Trump tromps in / Lightfoot's regrets / Phones in trees

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Trump tromps in / Lightfoot's regrets / Phones in trees

Trump tromps in. Over the objections of Wisconsin’s governor and Kenosha’s mayor, President Trump was headed today into Kenosha—the scene of more than a week of protest and at least two deaths in the aftermath of the police shooting of Evanston-raised Jacob Blake.

■ Tribune columnist Rex Huppke on Trump’s refusal to condemn the 17-year-old Illinoisan accused of shooting and killing two Kenosha protesters: “Trump … has an unbroken streak of not speaking ill of white people who support him.” (Cartoon: Keith J. Taylor.)
■ Poynter’s Tom Jones: “ If you want to know how the rest of President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is going to go, his news conference Monday was likely a good indication.”
■ A Sun-Times editorial: “Trump’s visit to Kenosha is nothing but another MAGA rally. Delivered on a stage built of violence.”
■ Phones of those driving near Kenosha overnight were buzzing with “civil unrest” alerts, including a request that gas stations “please turn off fuel pumps.”
■ A Black editor at The Kenosha News has quit to protest its headline on his report of a rally on Blake’s behalf.

Blue poo. Kenosha County’s embattled sheriff conceded in 2018 that he was being “un-politically correct” as he asserted that Black shoplifters should be “warehoused” and kept from “having small children.”
■ HBO’s John Oliver: “Calling for American citizens to be stopped from having small children isn’t politically incorrect so much as it is politically 1940s Germany.”
■ Chicago cops now qualify for free mental health care.

‘It made things worse.’ The Illinois State University athletic director’s assertion that “All Redbird lives matter” moved athletes to launch a boycott in protest …
■ … prompting the university to impose an “Athletic Department Action Plan for Social Change” …
■ … including a requirement the director and his staff “immediately” complete a “Race and Cultural Diversity in American Life and History” program.
■ The Sun-Times: Of the ISU athletics department’s 15 administrators, “14 appear to be white.”
■ The Conversation: Ethnic diversity on college campuses helps dissolve stereotypes.
■ A Milwaukee Bucks coach is slamming presidential adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner for “a level of ignorance.”

‘Officers then returned fire.’ Chicago police say officers shot and wounded a person after their squad car was hit by gunfire last night on the West Side.
■ Police report overall Chicago crime dropped in August—but more than 500 people were shot.
■ A Trib editorial: “Chicago is not lawless, but mayhem feels like it’s spiraling out of control.”

Lightfoot’s regrets. In what the Sun-Times’ Fran Spielman calls “a rare moment of self-criticism,” Mayor Lightfoot has conceded she needs to “push myself harder to work with people with whom I do not agree.”
■ The mayor says the pandemic has handed Chicago a $1.2 billion budget shortfall for the new fiscal year and so the city must begin “reimagining how our government operates.”
■ By one measure, Chicago hotel, restaurant and other tax revenue were down 85% last month from a year before.
■ Satire from The Chicago Machine: “Lightfoot Plans Bake Sale.”

‘Major advance’ against COVID-19. A public health policy professor hails deployment of 15-minute coronavirus tests developed by Abbott Laboratories.
■ Illinois’ daily COVID-19 caseload in August was more than double that of June.

Lawyer charged. Prosecutors accuse an influential Cook County lawyer of raping an associate and sexually abusing another female colleague.
■ An Illinois man who’s spent decades portraying Abe Lincoln has been handed his hat—arrested on charges of child porn and patronizing a prostitute.

‘TikTok was built to lip-sync music. The people decided they would use it to mock the fool in the White House.’ Journalism prof Jeff Jarvis says the president’s war on TikTok needs to be seen as an attack on human rights.
■ Jarvis continues: Trump hates TikTok because it’s “the platform that has enabled Sarah Cooper … to mock Trump.” (July 20 link is Square’s.)
■ And Jarvis regrets more journalists aren’t defending TikTok: “The old press still thinks the meaning of the ‘press’ is a machine that spreads ink. No. The internet is the people’s press. It is a machine that spreads power.”
■ WalMart’s considering buying TikTok as a weapon in its war on Amazon.

Phones in trees. Bloomberg explains a weird thing Amazon’s contract delivery workers are doing to get more work from the company.
■ Amazon has won FAA permission to deliver packages via drone.
■ American and Delta airlines are following United’s lead and dropping change fees on U.S. flights.

Red alert. Cultural institutions in Chicago and around the country will be bathed by red light tonight in an appeal for financial relief to the arts.

Support Chicago Public Square.

— Charlie Meyerson, September 1, 2020

But wait—there’s more!

■ Previously in Square:
'I am concerned' / 'This is not a way to live' / Thanks, COVID
'Intentional homicide' / Escapes from Chicago / This bites
'Public safety cadet' / 'Mostly false' / Deadliest year
Death in Kenosha / Republicans behaving badly / Masks up
Kenosha in crisis / 'Extreme fear porn' / Falwell from grace

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