Dread in Maine. The AP is updating the hunt for a mass killer responsible for the deaths of at least 18 people in Lewiston.
■ Among the victims: A volunteer youth bowling coach.
‘Don’t know anything about the shooting, its location, how many victims or who they are, who the shooter is or why he—it’s always a he—did it.’ The Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg has no thoughts, no prayers for the victims in Maine—because he wrote the column he filed for today’s paper on “April 9, 2021. To prepare for the inevitable.”
■ A Sun-Times editorial: “Americans must insist on laws to limit AR-15-style weapons in civilian hands.”
■ Writer Stephen King: “The shootings occurred less than 50 miles from where I live. … Stop electing apologists for murder.”
■ A Democratic U.S. representative from Maine, Jared Golden, is reversing his opposition to an assault weapons ban: “The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure.”
■ Stephen Colbert called out new House Speaker Mike Johnson for mouthing platitudes in the face of atrocity: “We’re already capable of hope and prayer ourselves. You’re capable of governing, theoretically. … If that seems like too hard of a job, you know who’s really got a hard job now? The people in Lewiston.”
■ Refuting Johnson’s assertion on Fox that “it’s not guns, it’s not the weapons,” Democratic California Rep. Robert Garcia tweeted: “It’s actually the fucking weapons.”
‘Just bigotry with nice hair and glasses.’ Johnson is Men Yell at Me columnist Lyz Lenz’s Dingus of the Week.
■ Vanity Fair’s Bess Levin lists “the absolute most WTF things the new speaker has said.”
■ Press Watch columnist Dan Froomkin offers political reporters a collection of adjectives that describe Johnson more accurately than conservative.
‘REMOVE THE SIGN … OR B U R N.’ A Hickory Hills family that displayed a lawn sign supporting a “Free Palestine” received a threatening letter under investigation by police.
■ A suburban landlord accused of killing a 6-year-old Palestinian-American boy and wounding his mom has been indicted on charges of murder, attempted murder and a hate crime.
Chicago politics’ ‘epicenter.’ That’s Mayor Johnson’s word for political organizer Marilyn Katz, who’s dead at 78.
■ Politico’s Shia Kapos recalls Katz as “an anti-war activist of the 1960s who would become a force in helping Mayor Harold Washington get elected and Mayor Richard M. Daley manage.”
■ Columnist and TV commentator Laura Washington, who worked in Washington’s administration, tells Axios that Katz “‘made good trouble,’ and reveled in it.”
■ Hear her discuss her career in a 2017 interview on WGN.
‘A troubling fixation.’ The New York Times’ Megan Twohey (a Chicago Tribune alumna maybe best known for her Pulitzer-winning work that helped birth the #MeToo movement) has spent the last seven months digging into Chicago-spawned Kanye West’s business deals with Adidas.
■ Read the full investigation here (a gift link, courtesy of Chicago Public Square supporters).
Nice work if you can get it. The executive assistant to the Illinois Emergency Management Agency’s director has quit following revelations that, as a contractor, she was billing the state twice as much as the salary of her boss—who declined to take the Sun-Times’ questions.
■ Education columnist Julie Vassilatos is spooked that a program to divert public cash to private schools is “creeping back from wherever bad policy goes to die.”
■ Illinois Senate President Don Harmon has kicked back cash his campaign received from a red-light camera contractor weeks after passage of a bill banning such contributions.
Oath Keepers probe. Chicago’s police oversight panel is calling for the city’s inspector general to expand its investigation of cops tied to hate groups from a case-by-case basis to a systemic overview.
■ The Tribune: A Chicago cop quit just days before he was arrested for assaulting and taking naked photos of a romantic rival.
■ Better Government Association chief David Greising concedes that the raises in a new Chicago police contract “are rich, true. But gains made in other areas justify approval.”
■ A man accused of shooting an Illinois state trooper in Springfield has been charged with attempted murder, days after he allegedly shot and killed his ex-girlfriend in Chicago.
Lights out. McCormick Place Lakeside Center has agreed to draw its drapes at night in the fall to keep birds from colliding with its windows—dying by the hundreds.
■ Companies that have pledged to cut their use of water—including Coca-Cola, General Mills and Amazon—aren’t coming close.
■ Heated’s Emily Atkin says that calling the monster Hurricane Otis a symptom of “climate change” isn’t enough—that rapid hurricane intensification is “a symptom of fossil fuels.”
‘Alexa is a graduate of the Darth Vader MBA.’ Author and digital agitator Cory Doctorow accuses Amazon of running “a bait-and-switch con where they sell you a gadget with five features and then remotely kill-switch two of them. … ‘I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.’”
■ Coming to Google Fiber customers: “Outrageously fast” internet service.
■ Platformer: Twitter is dead and Threads is thriving.
■ A new website offers a virtual museum of internet history. (Honk if you remember the Space Jam site.)
■ If you score better than 75%, you’re a better quiz-taker than your Chicago Public Square columnist …
■ … who goofed in yesterday’s edition—mistaking the semifinals for the finals in Axios’ poll to identify Chicago’s best all-time TV news anchor …
■ … a contest now resolved in favor of Carol Marin.
Speaking of contests … The Reader’s Best of Chicago 2023 poll is open for nominations. Square welcomes your nod in two categories: Best Email Newsletter and Best Independent Website.
■ Email a screenshot of your Square nominations to BestOf@ChicagoPublicSquare.com and see your name in this space—you know, like Kevin Lampe and Judy Karlov.
■ And you can buy without reservation because of Raygun’s exceptionally generous return and exchange policy: “Full refunds at all times. It doesn’t matter if the shirt has been worn or washed.”