Got ’im? Updating coverage: A 22-year-old Utah man has been arrested in the assassination of reactionary political activist and media personality Charlie Kirk.
■ Utah’s governor says the suspect seems to have acted alone.
5 rumors about Kirk, fact-checked. Surprise: Snopes says they’re all true.
■ Chicago radio veteran Mike Novak: “Kirk … did not deserve to die. He deserved to be fact-checked. Every single time.”
■ Stephen King apologizes for claiming Kirk “advocated stoning gays to death.”
■ Investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein: “Kirk, 9/11 have this in common.”
■ Breaking-news folk singer Jesse Welles whipped out a new one marking Kirk’s death: “Charlie,” whose lyrics include “I heard laughing, I heard glee. But it coulda been you, it coulda been me.”
‘The radical left and … corrupt media.’ That’s who Downstate Illinois Republican Rep. Mary Miller blames for Kirk’s death.
■ Columnist Neil Steinberg: “This is a very old playbook. In the 1870s, it was called ‘waving the bloody shirt.’”
■ Veteran AP reporter Ron Fournier: “If you’re a liberal, an independent, or old-line conservative who doesn’t toe the MAGA line … the Trump administration may come after you.”
■ The growing roster of media figures fired for sharing comments other than thoughts and prayers for Kirk now includes a DC Comics writer.
■ A Tribune editorial (gift link, available because readers support Chicago Public Square): “Kirk’s legacy should be a new American commitment to free speech and debate.”
■ The American Prospect’s Ryan Cooper: “Trump and the Republican Party … are setting up, without exaggeration, a fully totalitarian attack on campus free speech and academic freedom … the most extreme such attack in American history.”
■ The State Department warns immigrants that their legal status will be subject to review if they’re caught “praising, rationalizing, or making light” of Kirk’s death.
■ Chicago city officials and community leaders are bracing for a tense Mexican Independence Day weekend amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
■ Meanwhile, the president’s turned his attention to Memphis.
How safe are Chicago pols? Almost half the City Council’s signed a letter asking for a full police department review of security measures in light of the nation’s spate of political shootings.
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke: “I shouldn’t have to text my kids and tell them to avoid the horrific viral video of Kirk being shot.”
‘Replace today’s relatively ineffective Regional Transit Authority.’ Transportation-focused columnist Richard Day favors legislation to create “a new and more powerful Northern Illinois Transit Authority.”
■ A new survey of rider satisfaction finds CTA riders not so pleased as those riding Metra trains and Pace buses.
■ In the works for Chicago: Air pollution readings by neighborhood.
All the media? The Wall Street Journal (gift link) says the newly merged Trump-friendly Paramount Skydance media empire—which now controls CBS, Comedy Central and more—is prepping a bid to absorb Warner Bros. Discovery, including CNN, HBO, Warner Bros. Pictures and DC Studios …
■ … a move that Status says could put both CNN and CBS under the editorial control of conservative Bari Weiss.
■ A South Park episode in which Cartman is awarded the “Charlie Kirk Award for Young Master Debaters” was yanked from Comedy Central …
■ … but it remains available on sibling Paramount+.
■ Everyone Is Entitled to My Own Opinion proprietor Jeff Tiedrich: “The worthless scribblers of the corporate-controlled press are not our friends, and they haven’t been our friends in a very long time.”
A broadcast giant passes. Bruce DuMont, whose Beyond the Beltway became must-listening for conservatives, is dead at 81.
■ Although the program ended its run on Chicago’s WIND-AM—which coincidentally also carried Charlie Kirk’s show—it began on public radio WBEZ …
■ … whose former news director Ken Davis remembers a show that “wasn’t for the weak. It was loud. Raucous. There was emotion. And often, there was laughter.”
■ Your Chicago Public Square columnist’s final appearance on the show, in 2020, wasn’t a lot of fun.
■ DuMont also founded Chicago’s Museum of Broadcast Communications.
In fairness, a lot was going on. Your columnist scored a depressing 3/8 on this week’s news quiz from The Conversation’s quizmaster, past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel.
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