NFL’s ‘nightmare’ / Pardon her? / Illinois’ best hospitals

NFL’s ‘nightmare.’ News that the man who committed New York City’s deadliest mass shooting in 25 years was targeting the National Football League’s offices puts the league in what CNN’s Brian Stelter calls “a dreadful position”: “Headquartered at a crime scene, supporting an employee who was seriously wounded in the attack, and facing a renewed PR nightmare about head trauma problems.”
 Updating coverage from the AP: Police say the gunman—who took his own life—had a “documented mental health history.”
 He reportedly took the wrong elevator.

‘I’m tired of forcing our children to duck and cover.’ Gov. Pritzker’s signed legislation requiring gun owners to do more to keep their weapons out of kids’ hands.
 A judge has ordered continued confinement for a man accused of shooting and killing his daughter-in-law at a Schaumburg wedding—weeks after she’d announced plans to divorce his son.
 Columnist Ron Fournier asks in despair: “Will we ever come to grips with the gun and mental health crises?

‘Inhumane.’ That’s how a woman—a leader of Organized Communities Against Deportations arrested during her immigration check-in last month—describes conditions at Broadview’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility.
 Wonkette: “Would you believe a bunch of immigration agents lied about protestors assaulting them?”
 Trump’s Justice Department has filed a complaint against a judge who blocked deportations.

‘Make sure they get the food.’ President Trump’s applied a little pressure to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the famine conditions Israel has imposed on Gaza.
 Democrats—led by four Jewish senators—say that’s not enough.
 Gaza’s health ministry: The 21-month war has cost more than 60,000 Palestinians their lives.
 Seth Meyers broke format on Late Night to get serious: “We are appalled by the unspeakable horrors currently unfolding in Gaza.”

Pardon her? Popular Information’s Judd Legum explores Trump’s “personal interest in leading [convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine] Maxwell to believe that a pardon is a possibility, regardless of whether he ever intends to grant her one.”
 Andrew Egger at The Bulwark: “If Trump and his allies can convince their base that she … is the key to unlocking the [now-dead sex offender Jeffrey] Epstein story, they can recast their own role … as the people seeking out the critical information by getting Epstein’s top co-conspirator to at last spill the beans.”
 Maxwell’s also asking the Supreme Court to overturn her conviction. (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
 Late night hosts had a field day with Trump’s phrasing when asked if he’d ever visited Epstein’s island: “I never had the privilege.”

Caught cheating. PolitiFact Snopes confirms as True video showing Trump cheating at golf in Scotland over the weekend …
 USA Today’s Rex Huppke: “It was nice of Donald Trump to travel to Scotland and show our European allies firsthand that the United States is led by a self-absorbed and deeply weird man in obvious mental decline.”
 Out at The Washington Post after 14 years: Fact-checker Glenn Kessler.
 Ex-Tribune columnist Eric Zorn on trolls celebrating layoffs at the Trib: “You’re a shitty person if you revel in the misfortune of hardworking, decent people. And you’re an idiot if you think weakened daily newspapers will improve our city.”

‘Carr used the FCC as a tool.’ The Freedom of the Press Foundation is asking the District of Columbia Bar’s disciplinary council to consider disbarring Federal Communications Commission chief Brendan Carr for his pressure on media organizations—notably, a “shakedown” of CBS parent Paramount Global—to benefit Trump.
 Pulitzer winner Gene Weingarten looks back to a time in 1967 when CBS “extinguished a performance by folk singer Pete Seeger on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour for shabby and spineless reasons.”

Illinois’ best hospitals. U.S. News & World Report’s latest ratings put Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Rush University Medical Center in a tie …
 … although that report was compiled before the air conditioning in the main Rush tower downtown went south.
 Check your hospital’s ranking here.
 Abortion, Every Day: “We really needed a win, and we got one!

Not so bad. Concluding that Trump’s protectionist policies have so far proven less damaging than feared, the International Monetary Fund is upgrading the U.S. economic outlook …
 Economist Paul Krugman: “I coulda made a better deal” than Trump got from Europe.

R.I.P., Ryno. Iconic Chicago Cub Ryne Sandberg is dead of cancer at 65.
 Just last week, he issued what apparently was his final message to fans.
 The AP calls the trade that brought him here “one of the most lopsided deals in baseball history.”

‘Do you love music enough to deal with this crap?’ As Lollapalooza returns to Chicago Thursday, the Reader’s Leor Galil is not enthusiastic.
 Erica Thompson at the Sun-Times: R&B and soul have yet to get their due at Lolla.
 Here’s the Chicago Music Guide overview of what’s new at this year’s fest.
 ProPublica: “A Las Vegas festival promised ways to cheat death. Two attendees left fighting for their lives.”

Correction corrected. The emailed republication of yesterday’s Chicago Public Square—correcting, among other things, the spelling of the word graffiti—again misspelled the word graffiti.
 And again, here’s a paywall-free link to that Will Bunch column: “Hours of TV coverage fail to grasp what really matters about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal: The anxieties of the U.S. middle class.” (Image: Bart Simpson Chalkboard Generator.)
 Making mistakes is bad; having readers who care enough to report them is great.
 Mike Braden made this edition better.

‘Dangerous’ / Thanks, Trump / COVID’s ‘wimpy wave’ / ‘I was digitally snuffed’

‘Dangerous.’ That’s the National Weather Service word of the day, as the Chicago area faces another round of heat and humidity …
 … and storms.
 A heat advisory’s on until 8 p.m.
 Ryan Cooper at The American Prospect explains a cheaper and simpler way for homeowners to go solar: “You don’t have to pay for contractors or a grid hookup.”

‘What the Epstein scandal is—and isn’t—about.’ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (gift link, courtesy of Chicago Public Square supporters): “Hours of TV coverage fail to grasp … the anxieties of the U.S. middle class.” (Link fixed!)
 Columnist and AP alumnus Ron Fornier translates reporting on how President Trump’s faring the Epstein scandal: “Two people familiar with his thinking are telling The Post what we all can see with our eyes. Dude’s spiraling.”
 Law prof Joyce Vance surveys the week ahead: “Trump’s ongoing effort to confuse his base about what’s in the Epstein files involves asking a federal judge to release just a limited bit of them.”
 USA Today’s Chicago-based columnist Rex Huppke: “You have a choice, MAGA: A harsh reality or the comfort of lies. I have no confidence you’ll choose reality. But I at least hope the decision is tougher than usual.”
 Bill Kristol at The Bulwark says Trump’s flunking Scandal 101: “If you’re going to stonewall, stonewall.”
 Pod Save America cohost Dan Pfeiffer—a White House intern when then-President Clinton perjured himself about an extramarital affair—offers questions reporters should be asking about the Epstein scandal.

Thanks, Trump. The Tribune’s Dan Petrella explains the one change under the president’s “big beautiful bill” that can actually help Illinoisans: An increase in the limit on how much of your state and local tax bill you can deduct when paying your federal taxes.
 Go figure: The Revolving Door Project and The American Prospect report that Trump frenemy Elon Musk has a “secret army of progressive lobbyists” … people taking money from Musk while also being paid to fix the problems his “Department of Government Efficiency” created.

‘Fear-based cleansing.’ The Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg: “Trump 2.0 came out of the blocks swinging at immigrants—who now can be arrested on sight by masked police, without due process, and shipped to foreign countries while we race to build our own domestic gulags.”
 A suspect in the spray-painting of swastikas and “ICE rules” graffiti has surrendered to Chicago cops.

‘Chicago … actually scrapped their databases. … It has not resulted in an increase in reported crime.’ The city got a nod from John Oliver during last night’s dive into just how lousy police gang membership databases really are.
 See the full segment here.

COVID’s ‘wimpy wave.’ Your Local Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina says the summer surge is on—especially in Hawaii and Florida.
 One of Chicago’s few for-profit “safety net” hospitals, Weiss Memorial, has been booted from the Medicare program after state investigators found it out of compliance with federal standards.
 Dr. Jeremy Faust at Inside Medicine: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is reportedly ready to fire all voting members of the agency in charge of deciding what preventive measures private health insurers have to cover.

Who’s next? Media watcher Tom Jones: Emboldened by that $16 million from Paramount, Trump’s now targeting ABC and NBC.
 Critic Bill Carter: Josh Johnson’s breakout week as host of Paramount-owned Comedy Central’s Daily Show offers a demographic glimmer of hope for late-night comedy.
 Popular Information concludes that Axios has rebranded conservative ideology as “objectivity.”

‘I was digitally snuffed.’ Longtime Chicago journalist Andy Shaw shares how he came to be banned from Facebook—for no fault of his own—and how he found his way back.
 A Florida school board member has apologized for a Facebook post celebrating wrestler Hulk Hogan’s death.

‘A temple to the people’s art.’ That’s how Star Wars creator George Lucas, in his first appearance at San Diego Comic-Con, describes his new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, opening next year in Los Angeles.
 It coulda been here—but for what a 2022 Tribune editorial (another gift link) labeled “one of Chicago’s biggest mistakes.”
 Speaking of mistakes: As the present longest-serving member of the City Council gets ready to retire—in the hope his son will replace him—City Cast serves up a quiz on other council nepo babies. (Your Square columnist scored 3/5 correct.)

Rest in parody. Tom Lehrer, the prodigy Harvard math professor and song satirist who took aim at—well, almost anything—has died at 97 …
 … but not before putting all his work in the public domain: “So help yourselves, and don’t send me any money.”

A Square public service announcement
Bakery specialties and unique dining experiences. The Misericordia Hearts & Flour Bakery and Café and Greenhouse Inn Restaurant provide jobs for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities—and all proceeds benefit the 600+ children and adults who call Misericordia home.

Thanks. Mike Braden and Judy Graf made this edition better.

Subscribe to Square.