‘It’s a shame college administrators are so god-awful stupid.’ The Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg says “the smart thing to do would be to cough into their fists and leave the protesters alone.”
■ Not so at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where arrests of antiwar protesters began early today …
■ … or at New York’s Columbia University …
■ … whose president The American Prospect’s Harold Meyerson (no relation) notes “had limited (and no pedagogical) contacts with actually existing students before embarking on her current job” and whose appearance before congressional Republican inquisitors last month “featured her consistent caving to every deliberate provocation.”
■ The AP: How Columbia became the center of this movement …
■ … which has spread to DePaul and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
■ A Tribune editorial praises Northwestern University for, you know, actually negotiating with protesters.
■ Follow live updates from around the country here.
■ None of this bodes well for President Biden’s scheduled run of commencement addresses.
■ The Bulwark flashes back to 1968: “History doesn’t repeat itself, and all that—but this is a bit on the nose.”
■ A Northwestern professor says not so much …
■ … all of which makes this an apt time to revisit journalist Jules Witcover’s book, The Year the Dream Died: Revisiting 1968 in America.
‘They took over a building.’ Donald Trump’s comparing campus protests to those of his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021.
■ Columnist Rick Perlstein at The American Prospect: “The question of how many electoral votes each candidate gets on Nov. 5 might pale next to how many people are willing to take up arms should Trump lose.”
■ Minutes before a deadline imposed by the judge in his criminal trial, Trump deleted several posts on his social media account.
■ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch: “Biggest secret at Trump’s trial? It’s dull—because it should have happened five years ago.”
■ Jimmy Kimmel was not impressed by that $9,000 fine on Trump for violating the judge’s gag order: “This trial is about the fact that he paid a woman to be quiet. Now if he isn’t quiet, he has to pay them? … They’re using his thing against him. It’s like Jesus, a carpenter who they nailed to a cross. … Read about it in your Trump-brand Bibles, OK?”
■ Law prof Joyce Vance: “As with progressive discipline for your toddler, the judge is giving Trump the opportunity to show that he’s learned his lesson.”
■ Trump seems still unable to stay awake during the proceedings—prompting Stephen Colbert to theorize, “either he’s falling asleep again or he’s doing that little kid thing where he thinks if he can’t see you, no one can see him.”
■ Humorist Andy Borowitz: “Trump’s Trial Ends Abruptly After He Makes Full Confession in His Sleep.”
‘An imperial presidency.’ Time’s cover story, “How Far Trump Would Go”—based on two interviews with the ex-president and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisors—proves what historian Heather Cox Richardson calls “the truth of what careful observers have been saying about his plans.”
■ Popular Information: Time’s reporting confirms that Trump backs surveillance and prosecution of women to enforce abortion bans.
■ The Bulwark’s Marc Caputo: Trump’s considering Sen. Marco Rubio as his running mate, but that would put the campaign in a constitutional bind.
Need a hospital? Illinois’ are down two notches—to 30th—in the nonprofit Leapfrog Group’s national rankings for safety.
■ Find your hospital’s grades here.
‘If you think it’s hard to hire a certified electrician now, just wait.’ Cipher: As the U.S. strives to go electric, the electrical workforce is shrinking.
■ New research concludes that Earth’s cloud cover is easier to screw up than previously thought.
■ CBS News: Florida, maybe the state most vulnerable to sea-level rise and extreme weather, is about to repeal what’s left of a law making climate change a priority for energy policy decisions.
‘An obscene waste of time, money, and energy that will benefit no one except the Bears.’ But Reader columnist Ben Joravsky explains why “lefties are either quiet or carefully parsing their words” with regard to Mayor Johnson’s support for a new football stadium on the lakefront.
■ The Sun-Times details confusion over whether the mayor would or wouldn’t attend the funeral of a slain Chicago cop.
The Tribune, too. Tribune Publishing has joined a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, demanding they stop using the papers’ copyrighted articles to train AI chatbots …
■ … and not very well, at that.
■ Tech and big-biz watchdog Cory Doctorow: “Ticketmaster is buying Congress.”
Ready to cut loose? Cord Cutter Weekly’s ever-helpful Jared Newman has just published The Complete Guide to Cord Cutting—including tips like how to choose a streaming device and how to shop for home internet …
■ … and it’s available in convenient online form for, well, whatever you think it’s worth—as little as $1.
Corrections. Yesterday’s edition of Chicago Public Square required a few.