Loop gunfire. One person’s dead and another injured after a shooting early this morning outside the Chicago Theatre.
■ The FBI says one of its off-duty agents shot and killed a man Monday night in Pilsen.
Sacks attack. Ahead of next week’s first full Chicago school board election, the Sun-Times’ Fran Spielman says Mayor Johnson’s accusing billionaire Michael Sacks of leading a “nasty coalition” seeking to elect members who want to close schools in Black and Brown neighborhoods.
■ WBEZ: At least five candidates want to resurrect school ratings.
■ Experts tell the Tribune an elected board will mean more politics in the schools.
Trump’s ‘really bad day.’ Law professor Joyce Vance says the president yesterday suffered a round of defeats in federal court …
■ … including a failure to persuade a grand jury to indict former White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified against him in 2021.
■ Brooke Binkowski at Wonkette: “California 1, Trump DOJ Vote Stealers 0, As 9th Circuit Tells DOJ To Eat This F*ck.”
■ Columnist and former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger: “Democrats have every reason to be hopeful, and plenty of reasons to be nervous.”
■ The Wall Street Journal: Trump’s planning a fresh round of attacks on Iran after next week’s elections.
■ Will Bunch at The Philadelphia Inquirer (gift link): “Trump’s coup begins. It’s alarming … yet weak.”
■ Tom Jones at Poynter: The president’s team is spreading conspiracy theories, laying the groundwork to challenge losses.
‘Trump needs hospital-level care.’ But forensic and social psychiatrist Bandy Lee fears “the public will not be able to distinguish between a coup and the medical standard of care.”
■ Men Yell at Me columnist Lyz Lenz: “The president just cannot stop talking about Ohio Sen. Jon Husted’s butt.”
■ Ready to do the vote thing? Check the newly updated Chicago Public Square Voter Guide Guide.
Meanwhile: The supporting cast. Columnist Heather Delaney Reese: An awkward speech by Vice President Vance backfired in Montana.
■ Esquire’s Charlie Pierce (free link): Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner is “the worst thing to ever happen to this country, maybe the world.”
■ Political science professor Kristoffer Ealy: “Elon Musk wants to stay in the background. Congress should check what he buried in the backyard.”
■ Now streaming free on the web: Corruptionland, a 35-minute documentary that New Republic deputy editor Jason Linkins says exposes “the staggering scale of corruption in Trump’s Washington.”
‘I’m suing Donald Trump.’ Press Watch columnist Dan Froomkin is one of six plaintiffs arguing that Trump’s ban on reporters at the White House violates the First Amendment.
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson notes that, a day after a student-led democratic movement ousted Serbia’s Aleksandar Vučić, a key ally of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, Serbian TV apologized for its sycophantic behavior under his rule: “For years, we failed to fulfill our duty. We kept silent, turned a blind eye, reported events one-sidedly.”
■ As it endures something of a falling-out with Trump, Fox News’ ratings are way down.
■ Congressional Democrats have written a letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg urging him not to impose new terms that would let his company scrape news publishers’ content …
■ … a threat that has prompted one Chicago-area news publisher to abandon Facebook and Instagram altogether.
CTA pain prolonged. As Lake Street Bridge reconstruction work drags on, the return of normal Green and Pink line service will wait at least a few days more.
■ The CTA’s new parent agency isn’t embracing a push for the high-speed “O’Hare Flyer” rail project to connect the airport with downtown Chicago.
■ A Tribune editorial (free link) goes the other way: “River Forest NIMBYs deserve a hearing but they should not be allowed to dictate transportation policy for the entire Northern Illinois region.”
■ Writing for Crain’s, columnist Ed Zotti—you may remember him as “Cecil Adams” (1996 interview)—says a proposal to integrate CTA and Metra service, build a downtown rail tunnel and expand regional connections could reshape Chicago’s economic future (gift link).
■ In Spain’s second major such accident this year, at least 64 people are dead after a high-speed train slammed into the rear of another that had stopped.
AI’s ‘dark side.’ Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman on the internet’s newly discovered vulnerabilities: “Our whole economy is currently designed to work with an open web. … But now there’s a very real prospect that for the next few years AI, by empowering bad guys and forcing us to suddenly adapt to new threats, will make us poorer” …
■ … which makes this an apt time to revisit a 1993 interview with science fiction visionary William Gibson, to whose work Krugman nods.
■ Miles Klee at Wired (free link): “Please let the internet die.”
■ The Trump administration’s dangling $5 billion in funding to step up nuclear power production in Illinois and other states—to fuel power-hungry AI projects.
Square mailbag. A reader writes: “Are you still selling your Public Square hooded, zippered sweatshirt?” The answer: Yes.
■ Fun fact: Your purchase price doesn’t benefit Square—except by publicizing this service …
■ … but you can save $5—or get one free—if you support Square directly.
Corrections and Clarifications Dept.
■ Yesterday’s Square confused the end of daylight saving time with the return of daylight saving time …
■ … which is why this piece remains helpful 21 years later.
■ Also: Baseball’s postseason continues; the Cubs’ is over.
■ And, while he was indeed a Republican pedophile, former and now dead Illinois U.S. Rep. Denny Hastert molested boys, not girls.
■ Thanks, as ever, to readers who took the time to set things straight.
■ Chris Koenig, Mike Braden and Eric Zorn made this edition better.