GOPies’ choice. The official candidates for the next House speaker include one guy who’s chummed around with white supremacist leaders and another involved in a major college molestation scandal.
■ Columnist Lauren Martinchek says neither of them’s concerned with “the inevitable mess they’re bound to inherit. … There’s always that nice, cushy lobbying gig waiting for them on the other side.”
■ PolitFact confirms: It could also be Donald Trump.
■ Late Night host Seth Meyers: “Only the Republicans would consider giving the job of speaker to someone who is under a gag order.”
■ A Tribune editorial: “Democrats may enjoy watching Republicans flailing. But no one’s interests are served by … dysfunction on this level.”
■ The Washington Post’s Alexandra Petri has crafted the House’s “help wanted” ad: “You get a little hammer! Work with a man named Chip! Second in line to the presidency of the United States!” (Gift link, courtesy of Chicago Public Square supporters.)
■ New Yorker humorist Andy Borowitz: “Every House Republican to Be Speaker for Four Minutes.”
‘The Donald Trump is Show is over.’ New York Attorney General Letitia James welcomed Trump’s departure from the fraud trial that could demolish his business.
■ Columnist Liz Dye: “What should judges do when faced with a defendant who wields the world’s biggest microphone and will not shut up about his case? For the most part, the answer has been nothing.”
■ The Associated Press: Trump’s intensifying rhetoric suggests how he might govern as president again.
Another one of our guys. An Illinois man who attacked a cop and a wire service cameraman during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol is off to more than four years in prison.
■ That makes more than two dozen Illinoisans among the close to 700 sentenced so far.
‘Time to hold him accountable.’ The City Council’s passed an ordinance requiring the CTA’s truant—but increasingly well-compensated—president to meet with the council quarterly.
■ Mayor Johnson’s headed south to witness the migrant crisis at the border firsthand.
■ A coalition of Chicagoans is suing the city, demanding it stop housing asylum-seekers in public buildings.
Lap land. Chicago’s giving NASCAR a second go-round next July 7-8 …
■ … but City Council members gripe Mayor Johnson didn’t consult them.
‘Security cameras are showing us mayhem that was previously simply described to us.’ Noting that Chicago robberies in the 1990s far outnumbered those of today, columnist Eric Zorn offers theories as to why it all seems more alarming now.
■ A 16-year-old girl was stabbed to death downtown a year after a shooting killed her brother and wounded her mother.
‘Contempt citations, a murdered child protection investigator and the highest number of children who died after contact with the agency in 20 years.’ That’s how Capitol News Illinois recounts the legacy of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services under director Marc Smith, who’s quitting at the end of the year.
■ A Sun-Times editorial: “Give Smith credit for sticking around and shepherding the agency through a pandemic,” but he was set up for failure.
‘Gobsmackingly bananas.’ That’s one climate scientist’s reaction to a new record for global temperatures last month.
■ Cook County’s issued a disaster proclamation for the Sept. 17 storms that hit the south suburbs particularly hard.
■ The Conversation: Lego’s dilemma is an environmental wake-up call.
‘What conceivable emergency would require the entire nation to be notified at once?’ Yesterday’s test of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System prompted a lot of questions from columnist Neil Steinberg.
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke says the wording could have been better: “THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System, and you should be VERY, VERY AFRAID.”
‘The most pugnacious, public-interest force against corporate power since the Reagan administration.’ Columnist Cory Doctorow praises the Biden administration for bringing the hammer down on Big Meat.
■ Popular Information: “Target says it’s closing nine stores due to theft. The crime data tells a different story.”
■ Wired: Elon Musk’s brain-chip startup, Neuralink, and its collegiate partner, UC Davis, have been concealing grisly images of dead test-subject monkeys.
They never fit in your wallet anyway. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stopped printing COVID-19 vaccination cards—but hang onto them nevertheless.
■ USA Today revisits the question “Can I get a COVID booster and flu shot at the same time?”
‘I recommend updating soon.’ TidBITS’ Adam Engst encourages iPhone users to jump on an operating system upgrade that addresses security vulnerabilities and overheating.
■ Here’s Apple’s vague statement.
Live again. A week from Saturday brings the post-strike return of Saturday Night Live with host Pete Davidson and musical guest Ice Spice.
■ Chicago Public Schools music teacher Lena McLin, whose students included Jennifer Hudson and Chaka Khan, is dead at 95.
Correction. CWBChicago’s managing partner, Tim Hecke, writes to correct a report cited in Square Tuesday that he’d written nearly every story on the site going back to 2019: “The mass change of bylines on old stories was an error. My intention was to put my byline on the story about the judge’s no-writing policy. I went about it the wrong way and ham-handedly changed the byline on a few years of stories.”
■ But Hecke is taking more bylines these days.
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