Year’s funnest mayoral forum. Axios Chicago hosted all but two of Chicago’s mayoral candidates—Mayor Lightfoot and Willie Wilson declined—in a rollicking and revealing series of interviews last night at The Hideout.
■ The video’s mirrored, but photos show things as they really were.
■ Candidate Paul Vallas has a Twitter problem.
■ The Sun-Times says polls agree on one thing: “Only four of the nine candidates have a real shot at making the April 4 runoff.”
■ Veteran political strategist David Axelrod: Lightfoot “definitely has a very, very steep uphill climb.”
■ An aldermanic candidate accused of writing bad checks was arrested this week.
■ The election’s Tuesday. Time to check the Chicago Public Square voter guide.
Downtown population boom. A new report finds the population of Chicago’s Loop growing faster than that of any other area in the city.
■ An immigration rights lawyer condemns the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services for blocking undocumented survivors of child abuse from applying for legal status.
■ A law professor takes a critical look at the Biden administration’s impending new asylum rule.
‘Laboratories of degrading public education.’ Public Notice sounds a First Amendment alarm about Oklahoma plans for a publicly funded Catholic charter school.
■ Columnist Lyz Lenz’s Dingus of the Week is you—if you think that removing library books objectionable to religious or political groups constitutes a book ban: “It’s just sparkling content curation.”
■ A Boise State University archivist says the life of a Loyola University teacher, novelist and tattoo artist illustrates a “cancel culture” alive and well in the 1930s.
‘Every reporter can relate to feeling a target on the back.’ Media critic Brian Stelter reflects on the gunning down of a Florida TV reporter just doing a job that was underpaid and under-appreciated.
■ Poynter’s Al Tompkins prescribes ways journalists can make these deaths matter.
■ ProPublica: Texas’ governor says most gun crimes involve illegally owned weapons, but that’s not true for mass shootings.
■ The Onion, again: “Man Kicks Himself After Thinking Of Perfect Gun He Could Have Used To Win Argument.”
‘A stunning, criminal abuse of power.’ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch condemns House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s “leak of 44,000 hours of Jan. 6 security footage to a corrupted Fox.”
■ Mediaite: McCarthy’s using that turnover to raise political funds.
■ CNN’s Oliver Darcy: Legal experts say “Fox News is in serious hot water.”
■ Stephen Colbert mocks Fox for mocking Lego.
‘Let’s do this thing, Marge!’ Columnist Rex Huppke on “QAnon-hugging Georgia lawmaker” Marjorie Taylor Greene’s call to split the U.S. into separate red and blue nations.
■ A decision by the foreperson of the special grand jury in the Georgia election meddling investigation to go public has cast a shadow over the case against Donald Trump …
■ … but the judge overseeing the probe says she didn’t break any rules.
‘The longest day of our lives. The hardest day of our modern history.’ Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy today marked the anniversary of the Russian invasion.
■ Insider profiles the body collectors recovering Ukraine's war dead.
■ The U.S. is further lowering the economic boom on Russia.
■ Asserting that “all wars end,” a University of San Diego professor outlines three scenarios that could lead Russia to make peace with Ukraine.
■ NewsGuard: Big corporations—including Hertz, Hulu, Amazon, British Airways, Marriott, IKEA and Macy’s—are lazily running three times as many “programmatic” ads on websites propagating Russian disinformation as they were when the war began.
‘The funniest thing I’ve seen in months, and not just on Netflix.’ The Tribune’s Michael Phillips hails the British mockumentary series Cunk on Earth.
■ Veteran movie critic—and friend of Square—Lloyd Sachs resurrects a 1985 interview in which Bonnie and Clyde director Arthur Penn declared, “There’s nothing more pathetic than the level of emotion in films like Star Wars.”
‘The publisher of which 20th-century writer has hired sensitivity readers to change words in the author’s books like fat and ugly that might offend modern readers?’ That’s one of eight questions on this week’s news quiz, crafted by past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel.
■ Can you beat your Square columnist’s mediocre 75% score?
Know who gets to see the quiz early? People who chip in at least $10/month (about 50¢ an issue) to help keep Square coming.
■ Thanks to them, and to everyone whose financial support covers the cost of delivering this news briefing daily—including Ronald A. Fox, Michael Johnson, Judy Sherr, Barbara Cimaglio, Doug Strubel, Donna Barrows, Keelin Wyman, Peggy Fogelman, Victoria Long, Randy Young, Heather O’Reilly, Suzy Carlson, Barbara Heskett, Michelle Damico, Ryan Bird, Pat Albu, Owen Youngman, Mark Edwards, Louise Donahue, Gregg Runburg, Paul Kungl, Mark Mueller, Nina Ovryn, Theodore Naron, Bennett Hart, Jim Parks, Mary Bunker, Sherry Nordstrom, Jill Chukerman, Tom Barnes, Michael Mini, Michael Soriano, Anne Costello, Carol Morency, Neil Parker and John Culver.