Outage outrage. Sen. Marco Rubio says yesterday’s massive AT&T service collapse gave Americans a taste of what a potential cyberattack might feel like.
■ AT&T insists that wasn’t it …
■ … but its corporate response left customers frustrated …
■ … AT&T workers, too …
■ … and helped make the case for keeping a landline around.
■ The feds want to know a lot more about what happened and why.
■ If it made you think of Netflix’s apocalyptic (Obamas-produced) movie Leave the World Behind, you weren’t alone.
‘By fleeing, Johnson yields the field to his enemies.’ Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg appeals to the mayor: “Pry open your yap and start talking. Because if you don’t, we’ll find others to speak for you. And I guarantee you won’t like what they have to say.”
■ Johnson’s pick to head Chicago’s Department of Buildings happens to be the same woman found negligent after the implosion of a coal plant blanketed Little Village in dust.
■ Johnson’s school board has voted to remove police officers from Chicago public schools before the fall.
■ In partnership with The New York Times, Chalkbeat’s looking for high school juniors and seniors and high school teachers willing to let reporters join them in the classroom as the 2024 presidential election nears …
■ … which makes this an apt time to direct you to the Chicago Public Square 2024 Illinois Primary Voter Guide Guide.
South suburban shenanigans.
■ The mayor of one town is under investigation by the FBI …
■ … and the mayor of another is dodging questions about how his wife and son came to earn a total of more than $120,000 while working for his administration.
‘The ludicrous Republican impeachment investigation has now been exposed as a Russian intelligence op.’ But Press Watch proprietor Dan Froomkin says the mainstream media are in denial.
■ Columnist Parker Molloy rips apart a New York Times headline about student loan forgiveness: “An exercise in the paper’s absurdity.”
‘Baby dreams dashed.’ The Daily Beast explores the heartbreaking implications of the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that has kneecapped in vitro fertilization …
■ … a case that Esquire’s Charlie Pierce calls “the logical end of the anti-choice ‘personhood’ scam” …
■ … and that historian Heather Cox Richardson says illustrates the axiom that, “in the United States, theocracy and authoritarianism go hand in hand.”
■ Law professor Joyce Vance: Alabama Republicans have “put themselves in a politically inconvenient box, and now they’re going to have to try to legislate their way out of it.”
■ Democrats see a political opportunity.
■ Daily Show host Desi Lydek explodes Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s image as a moderate: “On abortion, she’s even more extreme than Trump.”
■ Harvard journalism prof Steve Almond on The Daily Show’s revival: “Jon Stewart’s ‘calm-down’ paternalism isn’t funny in 2024.”
■ Media writer Tom Jones Poynter managing editor Ren LaForme doesn’t get why Stewart’s back.
Vice versus oblivion. R.I.P., Vice.com …
■ … where hundreds are losing their jobs.
■ Columnist and Vice alumnus Luke O’Neil: “Running the very famous and cool brand Vice … would be a slam dunk … if only 45 people at the top doing nothing weren’t making like $19 million a year.”
■ CNN’s Oliver Darcy: The digital media revolution is over.
‘Google learned the hard way … race is not always a question of stereotypes.’ Platformer’s Casey Newton examines the decision to pause its AI eminence Gemini’s ability to generate images.
■ On technology’s upside: For the first time since Apollo, an American craft has landed on the moon.
■ Top a 5/9 score to earn bragging rights over your Chicago Public Square columnist.
Welcome, new readers. Turns out that losing the Chicago Reader’s Best of Chicago poll and running an ad congratulating the winners is a not-bad way to win subscribers.
■ Hey, newbies: Don’t be shy.
■ Rick Baert made this edition better.