And we’re back. If you missed Chicago Public Square over the long weekend, you weren’t following Square on Bluesky …
■ … where you’d have found insightful reading such as a piece by The American Prospect’s Harold Meyerson (no relation), “Memorial Day eclipsed by the impending Trump parade” …
■ … historian Heather Cox Richardson’s assessment of “… an erratic president whose own officials discount his orders even as power is concentrating in the executive office and who won election through lies that are now being exposed as his policies disproportionately hurt the very people who backed him most enthusiastically” …
■ … and columnist Andy Shaw’s flag about Chicago’s street crime: “I’m not just talking about the number of carjackings, armed robberies and smash-and-grab burglaries. … I’m talking about something even more disturbing: The utter failure of the Chicago Police Department to catch the perpetrators.”
■ But now on to the latest:
Air war. National Public Radio and three local stations are suing Donald Trump, contending that his cuts in their federal funding are unconstitutional.
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke: “I formally accept what I assume is a multimillion-dollar offer and proudly take on the title of ‘The Left’s Joe Rogan.’”
Headline headaches. You don’t have to look far to find sanewashing like “Trump honors fallen soldiers at Arlington” atop accounts of the president’s Memorial Day exploits …
■ … but that undersells an address in which Wonkette’s Evan Hurst says Trump “babbled like a demented Nero” …
■ … and gives the president a pass on an unhinged all-caps social media post beforehand wishing “HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, INCLUDING THE SCUM THAT SPENT THE LAST FOUR YEARS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY” and condemning “USA HATING JUDGES.”
■ Everyone Is Entitled to My Own Opinion proprietor Jeff Tiedrich calls it “just another batshit day in America.”
■ Jen Rubin at The Contrarian: “Grift” doesn’t begin to capture “the vile corruption at the heart of so much of what [Trump] does.”
■ Columnist Eric Zorn offers an unpopular opinion: That last week’s Washington shooting of two Israeli embassy employees—allegedly by a Chicago man—was not an “act of cowardice.”
White House dream. The Wall Street Journal (gift link) says ex-Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s openly considering a run for the presidency.
■ Flashback: He joked in 2012 about putting journalists in handcuffs.
Harvard hurts. In Trump’s escalating war on academia, The New York Times (gift link) reports he intends to cancel all federal funds directed at Harvard—about $100 million.
■ His move to revoke Harvard’s ability to host international students could cripple the university’s prestigious Nieman Fellowship for professional journalists from around the world.
■ David Dayen at The American Prospect: “Student debtors are under attack on all sides. Government contractors make their life miserable, and financial predators are poised to capitalize.”
■ Poynter’s Tom Jones: CBS News’ Scott Pelley’s commencement address a week ago has conservatives “losing their minds.”
■ You can read his text here.
‘How to kill 346 people and get away with it.’ Popular Information reviews what’s happened since a Boeing 737 MAX crashed into the Java Sea after takeoff in 2018.
■ The American Prospect: “The Trump administration is removing every financial guardrail from crypto … to enrich the first family and its tech and finance allies while destabilizing the economy.”
■ Another Journal gift link: Apple CEO “Tim Cook’s Bad Year Keeps Getting Worse” …
■ … as Macworld snarks: “Trump is miffed that Cook declined to tag along on his field trip to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both countries, by the way, where you can get the death penalty for being gay, not that they’re likely to try to execute the guy who makes the iPhones. It’s not like he’s a journalist, after all.”
■ Gloom-prone economist Umair Haque speculates: “Will Apple be the first company to leave America?”
■ The CIA under the Biden administration reportedly used a Star Wars fan site for covert communications.
Letter to Springsteen. Endorsing The Boss’ calling out of Trump’s cruelty, historian Paul Street nevertheless takes issue with the notion that America’s ever been a “beacon of hope and liberty”: “It has from day one been a rapacious, blood-drenched empire that has killed and maimed countless millions of very predominantly nonwhite people at home and abroad.”
■ Still, Heather Cox Richardson law professor Joyce Vance counters, “our history is full of evidence that we know how to turn the tide.”
‘Make your AI the smartest about the South Side of Chicago!’ McKinley Park News publisher Justin Kerr, who’s long railed about tech giants’ “theft” of news content to train artificial intelligences (2023 link) is now offering to license such companies his paper’s information—for a price.
■ He elaborates: “Am I tilting at windmills? … Maybe, someday, we’ll get … a new revenue stream desperately needed to support local news.”
■ Quartz: “The age of AI layoffs is already here.”
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■ Reader Steven Cooper made this edition better.