All aboard. Illinois’ legislative leadership has a plan to create a universal public transit system for the Chicago region—the Northern Illinois Transit Authority …
■ … but the money to pull it off? Not so fast.
■ A state watchdog agency reports that the CTA has, since the onset of the pandemic five years ago, paid 10 employees a total of almost $1.13 million to stay home and not work at least two days a week.
■ Headed to the governor: A bill that would forbid cops from ticketing and fining students for breaking minor rules at school …
■ … a requirement that all guns be kept in locked containers at homes with kids, at-risk people or anyone ineligible to own firearms …
■ … and regulations designed to crack down on third-party restaurant reservation services snarfing up tables and then selling them without eateries’ written consent.
One of our guys made it. Among the fresh beneficiaries of Donald Trump’s pardonpalooza: Ex-Chicago gang leader Larry Hoover—his life sentences for a range of criminal charges commuted by the president …
■ … but he’s not free, because he’s still doing time for a state murder conviction.
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson sees Trump’s break for Hoover as “an odd counterpoint to his administration’s stance on undocumented immigrants.”
■ Poynter’s Tom Jones contrasts Trump’s consideration of pardons for two men who conspired to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor with the administration’s purported “law-and-order” stance.
■ Columnist Eric Zorn: “It will require a constitutional amendment to rein in the presidential pardon power because, evidently, the Founders never anticipated a president so deeply corrupt that he would use the power simply to … throw shade at the justice system.”
■ Zorn on the settlement of a civil suit against “fatuous, self-important” actor Jussie Smollett for his phony 2019 claim that he’d been the victim of a racist, homophobic attack in Chicago: “Good riddance.”
■ Chicago news veteran Andy Shaw: Time for the City of Chicago to kick its addiction to “high-priced private law firms, instead of its large, well-funded legal department, to defend lawsuits against the Chicago Police Department.”
■ And a secret weapon: Sill—although its usefulness is a function of how many smart people one follows on Bluesky. Here’s a snapshot of your Square columnist’s Sill alerts yesterday morning:
A ‘horrible series of days.’ Then-Mayor Lightfoot looks back to the riots that engulfed Chicago and cities across the country on this night in 2020—in response to the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd.
■ Chicago Public Square five years ago: “WTF moment: Chicago’s new police union chief—known for uncompromising support of cops—is joining police across the country in condemning the officer seemingly responsible for George Floyd’s death.”
■ Teen Vogue columnist Olayemi Olurin: The backlash to those protests set the stage for another Trump administration.
‘Trump Always Chickens Out.’ Trump got pissed yesterday when a reporter asked him about that derogatory Wall Street nickname for his approach to tariffs: “TACO trade,” for short.
■ USA Today’s Chicago-based columnist Rex Huppke: “These unpatriotic nerds who understand the economy should be ashamed of themselves for suggesting that our bold, strong, vibrant president would ever chicken out.”
■ In other fowl play, law professor Joyce Vance takes a close look at public broadcasting’s challenge to the Trump administration: “Big Bird Fights Back.”
Musk out. Elon Musk is formally leaving his government role as a top adviser to Trump.
■ Politico: “So long, and thanks for all the efficiency.”
■ Huppke offers Musk his sympathy: “Hey, we get it. It’s not nice when other people try to take the government you tried to ruin and find a different way to ruin it.”
‘A line that cannot be crossed.’ Law Dork Chris Geidner flags Trump’s pick of his former criminal defense lawyer, Emil Bove, to become a federal appeals court judge.
■ Law professor Kim Wehle: “The Supreme Court just got closer to crowning Trump king.”
■ Columnist and Harvard alumnus Matthew Yglesias credits Trump for his decision to do “something that I thought I would never do and had, in fact, promised never to do. I gave money to my alma mater.”
‘I am optimistic.’ Reviewing a sweeping judicial opinion “that invalidated every tariff imposed by Trump under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act,” columnist Robert Hubbell predicts the nation “will survive and recover from this challenging period”—if voters flip the House and the Senate in 2026.
■ Block Club: Chicago’s museums and libraries are feeling the pinch of Trump’s budget cuts.
■ Columnist and news critic Dan Froomkin offers support to those who feel “everything you care about is under attack but you still need to function.”
COVID confusion. Illinois doctors say the Trump administration’s scaling back of vaccine recommendations for kids and pregnant women leaves unclear whether health care workers get the shot.
■ Still on the fence: The fate of the next-gen vaccination.
Oklahomans fight back. Popular Information updates parents’ resistance to that state’s requirement that public school kids be taught Christian nationalism and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election …
■ … including a parental opt-out form letter …
■ … concocted by a group with the in-your-face name WOKE—for “We’re Oklahoma Education.”
Stay off the sunny side of street-sold solar. The American Prospect calls for government action to address door-to-door solar salespeople scamming homeowners.
■ Climate journalist Kiley Bense: “Every story I write has an addendum that is Trump-related.”
Correction. Tuesday’s Chicago Public Square misattributed Joyce Vance’s column to historian Heather Cox Richardson.
■ Reader Steven Cooper caught the error.
■ Responsible journalists hate mistakes—but celebrate readers who take the time to set things straight.
■ Mike Braden made this edition better.
‘Am I missing a major source of news?’ A reader seeking to broaden his information diet asks where Square gets its news. An answer in brief:
■ Dozens and dozens of email newsletters—including email and app news alerts—nationally and in Chicago. Here’s a taste of what those subscriptions delivered over the course of half an hour yesterday:
■ Happy to have Square read the news so you don’t have to? Your support keeps this service going, free for all.
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