‘Horrifying ineptitude.’ Columnist Eric Zorn lays the death of an 11-year-old boy reportedly trying to protect his mother from a former boyfriend at the feet of the Illinois Prisoner Review Board.
■ Zorn credits the story’s international coverage to the heroism of Jayden Perkins.
‘A direct attack on our culture.’ Guess which ethnic organization is objecting to a City Council proposal to rename Columbus Drive in honor of Barack Obama.
■ Council member Lamont Robinson: “This is our opportunity as a city to give him his flowers while he’s still alive.”
■ Mayor Johnson’s “City Hall lifer” chief of staff, Rich Guidice—is quitting after just a year.
Party poopers. Axios Chicago notes a big uptick in nonpartisan ballot requests for this week’s Illinois primary.
■ A Sun-Times editorial: Ranked-choice voting could boost anemic primary turnouts.
■ Government reform adviser Madeleine Doubek blames “closed or partially closed primaries; gerrymandering that stifles competition; and our winner-take-all, two-party system.”
■ The winner of the Democratic primary for Cook County state’s attorney may be determined by mail-in ballots, and that could take a while.
■ Correction: Yesterday’s Chicago Public Square mischaracterized Illinois Supreme Court Justice Joy Virginia Cunningham’s Democratic primary victory. She’s [correction corrected!] seeking re-election to a position to which she was appointed in 2022.
■ Thanks to reader Ron Schwartz for taking Square’s corrections policy seriously.
■ Jack Leyhane’s For What It’s Worth law blog surveys other judicial primary results.
‘Trump is broke.’ Columnist Noah Berlatsky: “It’s fun to watch Trump turn his pockets inside out and go crawling about on his belly looking for loose nickels.”
■ The AP: If he can’t come up with a financial guarantee by Monday in his most costly legal battle yet, New York could seize his assets, including his Trump Tower penthouse.
■ LateNighter: Trump’s strategy may be to “flood the comedy zone with too much scandal to choose from.”
■ Jimmy Kimmel: “If Donald Trump wants immunity, he should drink bleach like he told us to do.”
■ An Onion quiz: “How Much Do You Know About Trump’s Court Cases?”
Tech giants besieged. The Justice Department and at least 16 states are suing Apple, accusing it of illegal monopolistic practices on its iPhones and other products.
■ Apple has, in the words of one assistant attorney general, imposed “a series of ‘Whac-A-Mole’ contractual rules and restrictions … to extract higher prices from consumers, impose higher fees on developers and creators, and to throttle competitive alternatives from rival technologies.”
■ Google’s been fined bigly for training its AI-powered chatbot with news organizations’ content—without notification to those organizations.
‘Go after these bastards.’ The Guardian reports growing momentum—and scholarly support at the University of Chicago, among other top law schools—for the notion of suing fossil fuel companies in connection with climate-related deaths from things like hunger, disease, floods and wildfires.
■ The Ralph Nader-founded organization promoting the theory, Public Citizen, condemns new EPA rules that clear automakers to slow-roll antipollution measures …
■ … as the Biden administration brags that it’s also the most ambitious plan ever to cut passenger vehicles’ climate-threatening emissions.
■ Journalist and climate tech investor Molly Wood has launched an electric car buying guide.
‘Why Boeing is such a shitty company.’ In contrast with its major competitor, Europe’s Airbus, columnist and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich notes that Boeing’s major investors are “entirely in it for the profits.”
■ The New York Post: Before his alleged suicide, a Boeing whistleblower claimed management was spying on him in connection with his suit against the company.
Journalism autopsy. ProPublica founder Dick Tofel analyzes what went wrong at the Center for Public Integrity, now at “what seems likely to be the end, one way or another.”
■ Poynter’s Rick Edmonds says that, unlike newspaper chains’ (including the Tribune’s) previous defections from The Associated Press, Gannett and McClatchy’s cancellations look likely to stick.
■ Media watcher Simon Owens suggests it’s time to reinvent the newswire.
‘Delightful.’ Critic Richard Roeper says Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire gets the franchise back on track.
■ Singing the praises of The King’s Speech, columnist Neil Steinberg asserts, “I’d rather watch one great movie a dozen times than a dozen so-so movies one time each.”
Almost that time again. Next week, we’ll launch another roll call of Square supporters. Want to see your name in that first installment? Join the ranks of those who’ve chipped in as little as $1, once, to help keep this service coming.
Thanks. Ian Mitchell and Ron Schwartz (again) made this edition better.