‘Trump’s evil plan is backfiring.’ That’s columnist Heather Delaney Reese on the repercussions of the president’s decision to ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House press pool.
■ Former USA Today editor-in-chief Ken Paulson, now director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, sees journalists and the president playing “high-risk chess with much at stake.”
■ A Tribune editorial (free link): “If Donald Trump won’t listen to this reason, those with thicker skin around said president should gang up on the boss and do all in their power to make him reverse course.”
■ In an occasion New York Times reporter Peter Baker calls “unprecedented,” Trump left the White House yesterday with no TV cameras tracking him …
■ … resulting in laughable video that even sycophantic Newsmax conceded shows Trump’s attack “backfiring.”
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich: “Silenced-by-the-media Donny is my favorite Donny.”
■ The New York Times (gift link): “Trump, for whom television is better than any narcotic, finds himself for the first time at least partially deprived of the major networks that have covered nearly every movement and utterance he has made for more than a decade.”
■ All this could make for interesting coverage of Trump’s first Chicago-area visit of his second term—for the Presidents Cup golfing thing at the Medinah Country Club.
■ PolitiFact rates “mostly false” assertions that President Biden “cut off 440 reporters’ credentials.”
Weight, weight—he told us. Gov. Pritzker’s gone public with his use of the weight-loss drug GLP-1 to address his diabetes and lose 80 pounds …
■ … elaborating in his (yes, he has one) Substack email newsletter: “If you have struggled with type 2 diabetes or being overweight, I hope this can be the push you need to talk to your doctor again.”
■ Pritzker’s also dropped a bit in Forbes’ list of the world’s wealthiest people.
■ Columnist Eric Zorn mocks Pritzker’s use of the word focus “to avoid giving straight answers to perfectly reasonable questions” …
■ … and instead commends former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s approach.
‘There’s not one person more qualified.’ Visiting last night’s Daily Show—with Jon Stewart, who’s one of his clients—talent agent Ari Emanuel stopped short of saying his brother Rahm will run for the White House, but nevertheless said “he’d make an incredible president.”
■ Tribune columnist Rick Kogan calls Ari’s new memoir—in which he discusses, among other things, his ties to Elon Musk—“lengthy, if ultimately unsatisfying” (free link).
■ Popular Information: Musk “is blanketing the internet with digital ads falsely accusing Democratic Senate candidates of supporting ‘taxpayer-funded sex changes for kids.’”
‘Happy Oligarch Day.’ Columnist and monopoly monitor Jeff Stoller says a decision by the states (not including Illinois) that were suing to block the merger of Paramount and Warner Brothers cleared the way for Trump-aligned billionaires to take over Hollywood.
■ Tech watchdog and science fiction author Cory Doctorow: California’s attorney general “sold us out.”
■ A veteran studio exec tells The New York Times (gift link) the deal makes David Ellison “the Hollywood equivalent of Superman”—a character over which he’ll have control …
■ … if a judge signs off on the deal …
■ … which LateNighter says would put much of political late-night programming under one corporate banner.
Same joke, two ways.
■ Jon Stewart assembles evidence that Donald Trump is an AI entity …
■ Seth Meyers returned to NBC after a record seven-week break.
‘Say so if you’re not sure.’ Tech columnist Kim Komando recommends adding that phrase to artificial intelligence inquiries—to keep chatbots from inventing answers …
■ … specifically as you check smart-home gadgets like doorbells, thermostats and fridges for Chinese-made chips that “may enable data collection and remote access.”
■ Veteran Apple-watcher Adam Engst: “What a broken wrist taught me about iOS 27 dictation and macOS voice control.”
■ Amazon’s blocking Facebook parent Meta’s AI agent Muse from doing users’ shopping.
■ Media critic Simon Owens warns media companies cutting staff right and left: “AI slop will not save legacy newspapers.”
■ Columnist and former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger: “AI could be dangerous. I am just as wary of the tech CEOs.”
‘If my children needed to be disciplined … as a Black father, I had to address it.’ A candidate for president of Chicago’s first fully elected school board is defending himself against—but not denying—charges he engaged in physical discipline that left his son scratched and bruised.
■ WBEZ, the Sun-Times, Chalkbeat and Block Club have teamed up to create a voter guide for November’s historic school board election.
A ‘mud ocean.’ A neighbor says Riot Fest 2026 left Chicago’s Douglass Park a quagmire.
■ Organizers say they’ll make things right.
■ At least fest-goers got outta town before a threatened strike by thousands of Chicago hotel workers.
■ Block Club: Chicago sewer overflows are on the rise as extreme weather piles on.
That’s three. Another beluga whale rescued from a failed Canadian theme park has died at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium.
■ A fourth died in Spain last week.
Fall falls tonight. The autumnal equinox arrives at 7:05 p.m. …
■ … ending this season’s run of the phenomenon we’ve come to know as Chicagohenge.
Square mailbag. A reader troubled by a passage in yesterday’s Chicago Public Square writes: “Why didn’t you use the word neighborhood? This use of ‘the ’hood’ dogwhistle is surprising and quite disappointing.”
■ Point taken, post revised on the web.
■ That reader’s note graciously ends, “I enjoy this newsletter and appreciate every one of them.”
■ And Square appreciates reader feedback of all kinds, critical or not.
■ Mike Braden made this edition better.