(Republishing to correct the Robert Redford item. The Sundance Film Festival was, of course, named after Redford’s character in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.)
Threats multiplying. Gov. Pritzker says last week’s assassination of Charlie Kirk has triggered an “enormous” increase in menacing messages to him …
■ … as the Trump administration moves to crack down on the political left—which the president’s martinet Stephen Miller describes as a “vast domestic terrorist movement.”
Copy that. Attorney General Pam Bondi has threatened to bring federal charges against a since-fired Office Depot employee who refused to print flyers advertising a vigil for Kirk.
■ Evan Hurst at Wonkette: “Do you think this means the Christian Nazi cake bakers have to make cakes for gay weddings now? Ha ha! Not how Christian fascism works.”
■ Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer: “Kirk’s death is being weaponized to silence dissent.”
■ Popular Information: Republicans celebrating Kirk as a champion of free speech are demanding his critics be fired.
■ Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University*, offers 10 ways to use your free speech without losing your job.
■ Economist Paul Krugman: “The horror of Charlie Kirk’s murder shouldn’t prevent us from admitting that his influence was largely built on catering to white male resentment.”
■ Reviewing Kirk’s last moments, Pulitzer winner Gene Weingarten sees him “resorting to misdirection to avoid being caught in a lie.”
‘An ever-more-timid media ethos … is the perfect complement to a dictatorship.’ Stop the Presses columnist Mark Jacob condemns journalists’ dismissals over their comments on Kirk’s assassination: “The latest examples of the ‘media capture’ … as fascism descends: News organizations intimidated by the right wing.”
■ Newsday’s apologized for a Pulitzer-nominated conservative artist’s Kirk cartoon …
■ … which you can see here.
■ Trump’s suing The New York Times … for $15 billion.
‘We need more information.’ Pritzker’s demanding Immigration and Customs Enforcement explain just what happened as an ICE agent last week gunned down a Chicago man.
■ The Reader and Unraveled: Agents’ “initial narrative of events was quickly disproven by videos captured by witnesses.”
■ The feds had a busy day yesterday in the Chicago area …
■ Trump’s not done threatening the city.
■ Chicago magazine’s Ted McClelland: Trump’s politics has doomed Illinois Republicans.
‘A marshmallow tossed at a charging animal.’ Columnist Elaine Soloway: “Of all the euphemisms popping up in discussions of … immigrants, people of color, trans individuals and invading Democratic-run cities, naming Trump’s behavior as ‘troubling’ tops my list.”
■ The Washington Post reports that Trump’s ordered the removal from national parks of information about slavery—including a photo of an enslaved man’s scars.
Things to do. Columnist Christopher Armitage looks back to Chicago’s Black Panthers for three anti-autocracy tactics.
■ The American Prospect’s Robert Kuttner: “If the antibodies to tyranny continue to revive, Trump’s paradoxical legacy may be a reawakened citizenry.”
‘Genocide.’ That’s what a UN commission of inquiry calls Israel’s actions in Gaza …
■ … which today include a ground incursion into Gaza City—in defiance of international condemnation.
Corruption doesn’t come cheap. A $90 million payout to victims of disgraced Chicago Police Sgt. Ronald Watts is on track for City Council approval.
■ Elmwood Park’s fire chief has quit—in the face of complaints he punched a local bar employee and locked him in a beer cooler.
■ A shooting nearby triggered lockdowns at Northwest Side elementary and middle schools.
Elevated treatment. Vending machines at five CTA stations now offer the free drug-overdose medication naloxone, a.k.a. Narcan …
■ … to those who press the code 5-5-5.
‘Oscar-winning director, liberal activist and godfather for independent cinema.’ Robert Redford’s dead at 89.
■ Redford’s Sundance Film Festival took its name from his character in starred in the Chicago-set classic The Sting, which critic Richard Roeper recalled in 2023 as “one of the most acclaimed and popular and enduring and exquisitely crafted blockbusters of all time.”
Drinking problem. Costco’s advising shoppers to beware Kirkland-brand Prosecco—because the bottles can shatter spontaneously.
■ It’s a recall without a recall, because the chain doesn’t want you to return those bottles to the store—pledging to issue refunds automatically to those who bought the stuff.
■ Author and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich says fraudsters are ripping off Amazon shoppers with blank-page lookalikes of his bestselling memoir, Coming Up Short.
‘If the Emmys can’t muster any excitement about television, why should anyone else?’ Tribune critic Nina Metz delivers a searing review of Sunday’s broadcast. (Gift link, paid for by Chicago Public Square supporters.)
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke: “Stephen Colbert’s Emmy MUST be revoked. … We cannot tolerate dangerous, pro-late-night-host views that might inspire other comedians to commit acts of leftist satire.”
■ Columnist and monopoly monitor Jeff Stoller: “With a proposed Paramount acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery by a Trump ally, the media and the movies are quickly consolidating into the hands of GOP oligarchs.”
■ Celebrating the legacy of Mad magazine, columnist—and former editor at corporate sibling DC Comics—Mike Gold fears for its future under that potential new ownership.
Chicago Public Square keeps coming because readers keep paying. This newsletter remains free for all thanks to the generosity of a relative few whose support covers the cost of its production and distribution. You can join their ranks—for as little as $1, just once—here.
■ Columnist Andy Borowitz puts it this way for his readers: “As corporate media continue to bend their knee to our senile wannabe dictator, I have never been more grateful that I don’t work for one of these craven companies. I work for you.”
■ Janean Hooker Bowersmith made this edition better.
* Whose newsletter on the First Amendment, journalism and America your Square columnist helped launch five years ago.