words, “hundreds of thousands of red-flag opioid prescriptions without performing adequate due diligence.”
Monetary damages come later, but the company says it’ll appeal.
Columnist and ex-Labor Secretary Robert Reich revisits “the worst memo in American history”: A 1971 memo from a then-future Supreme Court justice encouraging business to use its political power “aggressively and … without embarrassment.”

Look up. Way up. The Perseid meteor shower—widely considered the year’s best—is set to peak tonight …
 … but the bright light of the year’s last “supermoon” could make the shower tough to discern.

‘Kill your lawn before it kills you.’ The New York Times’ Agnes Walton sounds an alarm about “the astounding amount of water needed to keep our lawns vibrant, the toxic herbicides and chemical fertilizers we saturate them with and the air pollutants that billow out of mowers and into our lungs.”

‘It takes a village, and that village costs a shit ton.’ Grudge Report columnist Bess Kalb regrets a 2020 tweet that deprecated the challenges women face juggling career and motherhood.
Men Yell at Me columnist Lyz Lenz on the challenges of life in an era rife with “death counts, infection rates, mass shootings, disasters on our overheating planet”: “Sometimes there is nothing you can do but play Wordle.”

‘I don’t know if I’ll ever write anything again.’ Burt Constable grants an exit interview after more than 34 years as a Daily Herald columnist.
Poynter’s Tom Jones notes the loss of “an important media voice” from the Post.

‘Leftist claptrap.’ That’s the T-shirt-worthy reason one reader—with a Naples, Florida, IP address—gave for unsubscribing after reading yesterday’s Chicago Public Square.
Can you recruit a new reader to replace that one?


Mike Braden made this issue better.

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