A day off. Chicago Public Square won’t publish Thursday, but we’ll be back with a news quiz Friday …
■ … and you can track breaking news and commentary through the extended weekend via the Square account on Bluesky.
‘Disgusting abomination.’ It’s on between President Trump and Elon Musk, who yesterday used those words to describe Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” of tax breaks and spending cuts.
■ CNN: That took the White House off guard.
■ Lawyer and former White House counsel Robert B. Hubbell: “Musk just said what every Republican knows in their heart.”
■ Message Box columnist Dan Pfeiffer: Although “it’s probably wise to ignore most of the sewage that spills out of Musk’s pickled brain … here’s why Musk’s opposition … matters.”
■ Cultural critic Bob Lefsetz: “Musk is providing cover for Republican congresspeople to go against Trump. … This is just the beginning”…
■ … and so it is that MAGA Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene says she agrees with Musk that everyone who voted for that legislation—including herself—should be ashamed.
■ A Republican congressman from Missouri: “It’s like mommy and daddy are fighting.”
■ Jimmy Fallon: “Elon called it ‘massive,’ ‘outrageous’ and ‘pork-filled.’ And Trump was like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’ll take two.’”
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke: “Musk and Trump are prime examples of why we shouldn't have billionaires.”
5 ‘hidden horrors.’ Ex-Illinois Democratic Rep. Marie Newman focuses on some of the lesser-known impacts of that budget bill …
■ … the House-approved version of which you can read here …
■ … and which the Congressional Budget Office says would increase the U.S. deficit by $2.4 trillion.
■ The White House today formally asked Congress to adopt Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” spending cuts …
■ … and officially doubled tariffs on imported steel and aluminum—to cheers from the steel industry but dismay from manufacturers.
‘Re-establish the warrior culture.’ That’s the rationale Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s citing in ordering the renaming of the USNS Harvey Milk—whose name honors a slain gay rights activist who also was a Korean War veteran.
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich: “You know the last time a secretary of defense personally ordered the secretary of the navy to rename a ship? Did you guess how about never?”
■ Columnist Jamison Foser, whose father was a gay man drafted and sent off to war in Vietnam and who died of AIDS in 1996: “Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump and the whole sleazy lot of them are a bunch of assholes.”
Supremely pissed. CNN reports that Trump’s been complaining privately for at least a year about his most recent appointee to the Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett.
■ People’s Parity Project chief—and Harvard Law graduate—Molly Coleman*, writing for Teen Vogue: “We don’t have to accept judicial supremacy. In fact, many of America’s most admired leaders have rejected it.”
‘Maybe plan a picnic that includes tacos.’ Law professor Joyce Vance recommends you have a plan for the June 14 “No Kings” protest of the Trump administration.
■ American Crisis columnist and journalism professor Margaret Sullivan offers a list of journalists and politicians making a difference in the face of “the existential challenge that Trump has wrought.”
■ Tribune columnist Steve Chapman: “Whether we will be able to preserve our liberal democracy from the MAGA onslaught is not at all certain. But as those in the Civil Rights Movement could have told us, there is only one way to find out.” (Gift link, courtesy of Chicago Public Square supporters like you.)
■ The Sun-Times: The University of Illinois, which has the second largest number of international students of all public universities in the country, is bracing for Trump’s plan to revoke Chinese student visas.
‘No joke.’ Popular Information: That the acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency has admitted not knowing the U.S. had a hurricane season—a thing his spokesperson later said was a joke—is not a laughing matter …
■ … but tell that to The Daily Show’s Michael Kosta: “That reminds me of the time I, as a joke, sh_t my pants. Haha, it was so funny of me to do that on that airplane. Everyone was laughing and loving it” …
■ … or cartoonist Jack Ohman:
■ Environmental journalist Emily Atkin: “Over the last six months, Walmart has … walked back multiple promises to reduce its massive impact on plastic waste and climate change.”
‘The White House is telling Republican-led states that they can let women die.’ Abortion, Every Day columnist Jessica Valenti flags the Trump administration’s decision to stop directing hospitals to provide emergency abortions for women facing pregnancy crises.
■ The Electronic Frontier Foundation on 404 Media’s reporting: “She got an abortion. So a Texas cop used 83,000 cameras to track her down.”
■ Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg, whose father is “lost in a fog of dementia,” protests the Catholic Church’s hard lobbying against an Illinois bill that would let the terminally ill end their lives.
Grocery tax reprieve? Mayor Johnson wants to keep the city’s surcharge going past a statewide default retirement next year …
■ … even as he champions new taxes on “the ultra-rich” to spare Chicago-area mass transit from running off a fiscal cliff.
■ 404: “The IRS tax filing software TurboTax is trying to kill just got open sourced.”
Gotta go? Chicago’s Humboldt Park public restrooms are back—but just from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
■ From April: Where to find free restrooms in the city.
Dead air. Battered by state and (anticipated) federal budget cuts, Lakeshore Public Media’s laying off staff and cutting local radio and TV production for northwest Indiana.
■ CNN’s Brian Stelter: A 45-day clock is ticking for public broadcasters hoping to avert Trump’s proposal to claw back the next two years of federal funding.
‘Funny, stupid and a tad ingenious.’ Critic Catey Sullivan gives three stars to Timeline Lifeline Theatre’s new production of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds.
■ At the Trib (another gift link), critic Emily McClanathan praises the show’s “gutsy creativity.”
Thanks. Chris Koenig and Fred Stein made this edition better.
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* And your Square columnist’s daughter-in-law.