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There are tapes / Bearded / Something’s rotten in local news

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There are tapes. In conversations secretly recorded by filmmaker Lauren Windsor and a colleague posing as conservatives, Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito can be heard agreeing that people “have got to … return our country to a place of godliness” …
■ … and his vexillologistic wife is caught whining about June: “I want a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag because I have to look across the lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month.”
■ Windsor explains for The Intercept how she they got the justice to open up: “When he said that one side was gonna win, I was like, gotcha” …
■ … and she tells Rolling Stone the covert recordings were justified “because the Supreme Court is shrouded in secrecy, and they’re refusing to submit to any accountability in the face of overwhelming evidence of serious ethics breaches.”
■ Columnist Robert Reich: “She is right, but it is still a shame we have come to this.”
■ Law professor and former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance: “If Justice Alito is making comments like this to a random person at a public dinner, what is he saying to his close confidants? What is he doing on the bench?”
■ Chief Justice John Roberts, also recorded by Windsor, didn’t take the bait.
■ Speaking of audio: PolitiFact says a purportedly leaked recording of President Biden talking to Special Counsel Robert Hur was a deepfake.

Not even the length of an Apprentice episode. Donald Trump’s mandatory pre-sentencing interview yesterday reportedly lasted less than half an hour.
■ Stephen Colbert questions the value of a report designed to tell a judge more about a convict: “How could any part of Donald Trump still be a mystery, especially to Judge Merchan, who … could pick Trump out of a lineup by smell?”
■ Jimmy Kimmel: “Things got off to a rough start when Trump offered the probation officer $130,000.”
■ Seth Meyers: “If a probation officer is basing their sentencing guidelines on remorse, mental state and character, and the recommendation is a day less than 1,000 years … Trump is getting off easy.”
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke on comparisons of Trump to Jesus: “I don’t remember from my Catholic upbringing the biblical story of Jesus being convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up an affair with an adult-parchment star.”
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich on Trump’s weekend rally: “If your own grandfather started babbling like this about sharks and batteries, you’d be googling for … a world-class memory care center.”
■ Live updates: Jury deliberations had resumed in presidential son Hunter Biden’s trial on federal firearms charges.

Don’t bet on it. Talking to the Sun-Times editorial board, Mayor Johnson expressed skepticism that Bally’s can deliver on plans for a permanent casino on the Chicago River.
■ He also turned thumbs down on an 8 p.m. curfew for unaccompanied minors downtown.

Bearded. Chicago’s only James Beard Award winner this year: Logan Square’s Lula Cafe.
■ Last Week Tonight host John Oliver’s stunt purchase of a closed Red Lobster Restaurant’s contents drew a complaint from the owner of a nearby bakery, but Oliver offered to make things right—for a price.
■ Naperville’s Ribfest is a no-go for this year.

‘The United States lost more than 1 million lives—worse per capita than any other developed nation. We deserve to know why.’ But Your Local Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina says last week’s “unhinged harassment” of Dr. Anthony Fauci in a Republican-led inquisition about the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t help.
■ Chicago Public Square four years ago today: “Senate Republicans want to force the state’s reopening during the pandemic by tomorrow—a thing Gov. Pritzker rejects because science.”

‘Forever chemicals are poisoning your insurance.’ The Lever explains that, as concerns have risen nationwide about the dangers of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, insurers have been quietly cutting coverage for the pollutant’s risks.
■ The American Prospect pulls back the curtain on big banks behind the rising cost of credit.

Something’s rotten in local news. Popular Information says the Sinclair Broadcast Group—you may recall its unsuccessful bid to control formerly Tribune Co.-owned WGN-TV—has been injecting deceptive attacks on President Biden into its stations’ newscasts.
■ Now that the also formerly Tribune Co.-owned Baltimore Sun is owned by Sinclair CEO David Smith, that paper’s begun publishing ethically questionable work by Sinclair’s Baltimore TV station.
■ The paper’s staffers are demanding management “ensure that all stories published in The Baltimore Sun adhere to the same journalistic standards that we are held to as union members.”
■ Flashback (2023 gift link): How Tribune Publishing has changed since 2006.

No cell service? No problem. The next version of Apple’s iPhone operating system will let you send texts via satellite.
■ That’s one of 14 new features headed to the company’s operating systems this fall …
■ … none of them particularly “gotta-go-get-a-newer-iPhone” exciting, but tech columnist Casey Newman says the artificial intelligence initiatives Apple saved for the end offer “hints of a much different future for computing.”

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Thanks. Mike Braden made this edition better.

One juror / Air bag alert / Pets in peril / Cicada sex

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Quick pitch. Join the roughly 12% of Chicago Public Square readers whose contributions keep this service coming—oh, say, just a buck a month or $12/year—and see your name here. Now, the news:

One juror. As deliberations begin in Donald Trump’s criminal trial, The Guardian’s Cameron Joseph reflects: “Trump has been charged with falsifying business records. If Trump’s team can convince at least one juror that never happened … he won’t be convicted” …
■ … and one juror’s been spotted making “friendly eye contact with Trump.”
■ Liz Dye at Public Notice rounds up what you should know about yesterday’s closing arguments.
■ Live updates: Today’s proceedings began with the judge telling jurors how to judge the truth.
■ Actually, I’m a very nice person columnist Julia Gray praises actor Robert DeNiro’s “glorious” news conference for the Biden campaign outside the courthouse yesterday—and spotlights Trump’s “major tantrum” in response.
■ Law professor and former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance: Whatever the jury decides, “We have … a terminally unsuitable candidate to keep out of office.”
■ Greg Sargent at The New Republic: “When Trump elevates one of his supporters for celebrating the idea that a second term will result in ‘blowjob liberals’ being ‘done’ and ‘gone’ … Trump is plainly talking about you and me.”
■ Meanwhile in Florida: Popular Information reports that the state education department’s civics training links “cancel culture” to mass murder.

This may take the edge off. To skirt a quirk in Ohio election law, the Democratic National Committee will renominate President Joe Biden virtually—before the convention here in August.
■ The Onion mockingly lists “Everything Chicago Is Doing Ahead Of The DNC.”

‘President Pritzker?’ Chicago magazine’s Ted McClelland: Whatever November’s outcome, “the Democratic Party will need a new candidate next time around. And our governor is already positioning himself for a run.”
■The General Assembly early today pinched out a budget that closely matches Pritzker’s blueprint from February.

Who started it? Digging deeper into a display of seeming insurrectionist sympathy at Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito’s home, The New York Times reviews a recording of a call to police from a young couple claiming they were being harassed by Alito’s wife.
■ The New Republic’s David Masciotra: “Ted Kennedy warned us about Samuel Alito. He was ignored.”

Victim’s last moments. The Sun-Times reports that surveillance video shows the victim of an attack trying to flag down a police car Monday night just before he’s stabbed in the middle of Cicero Avenue.
■ And it says separate video shows an off-duty officer—now the subject of a federal lawsuit—last month shooting and killing a resident’s dog at point-blank range after it had gotten into a skirmish with the cop’s dog.
■ The chief of Chicago’s police oversight agency is asking why the four cops involved in a gunfight that left Dexter Reed dead after 96 shots in 41 seconds still have their police powers.
■ … but columnist Lyz Lenz isn’t buying Democrats’ line about the nation’s economic strength: “The exhaustive election-year booster-club yelling hasn’t done anything to materially change the fact that existing in America has gotten eye-wateringly expensive and it isn’t getting better.”

Air bag alert. Nissan’s warning owners of some of its 2002 through 2006 models to stop driving them—because the air bags can prove deadly.
■ Carfax: Ten years after a federal recall of those Takata air bags, more than 6.4 million affected vehicles—167,000 in Illinois—are still on the road, unrepaired.

Google oops. Thousands of pages of the company’s “secret sauce”—internal documentation about how its search engine works—have reportedly leaked out.
■ Will Oremus at The Washington Post: Google’s weird AI answers suggest a fundamental problem.

Pets in peril. With 669 animals put to death over the first four months of this year, WTTW reports Chicago’s animal shelter is set to top last year’s record euthanasia pace.
■ The shelter’s launched a “Doggie Day Out” program, giving the pet-curious a chance to check out long-term dogs for the day—and giving the animals some time out in the world.

Cicada sex. The Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg sees parallels to the human experience—and is not amused …
■  … even as his paper offers “Cicada Watch” caps as a donor perk.
■ Block Club’s asking your help mapping where cicadas are to be seen in Chicago.
■ WTTW: Experts are divided on the ethics of eating ’em.

Where do you get your news? A new Northwestern University survey that dives deep into how Chicago-area people learn what’s going on concludes a majority think local news should be free—and have no idea that local newsrooms are struggling.
■ The Daily Beast is planning major cuts—to begin, through buyouts.
■ BuzzFeed co-founder Jonah Peretti is dumping water on right-wing radical investor Vivek Ramaswamy’s push to overhaul the company: “We’re definitely not going to issue an apology for our Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism.”

‘They could have blamed it on the owners. Instead they went for the shrimp joke.’ Reader columnist Ben Joravsky invited your Square columnist onto his podcast to discuss, among many other things, reader reaction to news organizations’ coverage of Red Lobster’s bankruptcy.

‘My God’ / Naperville, sued / Google, disenshittified

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‘My God.’ Gobsmacked by fresh New York Times reporting that Samuel Alito’s beach house displayed a flag associated with a push for a more Christian-oriented government, law professor and former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance writes: “When you’re a Supreme Court justice, you’re supposed to avoid giving off even a whiff of partisan bias. Or religious favoritism. … Alito flunks the test and flunks it badly.”
■ Law Dork columnist Chris Geidner: Alito’s a problem Chief Justice John Roberts must solve.
■ Today: Justices rejected a lower court ruling that found a South Carolina congressional district discriminated against Black voters.
■ An Illinois judge has temporarily blocked an election law that could favor Democrats in November.

Ticketblaster. The Justice Department and dozens of states are suing Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, accusing them of an illegal monopoly over live events.
■ The news conference was set to stream live on the web at Chicago Public Square’s email deadline.

‘The only thing more shocking to find in Donald Trump’s bedroom would be a current wife.’ That’s Stephen Colbert on revelations that the ex-president still had classified docs in his Mar-a-Lago bedroom four months after an FBI search.
■ ProPublica: “For the women who accused the Trump campaign of harassment, it’s been more harassment.”

‘For the security of Israel and the sake of innocent people on both sides, this war does need to end.’ One of Hollywood’s most outspoken Jewish leaders, super-agent—and brother to Chicago’s ex-mayor—Ari Emanuel, split the audience last night as he accepted the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Humanitarian Award with what The Hollywood Reporter calls a fiery speech slamming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
■ Northwestern University’s president was to testify today before a Republican-controlled House committee hearing billed oh-so-objectively as “Calling for Accountability: Stopping Antisemitic College Chaos.”
■ See the proceedings here.
Naperville, sued. ProPublica: “It took four years and a jury trial for Amara Harris to beat the ticket that accused her of stealing another girl’s AirPods. Now she’s heading back to court in the hope of stopping schools from using police to discipline students.”
■ On its way to Gov. Pritzker, a bill that would change the term “offender” to “justice impacted individual” …
■ … a shift that columnist Eric Zorn says suggests “the law has impacted the person who broke that law, which is Orwellian.”
■ The Chicago City Council’s voted to give itself a bigger say in the deployment of safety tech, including the controversial ShotSpotter gunfire detection service.
■ CWBChicago’s spin: “Most aldermen voting in support of Johnson’s cancellation of ShotSpotter represent areas that don’t even have the devices. Meanwhile, aldermen who represent neighborhoods with the most ShotSpotter activity largely voted to keep it.”
■ Chicago’s inspector general wants to know how government can serve you better—via a survey you can take here.

Google, disenshittified. Tedium columnist Ernie Smith has built what he calls “a pseudo-search engine” that connects you directly to “essentially Google, minus the crap” …
■ … a shortcut to Google’s own newly deployed “web” filter, which delivers only text-based and AI-free results.
■ Try it here.
■ Coincidentally, Google competitors Bing, DuckDuckGo and ChatGPT all went down for a time today.

More mailbag. Treatment in Tuesday’s Chicago Public Square of—and reader comment in Wednesday’s edition on—coverage of Red Lobster’s bankruptcy continued to draw feedback:
■ Michael Rosenbaum emailed: “It’s interesting that the same people who complained that you couldn’t just blame one thing—endless shrimp—… are also blaming just one thing—land sales. The Business Insider piece emphasized property sales, but also listed a long array of problems that Red Lobster was facing. … If a restaurant cannot make enough money to pay rent, it isn’t making enough money to survive. Yes, Red Lobster probably had some advantage from paying only a portion of their ownership cost for real estate, but you have to cover your full costs long-term or you don’t have a business. I don’t know all the details here, and neither do most commenters, but the company simply couldn’t draw enough traffic to survive and a disproportionate share of revenue generated a loss for them. If they had more traffic, they would have failed faster. I know a lot of restaurants that made it through the pandemic and are still in business, even though they always had to pay rent. Putting the blame on rent payments is simplistic at best.”
■ Chicago Reader columnist Ben Joravsky texted (links added): “The CNN article that you linked to did have a few paragraphs dedicated to the role of private equity and leaseback in Red Lobster’s demise. Which is more than The New York Times coverage had. I don’t think you made a mistake. I think all in all you and your readers did us all a service” …
■ … and then he extended an invitation to talk about this and more on his podcast—which drops here Saturday.
■ One more from author and “[dis]enshittification” coiner Cory Doctorow: Businesses like Red Lobster “are easy pickings for looters because the people who patronize them have little power in our society—and because those of us with more power are easily tricked into sneering at these places’ failures as a kind of comeuppance … to tacky joints that serve the working class.”

‘Trump was stupid and ignorant long before he got old’

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‘Trump was stupid and ignorant long before he got old.’ That was Gov. Pritzker at the United Center this morning (at 2:27 in that video), welcoming reporters to a “media walkthrough” for this summer’s Democratic National Convention.

Chicago Public Square’s there today, which is why this edition is … different. As always, watch the Square Facebook page (no need to be a Facebook member) for news updates through the day. You’ll find lots new there this morning—including that video of Pritzker.

But we don’t want to leave you empty-handed. So because the Square mailbag coincidentally overflowed yesterday, let’s dive in:

■ Tim Baffoe: While you didn’t write the CNN piece about Red Lobster and endless shrimp in Tuesday’s newsletter, you did share it, and many others around the interwebs have shared or joked about something to the effect of “all-you-can-eat shrimp bankrupted Red Lobster” to the point that the common understanding is that the shrimp and customer gluttony are what killed the joint. … It was a different form of gluttony. Private equity did the restaurant chain in because private equity sucks. … Red Lobster did take an $11 million quarterly bath on the endless shrimp last year … but $11 million pales in comparison to hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars it lost having to pay rent on its own restaurant locations after a private equity company sold all of the chain’s real estate properties. This is the private equity formula when it comes to chain businesses: Buy the struggling company and pretend to be saving it, sell off its real estate at a profit, the chain then has to lease the properties that used to be their own, the chain slowly bleeds to death, new parent company does little to no upkeep (because there’s no profit in that) and in fact cuts costs, thus hastening the bleed, and the husk is scrapped or sold for parts when it finally dies. Private equity nonchalantly moves on to do this to a new business like … the mob doing to a poor restaurant owner in Goodfellas or the aliens to a planet in Independence Day. … It’s sexier to devote about 1,400 words to shrimp as a culprit instead of unfettered capitalism.

■ John Robinson: Massively disappointed in your characterization of Red Lobster’s bankruptcy. … Wall Street did it. Check this Business Insider column. While the CNN story to which you linked does eventually get to the point of how disastrous private equity investment often is to established companies, simply tacking “The shrimp did it” onto the story does a major disservice to the facts. Red Lobster’s bankruptcy is another chapter in private equity’s plunder, alongside Sears, Toys R Us, and the Chicago Tribune. … You chose to go with the easy joke. Disappointing.

■ Barry Koehler: Thanks so much for that link on how to remove personal results from a Google search. I searched myself and immediately found my name and phone number in a search from one of those “people finder” websites. I went to the link you provided, navigated to the Google request page, submitted it, and within 5 minutes got a confirmation that Google removed the search result. I was quite surprised at how fast and easy this worked!

Chicago Public Square returns to business as usual Thursday.


‘A unified Reich’ / ‘Unrelenting’ storms / Hey, kids! Get lost!

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‘A unified Reich.’ Yeah, Donald Trump’s social media account went there with video that boastfully mirrors Nazi terminology.
■ His campaign attributes the post [since deleted] to a staffer who “clearly did not see the word.”
■ President Biden’s campaign says Trump’s “telling America … he intends to … rule as a dictator.”
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “Trump is promising to destroy our democracy and usher in authoritarianism.”

Now they have something in common with Trump himself. Live updates: Prosecutors and defenders in the New York criminal case against Trump have rested …
■ … and the judge has sent jurors home until closing arguments begin Tuesday.
■ … after a day in which the judge cleared the courtroom of reporters and called out a Trump team witness …
■ … specifically: “If you try to stare me down one more time, I will remove you from the stand.”
■ Jimmy Kimmel: “I’ve gotta say, I don’t think a defense has ever been more rested than this one.”
■ Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow envisions a Trump trial daydream: “The Wall has been built, and it is both big and beautiful! Women’s menstrual cycles are being monitored by the NSA for signs of illegal reproductive health care activity! And the entire country loves Trump!”
■ Dan Froomkin at Press Watch: Trump’s decision not to testify in his defense should be a banner headline.
■ Variety: Billionaire investor—and former Washington Commanders owner—Dan Snyder is furious about the portrayal of a young Trump in a movie whose production he funded.

‘I fervently hope that Trump will be elected in November.’ That’s how a conservative commenter winds up an exchange with columnist Eric Zorn about the politics of the Mideast war.
■ Israeli government officials today seized broadcasting equipment belonging to The Associated Press—accusing it of violating a new law by providing images to Al Jazeera, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called “a terror channel.”
■ The Lever: The four largest U.S. weapons makers—companies profiting from that war—have rejected shareholder pressure to expose their emissions policies and human rights practices.
■ Human rights lawyer and George Clooney wife Amal Clooney says she’s one of the experts who recommended the International Criminal Court seek arrest warrants for Netanyahu and leaders of Hamas.

■ Willis told Rachel Maddow last night that threats have forced her to move out of her home.
■ Following Stephen Colbert’s lead, Jimmy Kimmel will host a Biden fundraiser next month.
■ Biden’s top guy at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.—you know, the agency that guarantees your money if your bank fails—is quitting in the face of a report that condemned a toxic workplace culture at the FDIC (May 7 link).

‘Unrelenting’ storms. They were headed this way late today …
■ … with “all weather hazards possible.”
■ A new study concludes that Antarctica’s “Doomsday Glacier” is sustaining “vigorous melting,” threatening more extreme sea-level rises than previously predicted.

Missing the point. A Tribune investigation concludes that the Chicago Police Department’s falling short in its federal consent decree pledge to track incidents in which cops point their weapons at people.
■ A five-time felon on parole’s being held on federal charges, accused of opening fire across the street from Wrigley Field May 5.
■ Police see no charges against a baker at the Near North Side Eataly marketplace after he allegedly pulled a gun on two coworkers.
■ … and, separately, two men riding bikes and armed with guns during six armed Rogers Park robberies this month.

Suburban smackdown. Chicago magazine rounds up a list of “Best Places to Live in the Suburbs” …
■ … including a key comparison: Evanston vs. Oak Park.

Hey, kids! Get lost! As of July 1, an Idaho public library becomes an adults-only joint …
■ … because it’s too small to comply with the oppressive terms of a new state law requiring “grown-up” books be kept away from children.

Young drivers’ break. On Saturdays through the summer, 10 Illinois Secretary of State facilities will add teens-only hours for first-time seekers of licenses and permits.

The shrimp did it. CNN explains how Red Lobster’s misguided “endless shrimp” promotion drove it to bankruptcy.

Scarlett heaver. OpenAI has pledged to silence its ChatGPT voice that sounds like Scarlett Johansson in the 2013 movie Her …
■ Casey Newton at Platformer: OpenAI’s treatment of Johansson should worry everyone.

Thanks. Patrick Olsen made this edition better.

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