Death to the CTA, Metra and Pace? Illinois lawmakers today were set to introduce legislation that would eliminate those agencies, combining them into one super-provider of Chicago-area transit.
■ If that seems like a “well, duh” moment, you’re not alone.
■ The Active Transportation Alliance’s executive director: Lower Chicago’s default speed limit of 30 miles per hour.
Unplugged? As the pandemic-launched “largest internet affordability program in U.S. history” nears its end tomorrow, more than 300,000 Cook County residents may lose their ’net access …
■ … because, as Popular Information explains, Republicans’ U.S. House “conservative caucus” considers the program—signed into law by Donald Trump—just one of those “government handouts that disincentivize prosperity.”
Politicians not welcome. As Chicago prepared to lay slain Chicago Police Officer Luis Huesca to his rest this morning, the family had reportedly asked Gov. Pritzker and Mayor Johnson to stay away.
■ The reward for identifying his killer had reached $100,000.
■ Weekend shootings took at least two lives in Chicago.
‘We’ve been here before.’ As college campus protests of the Mideast war spread, threatening graduation ceremonies across the country, columnist Clarence Page sees parallels to events of half a century ago. (Tribune gift link, courtesy of those who support Chicago Public Square.)
■ The author of a book about the “campus wars” of the ’60s and ’70s warns that “college administrators are falling into a tried-and-true trap laid by the right.”
■ USA Today’s been mapping college protests across the country.
■ Northwestern on Sunday saw a pro-Israel counter-protest.
■ As in 1968 and in years since: Columbia University’s at the center.
■ The Handbasket columnist Marisa Kabas, after watching footage of a Colorado campus confrontation: “The real rioters? Cops and college presidents.”
■ Green Party presidential candidate (yes, again) Jill Stein calls her arrest at a Washington University in St. Louis protest “a really bad look for the university.”
■ Forbes: Employers are souring on Ivy League grads and instead leaning into hiring alumni of the “New Ivies,” including the University of Illinois and Northwestern.
■ Pro-Israel Political Update columnist Steve Sheffey: “The greatest threat to the safety and security of Jewish Americans comes from the Republican Party, not college campuses.”
■ The Onion satirizes those supporting protest crackdowns: “It’s important to intervene before a protest becomes a drum circle.”
■ Zeteo: “Israel is pioneering yet another deadly innovation in drone warfare. What happens in Gaza won’t stay there.”
■ A health policy analyst for whom “the concept of Israel as a nation-state was so deeply ingrained in my Jewish education … it seldom occurred to me to ever question it” writes in the Trib (another gift link) that “Jews—themselves persecuted through the ages simply for being Jewish—displaced an entire people, simply for not being Jewish.”
‘Axios Chicago went into full-on mourning.’ A Tribune editorial mocks angst over the sudden demise of the merged Foxtrot convenience stores and the Dom’s Kitchen grocery chain.
■ Lawsuits against the failed amalgam are adding up. (Crain’s link, behind a really hard paywall.)
Storms loom. More rain’s in the works for Chicago.
■ The Conversation links a decaying El Niño to a spurt of Midwest tornadoes.
‘Laziness or fear.’ Journalism critic Mark Jacob sees those as the key motivators behind lousy headlines about Donald Trump in The New York Times and The Washington Post …
■ … and shares a dustup with a Politico columnist who contends “it doesn’t matter what The New York Times puts in its headlines.”
Biden was funnier. Reviewing the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, the Times says Saturday Night Live “Weekend Update” anchor Colin Jost’s speech “fell flat.”
■ The Daily Beast: “One of his darkest jokes … touched briefly on the recent college protests.”
■ LateNighter says President Biden’s biggest laugh came at Donald Trump’s expense.
■ The AP reports the president’s been pointedly testing and expanding jokes about Trump over the last few weeks.
■ Critic Richard Roeper gives 3 1/2 stars to David Letterman’s new Netflix special—filmed mostly in Chicago—with comedian John Mulaney, returning for the first time to his alma mater, St. Ignatius College Prep.
Are you square? Are you public? Then you should make sure your name appears here.
■ Chicago Public Square supporter Annemarie Kill made this edition better.