Knockin’ on Wisconsin’s doors. The Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg shadows “everyday Illinois Democrats,” young and old, who spent Saturday trying to engage voters in the swing state to the north.
■ Law professor Joyce Vance: “Checking your voter registration right now is essential!”
■ Here’s where to do that for voters in Chicago and the rest of Illinois.
‘The most expensive political ad of all time.’ That’s how Popular Information characterizes plutocrat Elon Musk’s interview thing with Donald Trump tonight on Musk-owned Twitter X.
■ Trump falsely accused Kamala Harris of using AI to simulate a massive crowd at her Detroit rally last week.
■ Trump niece Mary L. Trump: “One reason Donald continues to perpetuate such ridiculous, easy-to-fact-check lies, is because … he can’t fill seats anymore.”
■ Satirist Andy Borowitz: “Trump Boasts About Huge Crowd of Voices Inside Head.”
■ Last Week Tonight host John Oliver: “The Trump campaign has currently got absolutely nothing.”
■ Stephen Robinson at Public Notice: “Trump is down so bad that his campaign is bringing back Republican dirty tricks from 20 years ago” to use against vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz.
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich: “Don’t believe a word of this stolen valor nonsense.”
■ The Daily Beast: The campaign of VP candidate JD Vance—a vocal critic of gender-affirming care for minors—won’t deny the authenticity of a photo showing him in drag.
■ Trump on this date four years ago: “Harris is the meanest, most horrible, most disrespectful, MOST LIBERAL of anyone in the U.S. Senate.”
‘Eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere.’ ProPublica and Documented expose Project 2025’s secret training videos, offering guidance on how a second Trump administration would work to overhaul the federal government.
■ Got 14 hours? Here they are.
‘The most stunning and rapid reversal I have seen in my political career.’ Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer explains how Harris took control of the campaign.
■ Author and filmmaker Michael Moore—who presciently predicted Trump’s 2016 victory when few others were doing so: “America is now a liberal nation.”
■ Politico: Harris has yet to “settle on a plan for governing.”
■ The Washington Post reviews her “short but Trump-influenced Senate tenure.”
■ The research director of a Minnesota-based progressive think tank: Workers have “actually done … pretty well” under Walz’s gubernatorial administration …
■ … but The Lever’s David Sirota complains that Harris “has declined to outline a clear economic vision and has surrounded herself with her party’s corporate-friendly crowd” …
■ … a thing that Slow Boring columnist Matthew Yglesias counters doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.
■ The New York Times on copy editors’ campaign headache: “Is it Harris’ or Harris’s? Add a Walz, and it’s even trickier.” (Chicago Public Square style—for now: Harris’ and Walz’s.)
‘Shockingly understaffed.’ Author and Emmy-winning veteran broadcast journalist Jeff Kamen—who’s covered terrorist attacks across the country—offers Chicago police three strategies for improving security at next week’s Democratic National Convention. (Image: 1967 ad for Kamen’s work on Chicago’s WCFL-AM Radio.)
■ A Minnesota organizer planning to bring a couple of busloads of protesters here says people feel “betrayed by the Democratic Party.”
■ Politico Illinois Playbook: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has yet to deliver on his threat of flooding Chicago with busloads of immigrants this month.
■ Sun-Times D.C. bureau chief Lynn Sweet serves up an insider’s guide to the convention.
■ Block Club Chicago: How it’ll affect regular humans trying to get around the city.
■ Critic Richard Roeper surveys the cultural impact of Chicago’s 1968 and 1996 Democratic conventions.
■ A Kickstarter campaign aims to fund publication of a board game based on Chicago’s ’68 confrontation between “The Establishment” and “The Demonstrators.”
Parking pain—again. The private company with a stranglehold on Chicago’s street meters is demanding the city pay it another $100 million.
■ A Sun-Times editorial slams the CTA for falling behind on a plan to put elevators in all its elevated train stations.
‘My window to Africa has broken.’ Tribune columnist Laura Washington mourns cancellation of Chicago’s 35-year-old African Festival of the Arts …
■ … but the Washington Heights neighborhood’s back-to-school Stop the Violence Picnic continued its 28-year run Sunday.
■ Block Club and CBS Chicago: Chicago street festivals are underestimating crowds by tens of thousands, endangering attendees.
Journalism that doesn’t suck. Stop the Presses media critic Mark Jacob hails a host of “bright lights in news and commentary that deserve our attention.”
■ Separately, Jacob says of Chicago Public Square: “Everyone in Chicago who cares about news should subscribe.”
■ If you’re reading this and are not subscribed—free—here you go.
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■ Mark Wukas made this edition better.