Bears vs. Kochs. Add Americans for Prosperity—a Koch brothers-funded organization that The Guardian described in 2018 as “the most powerful rightwing group you've never heard of”—to those opposing taxpayer-funded financial incentives for the Bears to move to Arlington Heights.
■ A Sun-Times editorial: “It’s shameful for the Bears to even ask.”
■ Block Club Chicago: Youth coaches and fans in Chicago say a move would alienate working-class fans.
■ Correcting yesterday’s Chicago Public Square: The team’s community hearing on the stadium plan happens tonight at 7—but attendance will be limited to 2,000.
■ The Onion: “NFL To Begin Filling Players With Extra Blood To Boost Ratings.”
Armed robbery crews. Chicago police are seeking at least two separate groups of suspects in a series of robberies on the North Side, Near West Side and downtown.
■ A man shot on a CTA Red Line train in the South Loop last night around 7:20 was listed in critical condition.
■ Cops are sharing images of two men sought in connection with the stabbing death of a robbery victim late Tuesday night in the Loop—the neighborhood’s seventh murder victim this year. (Illustration: An excerpt from Ivan Brunetti’s cartoon commentary on “Sweet Home Chicago.”)
‘Killed for reporting on an elected official.’ A Las Vegas-area county administrator has been arrested in the stabbing death of a newspaper reporter whose work preceded his defeat in a June primary.
■ Memphis police say they’ve nabbed a gunman who livestreamed himself driving around town shooting randomly at people—killing four and wounding three.
‘You need to get your fall booster vaccine, so go ahead and get it.’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky is simplifying the government’s messaging on COVID-19 shots.
■ The Arm and a Leg podcast—“a show about why health care costs so freaking much”—explains how the Inflation Reduction Act “will make it so people on Medicare will pay less for expensive drugs.”
■ Choix, a California-based online reproductive health care startup, is offering non-pregnant women abortion pills to save for later use.
■ Popular Information: Republican candidates across the country are brazenly misrepresenting their positions on abortion.
‘I used to count the quotes in news stories, and if there were equal numbers of Democratic and Republican quotes, I would think the story was fair.’ Former Sun-Times and Tribune editor Mark Jacob* talks to Dame about reporters’ culpability in serving “the concept of Republican-Democrat equivalency instead of serving the truth.”
■ Steve Chapman** tells Eric Zorn*** why he’s signed off from his syndicated column.
Queen’s decline. With Elizabeth’s health in serious question, now’s a good time to revisit The Guardian’s 2017 account and Politico’s 2021 update of the once-secret plan for the days after her death.
■ Pioneering CNN anchor Bernard Shaw is dead at 82.
California steamin’. A record heat wave has put the state’s commitment to ending its reliance on fossil fuels to the test, because it needs to burn natural gas to avoid power outages.
■ A professor of civil engineering warns that America’s aging infrastructure can't handle the heat.
■ Block Club: Thousands of monarch butterflies will flutter through Chicago this weekend on their annual migration south.
‘Apple knows we’re all going to die soon.’ Buzzfeed News: The new Apple Watch and iPhone 14 “are perfectly designed for the apocalypse 😍😍.”
■ Like your iPhones small? Time’s almost up.
■ The Intercept: “Facebook engineers: We have no idea where we keep all your personal data.”
‘I … loved the way this version ends.’ Sun-Times critic Richard Roeper gives three stars to the new Disney+ take on Pinocchio …
■ … but The Wall Street Journal’s John Anderson calls it … ouch … “wooden.”
■ TV watcher Aaron Barnhart: With Disney+ prices rising, here’s one way you can fight back.
■ Satire from columnist Rex Huppke: “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power tries to jam Marxist ideologies like ‘elf diversity’ down the throats of me and my adult-male friends who are also single by choice and have time to worry about things like this.”
Thanks. Mike Braden made this edition better.
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* Former colleague of your Square columnist.
** Former colleague of your Square columnist.
*** Former colleague of your Square columnist.