‘An increasingly desperate felon, still the apparent Republican nominee for president, obviously lying on national television with no one fact-checking him in real-time.’ That’s what law professor Joyce Vance saw as she watched Donald Trump’s appearance on Fox News yesterday …
■ … during which he said he’s “OK” with doing jail time …
■ … but he also called on the Supreme Court to keep him free.
■ Trump joined TikTok over the weekend and quickly gained millions of followers.
■ Press critic Mark Jacob: “Today’s media need to defend themselves against Trump’s threat to free speech.”
■ The Republican leader of the Will County Board ordered the U.S. flag outside Homer Township offices flown upside down in sympathy with Trump.
■ Trump’s conviction prompted the Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg to read W. B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming.”
■ If you prefer a visual approach to the same subject, cartoonist Tom Tomorrow surveys “Trump Felony Conviction Talking Points from the GOP.”
Micro quiz. Can you name Mexico’s first female president-elect?
■ A nascent social media push encourages people to wear “jumpsuit orange” on Trump’s sentencing date, July 11.
Biden’s legal burden. Updating coverage: The president’s son Hunter faces trial today on federal gun charges.
■ Prosecutors have lined up testimony from three of his ex-romantic partners.
■ Columnist Julia Gray: “If he’s found guilty, he could spend some time behind bars … as he should. See how easy that is, Trump supporters?”
‘Dick Durbin, wake the f**k up and do your job.’ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich calls on Illinois’ senator—chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee—to do more than “twiddle his thumbs and send polite letters” about Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito’s ethical breaches.
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke: “If a liberal justice were raising ideological flags of any sort, Republicans would surely see the problem clear as day.”
‘Michigan Avenue … is now a depressing mess.’ Longtime Chicago journalist Carol Felsenthal has had it: “Sidewalks are stained with what looks like old vomit, and spit-out chewing gum leaves behind black spots. Pigeons poop on sidewalks and heads. Graffiti sticks around, inviting more graffiti.”
■ A lawsuit against the State of Illinois challenges the constitutionality of automatic license plate readers.
■ Read the filing: “Defendants are tracking anyone who drives to work in Cook County—or to school, or a grocery store, or a doctor’s office, or a pharmacy, or a political rally, or a romantic encounter, or family gathering—every day, without any reason to suspect anyone of anything.”
■ She’s a scientist and a leftist. (Photo: orinocotribune.com.)
■ Thousands of votes came from Chicago.
Google oops. 404 Media: “Google has accidentally collected children’s voice data, leaked the trips and home addresses of carpool users, and made YouTube recommendations based on users’ deleted watch history, among thousands of other employee-reported privacy incidents, according to a copy of an internal Google database.”
■ A data breach at Ticketmaster may have compromised the names, addresses, phone numbers and credit card details of more than half a billion customers.
Sour notes. For the second time in a year, Spotify’s raising rates …
■ … another sign that, in the words of the Hollywood Reporter, “streaming inflation is still running hot.”
■ The Lever: “While blaming inflation for rising prices, the country’s biggest food and restaurant companies are raking in billions and showering shareholders with payouts.”
■ AP analysis: CEOs last year made almost 200 times what their employees earned.
■ Columnist and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich on the state of the ecomomy: “There’s not one American consumer. There are really two—and increasingly they live in different worlds.”
■ Tedium’s Ernie Smith explores the rise of “bin stores,” where “e-commerce returns go to die.”
WaPo wobble. After just three years, the top editor at the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post, Sally Buzbee, is out.
■ Media writer Tom Jones: “The suspicious timing (late on a Sunday) and the fact that Buzbee is leaving ‘effective immediately’ would lead one to believe that this was not a cordial parting.”
■ Politico: “Adding insult to injury,” The New York Times managed to get the story up before the Post did.
A line too good not to steal. No part of Chicago Public Square was generated by AI. We won’t, to quote Cory Brown at the 99 Newsletter Project, “ask you to read something that no one bothered to write.”
■ And someone keeps bothering to assemble this newsletter because readers like you help underwrite the costs of its production and distribution—chipping in as little as $1, once.
■ Mike Braden made this edition better.