This means war. Retaliating against President Trump’s White House ban on reporters from CNN, MS NOW and Politico—who are suing—ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News are canceling their pooled TV coverage of the president, under which they’ve rotated responsibility for generating footage carried by news organizations worldwide.
■ Poynter’s Tom Jones sees Trump’s move as “the kind of brazen and dangerous act that attempts to push America closer to countries that have state-run media.”
■ Former U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger—a rare Republican who voted to impeach Trump: “While it may seem like a petty move by a petty man, this is a textbook move by authoritarians to choke out critical media.”
■ Radio news veteran Rob Archer says Trump’s act isn’t completely without presidential precedent.
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich: “No one should imagine that Donny’s going to stop with those four.”
So it’s not just about his ego? Trump says the big arch he wants to build between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery would also host ammunition supplies, drones and snipers.
■ Gary Legum at Wonkette sees it as “Toddler President’s … Super-Cool GI Joe Play Fort.”
■ Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg: Trump’s “putting-your-name-on-everything hustle is a play right out of the ancient tyrant playbook.”
■ The Onion: “Bankrupt Kennedy Center Auctions Off JFK’s Skeleton.”
Unhappy anniversary. Block Club: A year after the first violent clash at the Broadview immigration detention center, immigration agents again pepper-sprayed protesters.
■ See it here—profanities included.
‘Quantum is not AI.’ A Tribune editorial (free link): The Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park Gov. Pritzker’s championing for the former U.S. Steel South Works “will not be a collection of power-sucking, water-drinking data centers.”
■ Pritzker told ABC’s Jonathan Karl over the weekend that AI “essentially learns from itself and doesn’t need human beings anymore, and I think that’s what we all need to be concerned with.”
■ In a gesture some might see as poetic, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District is offering to sell AI data centers recycled sewer water.
■ Fear of sewer overflow amid weekend rain prompted cancellation of yesterday’s Chicago River Swim.
‘The government would like to revisit the whole don’t experiment on vulnerable people thing.’ Comedian and columnist John Fugelsang flags the Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-led Health and Human Services Department’s consideration of changes to rules regulating medical research on humans.
■ Back on HBO after several weeks, John Oliver took a swipe at his Trump-allied corporate business daddy: “Having access to wealthy parents just cannot be the system to get badly-needed healthcare—even if it is apparently the system that lets you be in charge of HBO.”
■ The Onion on a report that one in three U.S. residents with health insurance nevertheless struggle with long-term medical debt: “If there was a better way to provide healthcare surely another country would have figured it out.”
Apple’s ‘alarming text.’ HuffPost says that if your iPhone flags “mercenary spyware,” it’s not spam: “It’s a real warning Apple users are getting that they should act upon quickly.”
■ Here’s the company’s detailed guide for what to do.
‘Back to the drawing board.’ Sun-Times architecture columnist Lee Bey says the plan for “an ungainly and unattractive” new entrance to the Museum of Science and Industry “threatens to foul up one of the city’s great urban vistas.”
■ The owners of the United Center have released details of plans for a new 6,000-seat music venue in the ’hood.
■ William “Capt. Kirk” Shatner, 95, shredded heavy metal music at Chicago’s Riot Fest over the weekend.
Chicago Public Square loses a reader. An unsubscribe note following Friday’s edition objected to “Zionist mischaracterization of witch’s nose worn by Macklemore and illegal collusion by Robert Kraft to silence and demonize a courageous performer.”
■ We don’t expect every reader to agree with every opinion linked from Square, but we encouraged that (former) subscriber to read in full the pieces linked from that issue, as well as these links from Wednesday’s edition.
■ Opening a concert Saturday, Ed Sheeran commented on the dropping of Macklemore from his tour, calling the situation in Gaza “catastrophic and unjustifiable.”
■ Pulitzer-winning Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (gift link): “Eagles’ silence on their role in the Macklemore mess has become deafening.”
■ Chris Koenig and Mike Braden made this edition better.