Awash in business. Friday’s dust storm has brought Chicago-area car washes a boom in customers.
■ What caused it? Illinois’ state climatologist is looking at climate change and land management—especially uncovered, open farmland.
■ Nieman Lab asks: “How do you report on the weather when data is disappearing?”
■ The Onion: “Understaffed National Weather Service Still Weeks Away From Issuing Kentucky Tornado Warning.”
■ The Onion: “Understaffed National Weather Service Still Weeks Away From Issuing Kentucky Tornado Warning.”
Wallet shock. The average Chicago-area electric bill is set to rise almost $11 a month beginning next month …
■ … providing fresh incentive for homeowners considering going solar—a process columnist Mike Fourcher has been going through himself and breaks down for beginners here.
■ Know someone struggling with energy bills? The state offers help here.
Skeleton in the pope’s closet. A priest accused of child molestation tells the Sun-Times that, in 2000, the man who would become Leo XIV approved his move to a South Side monastery near a school.
■ Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich says he expects the new pope to stress matters of the environment and immigration.
■ The Financial Times: Trump’s dumped Ukraine peace talks on the pope.
■ The White Sox have unveiled a shrine to Leo at Section 140, Row 19, Seat 2.
■ University of Michigan public policy professor Don Moynihan (April link) calls the proposal “the tip of a spear in a broader movement to remove protections against politicization for all federal employees.”
■ Here’s the comment form—which Moynihan explains you can fill out quickly and anonymously, with something as simple as “Schedule F (politicization) is bad and the rule protecting nonpartisan civil servants is good.”
Meanwhile … Trump’s Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation into whether Chicago City Hall’s hiring practices are based solely on race.
■ The justification? Mayor Johnson’s remarks at a South Side church, where he highlighted the number of Black officials in his administration.
■ Here’s the letter (which misuses the phrase begs the question): “If these kind of hiring decisions are being made for top-level positions in your administration, then it begs the question whether such decisions are also being made for lower-level positions.”
■ Will Oremus at The Washington Post: Media companies looking to close deals under the Trump administration are ditching diversity policies.
■ Popular Information: “Verizon said it was ‘fiercely committed to diversity and inclusion.’ Verizon lied.”
‘We were doing everything right as dictated by the law and we are still getting kicked out.’ Chicago’s Venezuelan migrants face an uncertain future …
■ … after the Supreme Court cleared Trump to strip legal protections from more than 350,000 such refugees …
■ … policy that Law Dork Chris Geidner characterizes as “a lawless, heartless, process-free anti-immigration system with racist underpinnings.”
Been to Mardi Gras? Big Brother was watching. In what the Post calls “the first known, widespread live facial recognition program used by police in the United States … a surveillance method without a known precedent,” New Orleans cops secretly scanned city streets over two years in search of suspects.
■ The American Civil Liberties Union’s demanding the program end.
■ The Tribune reports that the Trump administration may end federal scrutiny of an Illinois school where special education students often got arrested.
‘Joe Biden is out of politics, while Donald Trump—the guy babbling incoherently about Bruce Springsteen, Oprah and Bono—has the nuclear codes.’ USA Today’s Chicago-based Rex Huppke acknowledges legitimate concerns about Biden’s cognitive decline in the White House, “but any concern is tempered by the fact that the country was in far better shape under Biden than it is now.”
■ Columnist Eric Zorn: “Trump is a gibbering fool.”
■ The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart ripped into CNN last night for relentlessly plugging Jake Tapper’s book about Biden’s decline: “The news is selling you a book about news they should’ve told you … a year ago for free.”
■ Columnist Brian Tyler Cohen: “CNN’s breathless, intolerable coverage of its own anchor’s book exposes the fatal flaw of today’s corporate media.”
■ Dilbert creator Scott Adams—whose strip was 86’d by many newspapers a couple of years ago after he made racist comments—says he has the same aggressive prostate cancer Biden has.
‘I’ve done enough.’ Elon Musk says he plans to cut back on political spending.
■ Politico explores Musk’s “remarkable” disappearance from Washington’s spotlight.
CBS in ‘distress.’ CNN’s Brian Stelter goes behind the scenes for CBS News chief Wendy McMahon’s resignation yesterday: “Sometimes the arguments could be heard well down the hall.”
■ She’s out as CBS’ corporate parent considers settling a lawsuit filed by Trump …
■ … a possibility HBO’s John Oliver ripped in this week’s show.
■ Scandal-scarred ex-Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune executive producer—and, briefly, Jeopardy! host—Mike Richards is taking over as president of the conservative Daily Wire news org.
Whoops. The Sun-Times says it’s investigating how it managed to publish a “Summer Reading List for 2025” that just happened to include books with real authors but fake titles.
■ Media critic Mark Jacob: “Looks like a new AI scandal. Either that or something even more stupid.”
■ Update, 1:22 p.m.: Axios reports: “Chicago-based freelance writer Marco Buscaglia, whose byline appears on most stories in the 64-page section but, oddly, not the book story, told 404 Media that he wrote the piece using AI but failed to fact-check it.”
■ Also: The whole section was created by King Features, which is owned by the magazine giant Hearst.
The deep-dish dish. Trib columnist Rick Kogan talks to Malnati’s pizza boss Marc Malnati about the ups and downs of building an empire on his father’s troubled legacy …
■ … a tale told in Malnati’s new book, which Kogan calls “self-aware and, frankly, occasionally chilling.”
‘More essential than ever.’ That’s what one—believe it or not, more than one—Chicago Public Square reader has to say about this service.
