Emmett Till Day. Gov. Pritzker’s declared July 25—Saturday—a Day of Remembrance for the 14-year-old Chicagoan abducted, tortured and killed in Mississippi in 1955 …
■ … and for his mother, whose insistence on an open casket for his mutilated body fueled the Civil Rights Movement.
■ Chicago’s unveiled 38 markers commemorating those who died in the 1919 Chicago Race Riot.
■ Acknowledging a dramatic disparity between traffic stops for Black drivers and those for others—and in the aftermath of a cop’s killing of a man pulled over after failing to signal a lane change—Oak Park’s moving to limit pull-overs for minor offenses.
‘It took just one traffic stop in Donald Trump’s America to turn everything upside down.’ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (gift link): “The U.S.’s reputation as a safe haven for the world’s dissidents takes another hit with Pennsylvania’s arrest of a Chinese human rights lawyer”—who was delivering packages for Amazon at the time.
■ Block Club’s project “Chicago Under Siege: How Operation Midway Blitz Changed Our City” has won a Society of Professional Journalists award for investigative reporting.
Hey, we’re ‘newly linked’! The Washington Post: Illinois is among four states added to the cyclosporiasis outbreak associated with shredded iceberg lettuce sourced from central Mexico.
■ Pulitzer-winning columnist Dave Barry: “Explosive diarrhea is no laughing matter. I speak from personal experience.”
‘Unsavory.’ That’s the word a former Illinois representative who worked to impeach former Gov. Rod Blagojevich uses to describe Blago’s new moneymaking scheme: Lobbying President Trump to pardon other corrupt convicts.
■ Coming by the end of the month: Release of the Legislative Ethics Commission’s report detailing just what disgraced ex-Rep. Harry Benton did.
‘What in the hallowed name of Memory-Hole Jesus is this?’ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich is flabbergasted: “The Pentagon just un-personned four war dead” …
■ … because their deaths occurred during Trump’s Iran war April ceasefire that wasn’t.
■ The Wall Street Journal: Trump threw an expletive-laden Oval Office tantrum over his inability to end the war.
■ Charlie Pierce at Esquire: “This nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia could go down as the worst idea Trump has ever had.”
Justice’s ‘worst day.’ Law Dork Chris Geidner says Thursday made clear “how bad things have gotten” in Trump’s Department of Justice.
■ Lawyer and columnist Robert Hubbell notes “the DOJ’s 17th loss (against zero wins) in legal cases in which the Trump administration is demanding that states turn over voter databases.”
■ The AP: “Government withdraws subpoenas of three reporters for The New York Times after admitting legal errors.”
■ Got nothin’ else goin’ on tonight? Watch Trump address the rescheduled—gunfire-disrupted—White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.
■ Late-night hosts had fun with the president’s inability to remember Pee-wee Herman’s name.
Social Security’s ‘reckoning.’ The Atlantic (gift link): “Senators elected this November will be in office when America’s most popular federal program is on track to run out of money.”
■ Social Security recipients won’t get a check in August—because they’re getting two in July.
■ The Washington Post: “As the cost of aging soars, families’ wealth is evaporating.”
■ A Boston University business professor ponders the prospect that the U.S. could follow Germany and Australia’s lead and get rid of paper checks.
On the Fritz again. Past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel’s back from a break with a nine-question news quiz.
‘This is like if Microsoft’s Clippy grew a mustache and stole data from Google Docs.’ Lyz Lenz’s Dingus of the Week: OpenAI.
■ Among The Associated Press’ updated list of approved newsroom uses for AI: Suggesting headlines and grammar help.
■ Science fiction author and tech watchdog Cory Doctorow: “Take away the accompanying, galactic-scale stock-swindle, and we’d call AI’s applications ‘plug-ins’ and we’d use them and abuse them in the same way that we’ve used every other technology.”
■ Cartoonist Jack Ohman: “Because I am a Person from the 1900s … I decided to try Chat GPT GLP-1, or something like that”—and he concludes, “it works … kinda.”
■ Cartoonist Jack Ohman: “Because I am a Person from the 1900s … I decided to try Chat GPT GLP-1, or something like that”—and he concludes, “it works … kinda.”
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