Obamas onboard. Former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, have formally backed Kamala Harris for president.
■ The campaign has released a video showing Harris taking the call.
■ Also endorsing her: Georgia’s former Republican lieutenant governor.
■ The Big Picture newsletter team disputes claims that Harris is a “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” candidate.
■ Abortion, Every Day columnist Jessica Valenti: “If the vice president is willing to leave behind Biden-era defensiveness, she can destroy conservatives’ most powerful abortion talking point.”
‘Does she have Silicon Valley donors, or Silicon Valley owners?’ Author and anti-monopoly advocate Matt Stoller says LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman has tossed $10 million to Harris’ campaign—while demanding she dump the anti-monopolistic chair of the Federal Trade Commission.
■ Sen. Bernie Sanders condemns Hoffman’s “arrogance.”
■ Press watcher Dan Froomkin offers guidance to journalists: “How to investigate Kamala Harris without repeating the mistakes of 2016.”
What’s in a name? Reporter Ryan Grim: Is it sexist to refer to Harris by her first name?
■ What’s the deal with the Republican vice-presidential candidate’s initials—“J.D.” vs. “JD” Vance?
Weekly Dingus. Men Yell at Me columnist Lyz Lenz’s pick is Vance, “the false prophet of white male exceptionalism” …
■ … and whose dismissal of women without children as “childless cat ladies,” columnist Neil Steinberg says, reveals “a man with an inherently selfish view of life.”
■ Columnist Evan Hurst: “Turns out he’s frequently made Kamala Harris a primary target of his attacks on women who don’t take their marching orders from white conservative Christian men.”
■ Satirist Andy Borowitz: “Vance Brainstorming Ways to Alienate Owners of Birds, Fish.”
■ Donald Trump’s niece, Mary L. Trump: Republican misogyny is “a feature, not a bug.”
■ Late-night hosts had fun with a story about Vance and … a couch.
■ The AP had the story but then took it down.
■ The Washington Post’s Will Oremus: This, um, affair, demonstrates that Elon Musk’s refusal to fight misinfo on Twitter X can hurt conservatives, too.
Can’t get there from here. Get ready to not get near McCormick Place and the United Center during the Democratic National Convention.
■ The Sun-Times has a detailed list of street closures.
■ Politico’s Shia Kapos: The plan’s real focus is on safety “as concerns lingered about security stumbles that led to an assassination attempt on Donald Trump.”
■ Widespread attacks on France’s high-speed rail network paralyzed travel to Paris as the Olympics get underway.
‘Spectacularly wrong.’ Ken Klippenstein complains that “the fact-checking industrial complex” gave a pass to President Biden’s assertion Wednesday night that “the United States is not at war anywhere in the world.”
■ Vice President Harris says she urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza.
■ Updating coverage: Netanyahu was to meet today with Trump.
■ Columnist Charlie Madigan says Fox News should “drop the pretense” and “just hire Trump.”
‘The question here isn’t how this could happen, but why it happens with such regularity—mostly to Black people.’ Columnist and basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ponders the police killing of Sonya Massey inside her Springfield home.
■ A GoFundMe page has been set up to help the family deal with Massey’s death.
Unprecedentedly presidential. This week’s news quiz, devised by The Conversation’s quizmaster, past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel, is a special all-presidential (and vice-presidential) edition.
■ To beat your Chicago Public Square columnist’s score, you’ll need to be perfect.
Search them. The OpenAI artificial intelligence firm has launched a challenge to Google: SearchGPT …
■ … an AI-powered search engine that, instead of spewing just a list of links, aims to organize and summarize the results …
■ … but there’s a waitlist to use it.
■ A U.S. representative from Virginia who lost her voice to progressive supranuclear palsy yesterday became the first lawmaker to use an AI-generated voice model to speak on the House floor.
■ See and hear her address here.
■ Aiming to create the “Silicon Valley of quantum development,” Gov. Pritzker’s unveiled plans for a 128-acre project in Chicago’s old U.S. Steel South Works facility, devoted to developing exponentially more powerful computers.
Taste this. Here’s the food and music lineup for this year’s Taste of Chicago, Sept. 6-8.
■ The FDA says several kinds of produce sold at Walmart and Aldi stores in Illinois and other states earlier this month may be contaminated with listeria.
■ Here’s the full list.
End of the line. This wraps up our latest roll call of Square supporters—people whose contributions keep this service coming: Anne Rowan, David Drew, Darryl Roberts, Randy Young (again!), Ellen Siciliano, Lawrence Rand, Deborah J. Wess, Shel Lustig, Allen Matthews, saknrad, Sally Donatiello, Athene C, Denise Mattson, Eric Davis, Suzy Le Clair, Kevin Wallace, Kevin Parzyck, Tim Woods, Marjorie Huerta, Paul M. Moretta, Ryan Bird, Jim Peterson, Jeff Weissglass, Katherine and Michael Raleigh, Doug Strubel, Barbara Miller, Sara Burrows, Mario Greco, Andrew Stancioff, Keelin Wyman, Ted Slowik, Jayson Hansen, Virginia Mann, Andy Simon, Cynde Seegers, Sonya Booth, Lizzie Schiffman Tufano, Lisa Colpoys and Catherine Schneider, Stan Zoller, Russ Williams, Thomas Gradel, Bob Ely, Sharon Halperin, John D. Abel, Ellen Cutter, Robert A. Shipley, John Teets, Darold Barnum, J. Michael Williams, Annemarie Kill, Garry, Jim Parks, Tom O’Malley, Ann Johnson Arellano, Mike Schultz and Mark Wukas (coincidentally Chicago Public Square Supporter No. 1).
■ But wait: If anyone pitches in this weekend—even just $1, once—your name will appear here in the next edition.