What’re you doing Election Day? Chicago and Cook County are in the hunt for election judges.
■ High school kids qualify, too.
■ Democracy Docket: The Trump administration’s “quietly removed public information meant to help U.S. citizens born and living abroad to vote.”
■ Ready to cast your ballot? Check the Chicago Public Square Voter Guide Guide.
‘The U.S. government is coming after me.’ Columnist and former Illinois U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger—one of the few House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump—is under investigation by Trump’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission …
■ … for prediction market trades bets he made a couple of years ago related to his presidential pardon by Joe Biden—before he’d received that pardon.
Did Nixon get a raw deal? Charlie Pierce at Esquire: “Instead of doing anything valuable, the DOJ is trying to recast Richard Nixon as the victim of Watergate.”
■ The Wall Street Journal (gift link): The Biden administration rejected a request for such an investigation.
■ The Washington Post (gift link): Those campaign-style TV ads the Trump administration’s been running are being paid for with money Congress approved for border security, drug enforcement and memorials for officers killed in the line of duty.
■ Law prof Joyce Vance reviews “another bad day in court for Trump.”
■ If you find yourself nostalgic for President Obama, columnist and author Cory Doctorow recalls that “he let the bank executives … foreclose on the homes of millions of Americans … shielded the CIA’s torturers from scrutiny and prosecution … [and] reneged on his promise to shut down Gitmo.”
‘When the FBI called, I hesitated.’ But, Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg says, despite “reading about the various humiliations visited upon the FBI by its director, I decided to check up on my old pals in the Chicago field office.”
■ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist James Causey (free link): A Senate session on FBI hiring merits a slot on a list of “the Top 10 most inane Congressional hearings of the second Trump administration.”
■ Chicago taxpayers are in line to pay more than a quarter of a billion dollars to settle cases linked to torture by a former police detective.
‘He deserves the whole damn thing.’ Columnist Al Katz says Chicago should rename all of 71st Street, not just a small stretch, Emmett Till Road, in honor of the 14-year-old boy who was kidnapped, tortured and murdered in Mississippi—and whose body was almost unrecognizable when it was returned to his mother in 1955.
■ The Marshall Report on Tennessee’s failure to kill a woman convicted of murder: “They executed her. She’s not dead.”
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke—who’s witnessed executions—calls that “a moral stain on America.”
■ Huppke’s launched his own standalone platform, Quick Distractions—“unlike other newsletters in that it is mine.”
Half-right. Past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel’s devised a daunting news quiz—on which your Chicago Public Square columnist notched a score of just 50%. Your turn.
Kimmel’s future: ‘Challenging.’ ABC’s president is hedging on whether Jimmy Kimmel Live! will be around past next year …
■ … which made an apt time for Robert De Niro, in his mob-boss take on FCC chairman Brendan Carr, to tell Kimmel on last night’s show, “Shut the f**k up!”
■ Later, fellow late-night hosts Seth Meyers and John Oliver told Kimmel—in Oliver’s words—“We are fully behind you the way that we’re fully behind a bulletproof vest.”
■ Later, fellow late-night hosts Seth Meyers and John Oliver told Kimmel—in Oliver’s words—“We are fully behind you the way that we’re fully behind a bulletproof vest.”
McDonAIld’s. Antitrust lawyer Lee Hepner: McDonald’s is using artificial intelligence tech to set different prices for the same item between restaurants—not just between cities, but even between nearby neighborhoods.
■ For What It’s Worth law blogger Jack Leyhane: “AI makes stuff up: Why would any lawyer—why would anyone—want to use it for anything serious?”
■ Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s put “four of the most frighteningly irresponsible people in America” in charge of a Pentagon operation for autonomous—no humans necessary—warfare.
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich, reviewing Time’s interview with Trump: “When Donny was plotting to steal Venezuela’s oil and kidnap its leader, one of his most-trusted advisors was … Grok, the Space Nazi’s own personal plagiarism robot.”
Students pushing back. 404 Media surveys how schools and universities—including Southern Illinois University Edwardsville—have been trying to censor student journalists.
■ Editor & Publisher columnist Rob Tornoe: Newsrooms need more transparency over AI-generated cartoons.
Missing link. Careful readers of Thursday’s emailed Square noticed the phrase “The ACLU” just sitting there all by itself. That was to have been an item about the American Civil Liberties Union’s new appeal, “Are you sick of seeing Flock cameras everywhere?”—as it encourages voters to write to Congress demanding, “Get the flock out.”
■ The ACLU’s suing a Minnesota school district that banned all stickers—to get rid of the rainbow ones.