Zorn: The certain kind of show that is Chicago Public Schools these days

9-26-2024 (issue No. 160)

This week:

• The epic cluster-event at the Chicago Public Schools

• Last week’s winning quip

• A new book tells you how to write good well

• News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked

• Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go

• Squaring up the news — Where Charlie Meyerson tells readers where to go

• Cheer Chat — Tickets now on sale for the 26th annual beloved holiday tradition

• Mary Schmich — Waxing poetic about October

• What’s on “The Mincing Rascals” podcast this week

• Quotables — A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately

• Quips — The winning visual jokes and this week’s dad-jokes contest finalists jokes

• Good Sports — What else? The White Sox

• Tune of the Week — “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter

Eric Zorn is a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Find a longer bio and contact information here. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above. Paid subscribers receive each Picayune Plus in their email inbox each Tuesday, are part of our civil and productive commenting community and enjoy the sublime satisfaction of supporting this enterprise.

Brandon Johnson seems determined to step on yet another rake

Family newspapers do not use the words “clusterfuck” and “shitshow,” but I can, and will, for they are clearly les mots justes to describe what’s going on with Mayor Brandon Johnson, the Chicago Teachers Union and the CEO of Chicago Public Schools.

Tuesday, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez confirmed in an op-ed posted to chicagotribune.com that Johnson asked earlier this month for his resignation in the middle of testy contract negotiations with the teachers union.

That request dovetails with last week’s unanimous vote of no-confidence in Martinez by the House of Delegates of the CTU, Johnson’s former employer and main campaign funder.

Johnson is reportedly unhappy because Martinez is refusing to sign off on a massive, high-interest loan to cover projected deficits that will include costs of the new contract.

The union’s statement reflected that same concern:

CTU delegates were clear that the district urgently needs leadership that is capable of fighting for the resources that our students need, partnering with educators and parents, and settling a new contract with our union that can transform our schools. … (Martinez) has undermined our efforts to secure the revenue that the state of Illinois owes CPS, by refusing to go to Springfield with us until the very last moment in May.

That lobbying mission to Springfield was a bust and would have been no matter how enthusiastic Martinez had been. The state has its own budget problems, and lawmakers don’t have a lot of love for a school systems where enrollment has been shrinking, officials won’t even close a high school with a capacity of 888 students that has an enrollment of just 33, nearly 40% of schools are underenrolled and the mayor appears to be little more than a tool of his union benefactors.

The Sun-Times’ political reporter Fran Spielman offered this analysis:

City Hall hopes its ongoing fiscal challenges will help turn up the heat on Gov. JB Pritzker and the Illinois General Assembly to deliver the $1.1 billion CPS needs to be fully funded, according to state estimates, and deliver the quality education required by state law.

But even if the mayor succeeds in removing Martinez, there is no guarantee the pressure tactic will work.

In fact, it could backfire spectacularly.

Pritzker and Johnson already have a strained relationship. The governor could resist the mayor’s demand and possibly even force CPS into bankruptcy.

Spielman quoted Democratic state Rep. Kam Buckner of Chicago:

The city has to come to Springfield as early as five weeks from now when we start our veto session under a united front and say, “This is what we are asking for. How can we convince you guys to help get us there?” That means without some of the dissension and the personality politics that seems to be playing out right now in the public sphere. We want to see folks on the city level work things out before they come to us.

Don’t count on the union to lower the temperature. Teachers union President Stacy Davis Gates is continuing her refusal to engage in interviews with the question of how the financially strapped district is supposed to find the money not only to improve the schools but also to pay for salary increases and other union demands.

This was her answer Monday when WTTW-Ch. 11 “Chicago Tonight” host Brandis Friedman asked about this directly:

The first day of school, I was at Poe Classical in the Pullman neighborhood, and I met a mother there who exclaimed about her experience there, her child's experience there, and was very happy about the first day of school. She talked about the difficulty she's had as a family getting her child to and from school, because that's a selective enrollment school, and she no longer has bus service from Chicago Public Schools. But what she did is that she got another job over the summer. She figured out how to bring new revenue into her household, so she can afford to buy a transportation vehicle to get her child to school every day. Pedro can't tell us no, and that cuts are okay when Black single mothers every day in the city are figuring out how to make ends meet, how to get their kids to school, and how to do it with a smile, he's got to do more than, say, cuts, closures, and consolidations.

True, coming up with new revenue ideas after so many other ideas have failed isn’t Davis’ job. But “figure it out!” sounds tone-deaf to most of us outside her union bubble.

In fairness, though, the CTU has put forth some revenue ideas:

• Demand money back from big banks and other predatory lenders that profited at the expense of Chicago's schools.

• Claw back funds from bad vendor contracts and end wasteful privatization schemes.

• Declare record tax increment financing surpluses to return millions in funding to CPS.

• Tax high-income earners and millionaires like Minnesota, California and Massachusetts.

• Make corporations, which had record profits since the pandemic, pay their fair share by closing corporate loopholes and following Minnesota's lead.

• Claw back funds from corporations and industries that have failed to create good jobs despite hundreds of millions in taxpayer subsidies.

• Establish “payments in lieu of taxes” on corporate hospitals and wealthy universities currently receiving huge tax breaks, to support health and housing of CPS students.

• Tax big tech corporations profiting off our students’ and families’ private data.

Demands and attempted clawbacks would likely involve lengthy litigation — the banks and lenders who profited off what Davis Gates herself has called “payday loans” to help the schools kick the fiscal can down the road broke no laws, and neither did the vendors and private service providers who entered into contracts with CPS.

I’m all for levying higher taxes on millionaires, but voters rejected a proposed graduated income tax in a 2020 referendum. And increasing corporate tax rates sounds like a good idea, but might have deleterious effects on the state and local economy that would negate any revenue gains.

Martinez wrote:

We face a structural budget deficit of at least $700 million next year while still carrying debt from past administrations.

We need to find solutions, but, to be clear, I remain against exorbitant, short-term borrowing, a past practice that generated negative bond ratings for CPS and that would likely lead to additional bond rating cuts and higher borrowing interest rates. Additionally, bonds are primarily repaid by operating revenues, and all the additional costs of debt service take away dollars from the classroom — all of which means that future generations of Chicago’s children and taxpayers will ultimately pay the price.

Raising local taxes — mostly property taxes — and cutting expenses are the more obvious solutions, but Johnson campaigned on a promise not to raise property taxes, and closing poorly utilized schools is such a toxic idea that the union has been claiming Martinez has plans to close up to 100 schools.

Statements and memos

Martinez took pains to distance himself from the idea of school closures in a memo released Tuesday regarding Thursday’s scheduled board meeting:

There are no plans to take action on the CEO's contract at this time, nor are there any action items regarding securing a loan to support the fiscal year 2025 budget approved in July. ... In the past week, there have been an unfortunate series of rumors aimed at discrediting CEO Martinez and his leadership team. References to school closures and co-locations as a tactic to provide more chaos and uncertainty, to steal precious time away from delivering a world class education to our children. ... to put these false school closure rumors to rest once and for all, the Board of Education will adopt a resolution at Thursday's monthly meeting. It clearly states that CPS will not close, consolidate or phase out any district managed schools during the CEO's tenure or before the fully elected school board is seated in January 2027.

The memo was billed as a joint statement from CPS and the Board of Education. But because this is, remember, a total shitshow, school board President Jianan Shi quickly said he hadn’t even seen the memo and the memo was recast as being from CPS alone.

Meanwhile, 24 alders, three former CPS CEOs, City Clerk Anna Valencia and Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza have put out a statement in firm support of Martinez. It says in part:

 It is in the interest of both the city and our schools to ensure that the next generation is not saddled with debts they did not seek to take on. CEO Martinez's responsible refusal to enter into short term, high interest loans to address budgeting shortfalls should be lauded, not punished. Chicago needs more fiscal discipline, not less.

Will the board cave to pressure? Sarah Karp of Chicago Public Media notes that “board members are unpaid volunteers, and Johnson selected political novices, mostly all of whom are former activists” to fill it. Karp reports that members have a frosty relationship with Martinez, who was appointed by Johnson’s predecessor, Lori Lightfoot.

Johnson’s fingerprints will be all over a vote by the board to terminate Martinez’s contract, a move with complications. Karp again:

If he is terminated without cause, the contract requires he can stay on for six months, “during which the CEO will remain as CEO.” He also gets five months severance pay. … If Martinez is terminated for cause, he gets no severance, but board members might be worried about being sued. …

The definition of firing “for cause” (includes) “any other conduct inconsistent with the CEO’s duties and obligations to CPS or the Board, or that may be reasonably perceived to have a material adverse impact on the good name and integrity of CPS or the Board in the sole judgment of the Board.”

I’m not a lawyer, but refusing to rubber-stamp a high-interest loan to pay for today’s expenses with tomorrow’s money does not strike me as cause for termination.

Jake Sheridan at the Tribune:

The mayor carefully avoided criticizing Martinez directly when asked in an interview with the Tribune why he called on the school district leader to resign last week. But he professed a need for new direction in the Chicago public schools and said he was “elected to transform this school district.”

“That is exactly what I intend to do,” Johnson said. “We are moving in a different direction based upon what the people of Chicago want. They want me to invest in their children, invest in their communities, and that is exactly what we are doing.” … Asked what about Martinez’s performance he takes issue with, Johnson called for more school libraries and librarians — “basic amenities” that too many children go without. The district needs manageable class sizes and “sustainable community schools” controlled by residents, he added.

Those needs are real, but paying for them is a real problem. A Tribune editorial that posted Wednesday afternoon with the headline “CPS crisis is mobilizing establishment Chicago against Brandon Johnson’s agenda,” called the situation the result of “epic dysfunction,” which is newspaper-speak for clusterfuck:

Johnson could have avoided much of this if he had done the right thing and recused himself from the negotiations with CTU on the grounds that his ties with the union, which worked to ensure his election, were too public and too close. As most all of Chicago knows.

He should have nominated a proxy who was capable of putting the city of Chicago’s interests first in said negotiations (Martinez comes to mind).

But that would have required more courage than this mayor has yet shown. Even failing recusal, he could have clarified his separation from the union in terms of whose interests he served. The very notion of the person in charge of a massive educational system tacitly supporting its potential bankruptcy at a union’s behest is (to us, at least) a dereliction of duty. …

When they write the history books about the Johnson administration, his absurd and failed attempt to get Martinez to quietly resign may well feature as his biggest mistake, the one that brought down a roaring opposition on his administration’s head.

Johnson does seem to go from one blunder to the next, from enthusiastically promoting the unpopular idea of a new Bears stadium on the lakefront to discontinuing a politically popular crime-fighting technology.

Speaking of stepped-upon rakes …

Last week I wrote extensively about Johnson’s determination to pull the plug Sunday on the ShotSpotter gunshot detection system over the objections of the majority of the City Council, nearly all the alders whose wards have been serviced by ShotSpotter top police brass, and, according to one poll, 70% of Chicagoans.

Proponents argued that the system saves many lives every year by getting first responders to gunshot victims quickly, particularly in cases when residents have not bothered to call 911.

Inevitably the CWBChicago crime blog has started a “Brandon’s Bodies” archive to track “incidents of people being found shot in areas previously served by ShotSpotter where the technology, had it not been dismantled, could have played a critical, helpful role.” The political peril for Johnson is obvious, which may be why he has just put out requests for information from companies offering technological crime-fighting tools.

Why did he wait until now when he announced in February his intention to dump ShotSpotter?

“There’s an entire process “ he explained at a news conference “Some things take time when you’re doing it right, and we’re going to do it right. … A reasonable timeline is to do it right, to do it right … I'm going to do it right."

Right.

Last week’s winning quip

Who started calling the Tesla Cybertrucks “Deploreans?” I owe you a drink. — @franklinleonard

Here are this week’s nominees and the winner of the Tuesday visual-jokes poll. Here is the direct link to the new poll, which is all “dad jokes” this week.

Strunk & White for the modern age

Just published: “Everybody Needs an Editor — The Essential Guide to Clear and Effective Writing” by Melissa Harris and Jenn Bane, edited by Mark Jacob. Harris and Jacob are former colleagues of mine at the Tribune.

“ENE" is a punchy, opinionated advance on the classic 1939 writing guide “The Elements of Style” by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White — a hortatory manual on the shelves of every college student of my generation (and perhaps yours) colloquially known as “Strunk and White.” Harris and Bane go well beyond advice for academic or professional writers to address many of the real-life situations that call on us to clack out words on the keyboard. I suspect they will cringe at my use of the unfamiliar “hortatory” just above.

Here are some representative section headings:

• How to Add Warmth to a Cold Email

• How to Write a Sympathy Note

• How to Write a Toast Without Embarrassing Anyone 

• How to Write a Holiday Letter People Will Enjoy Reading 

• What to Write to Someone Who Ghosted You

• Don’t Trip over Transitions 

• Use Subheads to Whisk Your Reader Along

• Let’s Have a Big Fight About the Oxford Comma

• Don’t Say the Same Thing Twice or Be Redundant

• Banish “Apparently” 

• Don’t Make Sweeping Statements

• Spare Us the “Helper” Verb

• Banish Blob Words

• Kindly “But” Out

• Cut Wimpy Words

A few sample quotes:

• The second you hit send on an email, you lose control of your audience. You don’t get to decide who sees it next.

• Limit yourself to one idea per sentence. … William Faulkner once wrote a 1,288-word sentence, and he won a Nobel Prize. But unless you’re William Faulkner, keep your sentences much tighter than this. Short sentences are easier to understand. And pack a punch. Right? Right.

• “Thing” is one of those English words we can’t live without. We use it without much thought. But you want your writing to actually say something, and “thing” doesn’t usually say anything.

• “Really” can have great impact when spoken. Written? It’s a speed bump on the way to making a point. “Really” and its friend “very” are imprecise and almost always unnecessary.

• Don’t use ridiculous synonyms. If you’re writing about snow, it’s OK to call it “snow” over and over. In badly written news stories, you’ll sometimes see snow described as “the white stuff ” because someone once told a writer to do that. Don’t do that.

• Successful writing can be simple and conversational. But overly chatty language tends to trivialize what you’re writing.

• Once you finish the first draft, immediately stop thinking of yourself as the writer. Put distance between yourself and the text. Become the editor.

News & Views

News: Independent Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia is withholding his support for Kamala Harris because she’s expressed support for eliminating the Senate filibuster.

View: The filibuster cools majoritarian passions yet gives even more outsized power in the Senate to small states. Getting rid of it for U.S. Supreme Court nominees has not been good for the Democrats, and I worry about the wild swings in legislation that might occur if one party and then another holds both houses of Congress and the White House at the same time.

News: California’s governor has signed a law banning all grocery store plastic shopping bags.

View: I still remember how giddy I was in the early 1980s when thin, strong, single-use plastic bags with handles became common in supermarkets, replacing the awkward and bulky brown paper bags that White Sox fans now use to put over their heads.

It was much easier for one person to carry a lot of groceries at once, and the waste they created seemed insubstantial. I’ve since converted to reusable bags — in part to avoid the city’s seven-cent bag tax and in part because they’re more environmentally friendly (though that’s a debatable point).

I don’t mind the bag tax — perhaps it should be higher with proceeds devoted to environmental clean up — but an outright ban goes too far.

News: “”Donald Trump will attend Al Smith charity dinner that Kamala Harris is skipping to campaign in battleground state.”

View: This is an unforced error by Harris . The benefit dinner ”traditionally has been used to promote collegiality, with presidential candidates from both parties appearing on the same night and trading (humorous) barbs.” Trump’s “humor” has a nasty, self-aggrandizing tone and Harris would likely outshine him in an event that makes national news. With the help of a sharp team of writers, she could make an excellent impression on voters who still don’t feel they have a good sense of her.

News: “Trump calls for 100% tariffs on cars made in Mexico as part of US manufacturing plan” and says that, if elected, he will impose a 200% tariff on goods manufactured by companies that move to Mexico.”

View: Most economists agree that higher tariffs result in inflation, since the cost is ultimately paid by the consumer. I doubt Trump understands this.

News: Trump says he need to get immigrants “the hell out” of our country, and his rally audience responds with chants of “Send them back! Send them back!”

View: The ugly nativist rhetoric is just getting uglier the closer we get to the election. Here’s the quote:

(Immigrants are) changing the character of small towns and villages all over our country,  and changing them forever. They will never be the same. They will never be. Do you think Springfield (Ohio) will ever be the same? I don't think. — the fact is, and I'll say it now, you have to get ‘em the hell out. You have to get ‘em out. I'm sorry.  Get ‘em out. Can't have it. Can't have it. They’ve destroyed it.

A reminder that the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are in the country legally and have largely been embraced by the community, and that this is what ethnic cleansing looks like.

Land of Linkin’

• How popular is your last name? Get a rough idea by going to “Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2010 Census,” downloading file B on that page and using the search function. Zorn is in 7,353th place out of 162,254 names that occurred 100 or more times in the survey. (Hat tip to Jim Strickler, whose surname is in 5,703th place.)

• Neiman Lab: “Documentary filmmakers publish new AI ethics guidelines. Are news broadcasters next?” “The debate over using generative AI clearly echoes past controversies in documentary ethics. Reenactment, for one, has long been criticized by documentary purists. … Some documentary features have used deepfake technology — mainly AI-generated face swaps — in a thoughtful, and ethical way. Examples have included masking the identity of victims of revenge porn (“Another Body”) or endangered LGBTQ+ activists (“Welcome to Chechnya).”

• Block Club Chicago co-founder Stephanie Lulay sat for an interview with media news Substacker Simon Owens for “How Block Club Chicago reached 20,000 paying subscribers.” You can listen to the interview at Owens’ “The Business of Content” podcast here.

• Speaking of Block Club, “Uptown People's Law Center Leader Stepping Down After Decades Fighting For Prisoners' Rights” is a fitting tribute to local justice warrior Alan Mills.

• Going to any weddings soon? We’re going to our third of the month this weekend and fully expect during the dance portion of the evening to include Chappell Roan’s “Hot to Go,” the Tune of the Week on Aug. 8. The canonical arm movements make me think of “YMCA” meets “The Macarena.”

• “Virginia school picture photographer loses job after allegedly asking young students, 'Can I eat your soul?’” Did she not say “please”?

• Catherine Rampell at The Washington Post: “Don’t scoff at the Hitler comparisons. Trump’s rhetoric is that bad.” (Gift link)

Squaring up the news

This is a bonus supplement to the Land of Linkin’ from veteran radio, internet and newspaper journalist Charlie Meyerson. Each week, he offers a selection of intriguing links from his daily email news briefing Chicago Public Square:

■An ‘immediate halt.’ Friends of the Parks has launched an online petition to block plans for a new Bears stadium on the lakefront.

■ MAGA-mind, explained: An anthropology professor offers five reasons people still back Donald Trump—despite, you know, everything.

■ Columnist and former Illinois Rep. Marie Newman fears MAGA is birthing female misogynists.

■ Jimmy Kimmel’s wife and producer, whom Trump name-checked at a recent rally, took the stage during Tuesday night’s monologue to counsel Trump: “Spend all day, every day cheating at golf and masturbating to Newsmax, and let a competent woman take over.”

■ Trump hulks out in a new cartoon from Tom Tomorrow: “Trump tired of media talking about Ka-mah-la! Trump want to change subject—back to Trump.”

■ The plainspoken Jeff Tiedrich: “Kamala is running a near-perfect campaign and it’s driving the press insane.”

■ Writing from Alabama, law professor Joyce Vance shares a collection of “Harris signs in a place where you wouldn’t necessarily expect to find them.”

■ Press Watch proprietor Dan Froomkin: The New York Times is normalizing JD Vance’s racist attacks.

■ The Heated newsletter on the environment asks: “Why are Republicans so obsessed with refrigerators?”

■ Men Yell at Me columnist Lyz Lenz: An Iowa college is requiring faculty to report pregnant students.

■ Besieged by thousands of protest emails, a suburban library’s canceled the showing of a movie about how—to quote one of the film’s champions with the group Jewish Voice for Peace—other Jewish organizations court youth support for Israel with “a sanitized, historically inaccurate narrative of its founding.”

■ It’s the Democracy, Stupid columnist Jennifer Schulze: “The Olivia Nuzzi/ RFK Jr. scandal is part of a much larger media failure.”

■ Mark Jacob at Stop the Presses: “During the time Nuzzi was ‘personal’ with RFK Jr., she argued in a New York Times piece that the media was ‘ignoring something rather important’—Kennedy’s candidacy.”

■ Lyz Lenz’s Dingus of the Week: Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

■ Block Club Chicago: A deadly stretch of Pulaski Road’s in line for safety upgrades.

■ Welcome, fall: Block Club’s Colin Boyle caught Sunday’s Chicagohenge in photos.

You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.

Cheer Chat

Tickets for Songs of Good Cheer are on sale now at the Old Town School of Folk Music. Yes, it’s not yet feeling a lot like Christmas, but it’s not too early to plan to attend the annual holiday singalong (Dec. 12-15) hosted, for the 26th year, by Mary Schmich and me. We will be fronting a vastly talented band of musicians who always deliver a wonderful mix of familiar and unfamiliar songs of the winter holiday season. She plays piano. I play a little fiddle despite the humbling presence in our band of four superior fiddle players.

We’re just starting to plan this year’s program, and I’ll keep you posted here on how things are going at rehearsals.

Mary Schmich: No need for winter dread!

My former colleague Mary Schmich posts occasional column-like entries on Facebook. Here, reprinted with permission, is a recent offering, a brief bit of poetry:

Autumn sneaks in right on time
Wearing clouds and rain 
But don’t despair of summer’s end
Don’t think of winter’s pain. 

Autumn sun will soon return
No need for winter dread!
The autumn leaves will shine with gold. 
So what that means they’re dead?

September’s end’s a tender time
No other time is better
So don’t be sad that summer's gone--
But maybe grab a sweater.

John Williams, Austin Berg, Cate Plys, Marj Halperin, Eric Zorn

Minced Words

Host John Williams welcomed Austin Berg, Cate Plys, Marj Halperin and me to the virtual roundtable for this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. Most of our time was spent talking about the Chicago Public Schools situation, but we also touched on national airport rankings, the White Sox collapse and, of course, the latest appalling rhetoric from Donald Trump.

Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. Or bookmark this page. If you’re not a podcast listener, you can hear an edited version of the show at 8 p.m. most Saturday evenings on WGN-AM 720.

Read the background bios of some regular panelists here.

Quotables

A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately

It’s not just trolling: Trump is an authoritarian leading an authoritarian movement, and if he returns to the White House, he will again try to carry out his authoritarian impulses. And journalists, whom the former president often describes as the “enemy of the people,” will not be spared. — Matthew Gertz

During the time that I’ve been with the office, 21 years now, we have not had any murders involving the Haitian community. — Daniel Driscoll, Republican chief prosecutor for the county that includes Springfield, Ohio, responding to JD Vance’s false claim that “Murders are up by 81% because of what Kamala Harris has allowed to happen in Springfield.”

The rabid “Send Them Back” chants Trump leads at his political rallies (regarding immigrants) are sickening, unAmerican, downright disgraceful. He’s talking about people who are here legally. Raw racism. It’s Hitlerian. If you don’t vote for Harris, this is exactly what you’re enabling. — Laurence Tribe

“(North Carolina’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson) called himself a Nazi on a porn website. … If you can’t denounce that, you can’t denounce anything. Which of course is one of the job requirements when you’re Donald Trump’s running mate.” — Seth Meyers on Vance’s reluctance to condemn Robinson

Thinking about Rush Limbaugh and how, now that he’s dead, you never, ever hear about him. No one mentions anything he did. Because what he did had no value. It contributed nothing worthwhile to the culture. Nothing of lasting value. He just made anger. Every day. Rising, blooming & fading like a fart. Then he died and was instantly replaced by a fleet of little replicas, farting fake fury five days a week. Creating nothing of interest or artistic value to anyone. — Dana Gould

Remember when the media was all “Biden is old. What if he can’t finish a second term?” I haven’t heard shit from them about the possibility of a president Vance. — @OhNoSheTwitnt

The sound of Americans cheering Vladimir Putin at a Trump rally should disgust every right-thinking person, but it’s a sign of how corrupt the Republican Party has become that they boo Zelensky and cheer Putin at Trump’s behest. — Rick Wilson

It seems apparent to us that God has chosen (Donald Trump) … to lead the greatest nation in the history of the world for a second time. — Republican U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson

(Critics of the U.S. Supreme Court) should be put in jail the way they talk about our judges and our justice system. — Donald Trump

This Trump fellow is an obvious, unrepentant fascist without the slightest understanding of what the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution demands and requires of every citizen, let alone the president. — David Simon

Today in Kabul, a female cat has more freedoms than a woman. A cat may go sit on her front stoop and feel the sun on her face. She may chase a squirrel into the park. A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan today because the public parks have been closed to the women and girls by the Taliban. — Meryl Streep in an address to the United Nations

Trump told a crowd that Haitian immigrants are "destroying" Springfield, OH--notwithstanding the fervent rebuttals from the town's Republican mayor, Ohio's Republican mayor and other local leaders. Trump doesn't give a damn. For him, Springfield is a prop. — David Axelrod

U.S. crime data See “New FBI stats destroy Trump’s constant lies about violent crime

Quips

In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers vote for their favorite, and I post the winner here every Thursday:

Apropos of the above was this post by veteran journalist Josh Marshall earlier this week:

Musk is so vain and self-important that he has clearly ordered his minions to tweak Twitter’s algorithm so that every fetid thought that comes out of his increasingly nasty brain pops to the top of my feed. I despise the “for you” tab to which Twitter automatically defaults when I open the app, but not nearly as much as I despise Elon Musk.

The new nominees for Quip of the Week:

Once again, I’m devoting the poll to “dad quips,” the often excruciating but family-friendly jokes and riddles that are so often borrowed/stolen that I no longer attribute them. Apologies in advance for these groaners:

• I tried to take a picture of myself in the shower, but my camera kept fogging up. I have selfie steam issues.

• “Do you have a good reason for calling your wedding off?” “I can’t say I do.”

• No matter how kind your children are, German children are kinder. 

• I think my wife might have been secretly taking goalie lessons. I certainly wouldn't put it past her.

• What do you call a woman that sets her credit card bills on fire? Bernadette.

• Her: I don't even know what the cloning machine does Me: Well that makes two of us.

• What do you call 100 sheep rolling down a hill? A lambslide.

• Me: Want to go hunting this weekend? Friend: Sure, I’m game. Me: Oh, then, you probably shouldn’t come.

• What's green, has six legs and would kill you if it fell out of a tree? A pool table.

• I know a mortician with such a casual approach to his work he uses informaldehyde.

Vote here and check the current results in the poll.

For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Why the new name for this feature? See “I’m rebranding ‘Tweet of the Week’ in a gesture of contempt for Elon Musk.”

Good Sports

Caitlin Clark Effect

The WNBA Indiana Fever had higher average home attendance than the Indiana Pacers, Atlanta Hawks, Washington Wizards, Memphis Grizzlies and Charlotte Hornets of the NBA.

The No-No Sox

The White Sox continue to disappoint their fans, many of whom turned out to Guaranteed Rate Field Tuesday and Wednesday night hoping to see defeat number 121, which would be the most losses in a single season in the history of Major League Baseball.

And they won both games, prompting lusty boos from the stands. It remains possible that, at 38-120, they’ll sweep their last four games and end up at 42-120, with a better winning percentage than the 1962 New York Mets, who finished 40-120 due to two rainouts that were not made up.

Here’s Sun-Times sports columnist Rick Telander:

(The 1962 Mets) were a half-baked expansion team filled with hacks, has-beens and hapless kids. They, like the Spiders, had an excuse.

The Sox?

They have none.

What they’ve done is inexplicable. Even a franchise that called up its entire Triple-A team and fielded it all season likely would do this well. Excuse me, this badly.

It also remains possible that the Sox will lose their last four games and end up 38-124, giving them winning percentage of .2346. That’s just a whisker worse than the 1916 Philadephia A’s, who played only 153 games and finished 36-117, a winning percentage of .2353 that set the low water mark in baseball’s modern era (since 1900).

Neither possibility strikes me as likely. The Detroit Tigers — against whom the Sox will play the final three games of the season on the road — are in the thick of the wild-card race.

I’m going to Thursday afternoon’s game — my first of the season — hoping to see history. I have been following this slide to the bottom weekly in this publication since April 16, and deserve my reward. Go (down) Sox!

Tune of the Week

I’ve been opening up Tune of the Week nominations in an effort to bring some newer sounds to the mix. I’m asking readers to use the comments area for paid subscribers or to email me to leave nominations (post-2000 releases, please!) along with YouTube links and at least a few sentences explaining why the nominated song is meaningful or delightful to you.

A recent New York Times article on songwriter Amy Allen said that singer Sabrina Carpenter’s “Please Please Please” was the “surprise No. 1 hit of this summer.” I was surprised myself, as the accompanying music video tells a dark story of a woman with very dubious taste in men, to put it mildly. I preferred “Espresso” by the same songwriter from the same album (“which debuted atop the Billboard chart”) and, the Times writer tells us, put the phrase “‘that’s that me espresso’ into the cultural lexicon.”

Say you can't sleep, baby, I know
That's that me espresso
I can't relate to desperation
My 'give-a-fucks' are on vacation
And I got this one boy, and he won't stop calling
When they act this way, I know I got 'em

Sounds like fairly basic pop-dance music to me, but critics seem to like it:

It’s honeyed but arch. Frothy, hooky, with a lyrical sting. (The Guardian)

The tune’s brilliantly absurd chorus … has me ready to elevate it to genius status. … I consider myself to be a fairly self-aware person, but I had no idea that I could be pulled into a singer’s orbit so quickly. … She likens her sexuality and her affection to the velvety smooth taste and habit-forming properties of specialty java. And, like espresso, Carpenter’s love is chic, finite, and reserved for consumers with a higher standard than your average caffeinated rush job. (The Daily Beast)

It’s an incredibly catchy, upbeat song that’s hard to get out of your head once it’s stuck in there. … Sometimes, there are songs that I wish were longer because they’re so good. (Yakima Herald-Republic)

The song is all about being the object of someone’s addiction, as the caffeine-based name suggests. … Though “Espresso” could have benefitted from some more depth or experimentation, it still ends up being an incredibly catchy tune saturated with charismatic frivolity, guaranteed to repeatedly play in one’s head. (The Harvard Crimson)

It's not just the music that makes "Espresso" stand out – it's Sabrina's signature brand of humor and charm that truly elevate the track. … It's like a mini summer vacation wrapped up in a three-minute package. … "Espresso" is a triumph for Sabrina Carpenter, showcasing her growth as an artist and her ability to craft infectious pop anthems. With its catchy beats, empowering lyrics, and undeniable charm. (Next Wave)

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