‘Seized … but not silenced.’ Days after police raids claimed almost all its computers and phones, a defiant small-town Kansas newspaper—the Marion County Record, helmed by a former University of Illinois journalism professor—was back in print today.
■ The Kansas Bureau of Investigation has launched a criminal investigation of the raids (Washington Post gift link, courtesy of Chicago Public Square supporters).
■ A Sun-Times editorial: “That a judge would sign off on a search warrant allowing the … possibly illegal raids exemplifies just how quickly the First Amendment rights of journalists can be trampled on.”
■ Thousands—including readers of yesterday’s Square—have shown their support for the Record by buying subscriptions.
■ Publisher Eric Meyer—whose mother and co-owner died after the raids—yesterday answered your Square columnist’s offer of help this way: “Right now, all we need is more hours in the day to meet tonight’s midnight deadline for this issue.” Which they did.
‘Such deflective mayoral wordplay bodes ill.’ Add columnist Neil Steinberg to the list of those dismayed by Mayor Johnson’s “Blagojevichian” explanation for his dismissal of widely respected Health Commissioner Allison Arwady.
■ Reader Matthew Tarpy writes: “No one with a straight face can claim this wasn’t a payback to the Chicago Teachers Union. … It was absolute penny-ante bullshit, and I thought [Johnson] was better than that.”
■ Message on the health department’s Twitter X account yesterday: “#AskDrArwady has been canceled.”
We’re a disaster. President Biden’s made it official: Cook County’s a disaster area after storms in June and July.
■ Need help covering housing and home repairs, uninsured property losses, temporary housing or other weather-related losses? Start here.
■ As the death toll from the Maui fires rises, an electric utility’s under scrutiny for not cutting power even as winds toppled poles that sparked flames.
■ A University of Hawaii atmospheric sciences professor forecasts the state’s climate future: Wet areas getting wetter, dry regions getting drier—and more prone to fires.
■ Climate experts tell CNN the news media aren’t giving the crisis “anything like the amount and urgency of coverage the story deserves.”
■ Columnist Matthew Yglesias: “If elected officials actually went about tackling climate change in a highly aggressive, single-minded way, voters would kick most of them out of office.”
■ Biden’s headed to Hawaii Monday.
Man bites dog. One of Illinois’ most prominent Republicans says the party needs to break its “Trump fever.”
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “Trump Republicans have fully embraced what Russian political theorists called ‘political technology’ … creating a false narrative around an election … to control public debate.”
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke: “Why do Democrats want to deny Americans the chance to see how great Trump is?”
■ Legal scholars tell The Guardian that Trump’s free-speech defense is a danger to democracy.■ Two of our guys were indicted in Georgia along with Trump.
■ In Wisconsin yesterday, Biden ignored the charges against Trump.
Friends in a high place. The Lever traces a pending Supreme Court case that could upend rent control laws across the country to a conservative group linked with two of the justices’ billionaire benefactors.
■ Charlie Pierce at Esquire: “Wisconsin just delivered more proof that an elected judiciary is a terrible idea.”
Streaming savings. The Post’s Tech Friend newsletter offers five tips for cutting your streaming TV bill.
■ The Internet Archive* vows to appeal a court injunction forbidding it from sharing copyrighted books—a practice it says is important in an era when “libraries are under attack at unprecedented scale.”
Hide yourself from Google. Advisorator explains how to suppress your personal information—including your address, phone number and age—from Google search results.
■ Coming to Google’s Chrome browser: The AI-powered ability to summarize articles on which you’ve clicked.
‘You cull your news from sources that have proven to be untrustworthy.’ Square yesterday lost a reader, who offered this explanation: “Tired of your myopic views on what constitutes news.”
■ Can you replace that reader by recommending Square to a friend?
■ And, of course, your financial support to keep this service coming helps ease the sting.
* Which hosts a good chunk of your Square columnist’s professional audio archives.