No Chicago Public Square tomorrow, Independence Day. Watch your inbox for a news quiz Friday morning.
Gubernatorial intervention. Updating coverage: Democratic governors, including Illinois’ Pritzker, planned to meet President Biden at the White House today after his disappointing appearance in last week’s debate.
■ Texas Rep. Lloyd Doggett is the first sitting Democrat to call for Biden to bow out.
■ Pod Save America co-host and former Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer: “Something has fundamentally changed in this story over the last 24 hours.”
■ Axios’ Alex Thompson quotes a member of the president’s staff: “Everyone is freaking the f*** out.”
■ Columnist Josh Barro: “The same fools telling us not to panic about Biden are the ones who let him get on that stage.”
■ Matt Stoller: “A large faction of Democratic elected leaders are pretending that he is well. It feels … Twilight Zone-ish.”
■ Reader columnist Ben Joravsky is more sanguine: “All is not lost. Coherence in politicians is overrated.”
■ Rick Perlstein at The American Prospect wonders what happened to Biden’s 2020 pledge to serve as “a bridge” to “an entire generation of leaders … the future of this country.”
■ Wonkette’s Rebecca Schoenkopf: “We have a solution. There happens to be a woman we hired specifically for the job of vice president to the oldest man we’ve ever elected president.”
■ Politico: Vice President Harris is getting “strange new respect … without any nudge from Harris herself.”
■ Columnist Jordan Zakarin: “Replacing Biden would change the Democratic Party forever. And that’s another reason to do it.”
■ NPR alumnus Bob Garfield: “If a carton of rancid buttermilk is the nominee, vote for it. Twice.”
■ Looking back to “the only time a major party had to replace its candidate in mid-cycle”—1968, when that party had its convention in Chicago—Politico’s Joshua Zeitz sees disaster.
■ Square reader Joe Hass—a self-described “guy who would step over a dying man to make sure I can vote Democratic in a nationally irrelevant state in November”—praises Slate for what he calls “the best of all the Joe Biden articles I’ve read.”
■ LateNighter critic Bill Carter says Biden’s been lucky all the nightly comedy shows—Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, John Oliver and Saturday Night Live—have been dark since the debate.
■ The Onion: “Biden Spends Press Conference Gnawing On Extension Cord.”
‘He has made judges dependent on his will alone.’ In the Declaration of Independence, Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg finds a “sense of menace” sadly “not sunk in the distant past.”
■ The League of Women Voters calls Donald Trump’s Supreme Court slam-dunk this week “the most dangerous decision for democracy of our time.”
■ Law professor Joyce Vance takes reader questions about that court ruling.
■ Allow Popular Information to introduce you to 2024’s biggest political donor—an 81-year-old nepo baby who’s pumped at least $100 million into Trump’s and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaigns.
■ In an extensive interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, witness for the prosecution Stormy Daniels detailed Trump supporters’ rape and murder threats against her and her family members—including her young daughter.
■ The Onion again: “Trump Ad Shows Montage Of People He’ll Kill If Elected.”
■ An ex-Argonne National Lab worker has conceded guilt in the pro-Trump riot at the Capitol Jan. 6, 2021.
‘Absolutely reprehensible.’ CTA chief Dorval Carter condemns a shooting that left a passenger dead and a bus driver wounded—a crime for which one suspect has been arrested and another was being sought.
■ The CTA wants your feedback on what’s working with its bus network—and what isn’t.
■ Chicago police are investigating reports of a confrontation with gunfire—caught on video—between bicyclists on a Critical Mass bike ride last Friday and a motorist and passenger angry at being blocked from exiting an alley.
■ A Sun-Times editorial condemns the Chicago Park District’s removal from playgrounds of kids’ toy vehicles left by families whose children have outgrown them.
Hospital headache. Lurie Children’s Hospital concedes personal data of almost 800,000 people leaked out during a cyberattack that lasted months earlier this year.
‘A classic whistleblower case.’ That’s how the lawyer for a former Cook County employee describes a lawsuit filed against Cook County Board of Review Commissioner Samantha Steele.
■ He wants his job back, too.
Jelly Belly boot. Parent company Ferrara Candy is closing its North Chicago plant, laying off 66 workers.
■ Asserting that demand for farm equipment’s slowing, John Deere is laying off more than 600 in Illinois and Iowa.
‘AI stole my book and sold it online.’ Men Yell at Me columnist Lyz Lenz says Amazon’s peddling a rip-off of her autobiographical work This American Ex-Wife.
■ A Google research paper warns that generative artificial intelligence could—and in some cases already has come to—“distort collective understanding of socio-political reality or scientific consensus.”
■ Google’s pledged to cut its climate impact to zero within six years, but its AI push threatens to blow that target bigtime.
■ Chicago City Council members have begun considering the prospect that climate-change-related disasters could push more migrants to seek refuge here.
■ The AP: Sizzling sidewalks and unshaded playgrounds threaten surface burns for people in the searing U.S. Southwest.
Correction. Monday’s Square erroneously reported an increase in the Illinois grocery tax. That was last year. Thanks to Marie Martinek for flagging the error.
■ We hate making mistakes, love having readers who take the time to set things right.
Square returns in force Monday … when we’ll relaunch the random roll call of readers whose support keeps this service coming. Kick in as little as $1, once, to see your name in this space later this month.