Climate derange. Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency chief is proposing to rescind a scientific declaration that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases fuel global warming and endanger humanity.
■ Economist Paul Krugman on what looked like European Union concessions to Trump—including a “sort-of” pledge to invest in U.S. oil and gas: “Europe played Trump for a fool. Specifically, a fossil fool.”
■ The American Prospect: A rule requiring employers to protect workers from extreme heat is in limbo under Trump.
■ Next for Chicago’s forecast: Heavy downpours and flash flood risks …
■ … as Southwest Siders push for emergency recovery help after flooding Friday and again Monday.
■ A term this summer’s hot weather should add to your vocabulary: “Wet-bulb” temperatures.
Shaken, but not too stirred. Updating coverage: An earthquake in Russia sent tsunami waves into Japan, Hawaii and the U.S. West Coast.
■ It was the sixth biggest quake on record.
Your election privacy on the line. The Trump administration’s asking Illinois to surrender its vast voter registration records—including sensitive data about individual voters.
■ Here’s the Justice Department’s letter.
‘Claiming a 17-year-old girl who fell into the hands of sex traffickers was stolen from you is the kind of thinking that makes sex trafficking possible.’ That’s USA Today’s Chicago-based columnist, Rex Huppke, on Trump’s complaint—“without a hint of empathy or compassion”—that now-dead sex offender Jeffrey Epstein “stole” a teenage spa worker from Mar-a-Lago.
■ Closer to the Edge: Trump’s words “should have shattered headlines and ignited congressional investigations.”
■ Popular Information: The president’s callous account raises at least four thorny new questions for him.
■ Seth Meyers on Late Night: “Vice President JD Vance said that President Trump has been ‘incredibly transparent about that stuff.’ And I agree. We can absolutely see right through him.”
■ Columnist Neil Steinberg: “If you are discovering the president is a liar and a perv, well, welcome to the party. But pardon me if I don’t share your excitement, because you’re discovering the painfully obvious.”
■ Men Yell at Me columnist Lyz Lenz says Epstein’s imprisoned accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, “is swinging on the monkey bars of power, privilege and patriarchy.”
■ The Onion: “Trump Still Polling Well With Working-Class American Pedophiles.”
‘An employee may engage another in polite discussion of why his faith is correct.’ The Trump administration has cleared federal workers to proselytize their colleagues.
■ Stephen Colbert: “Of course, converting people to your religion is always very chill. That’s why all those people died in the Spanish Gentle Suggestion.”
■ Desi Lydic on The Daily Show: “If you’re going to approach me at work and ask, ‘Have you heard the good news?’ it better mean there are donuts in the break room. Otherwise, keep it moving, Zachariah.”
■ An Army veteran who worked for the American and Israeli-backed nonprofit that has been given almost full control over food distribution to starving civilians, and that has reportedly been shooting and killing some of those very civilians: “I witnessed war crimes.”
■ The Feed on social media platforms’ repressive policies: “If you post the word Gaza, you’re shadowbanned, demonetized or dropped from brand deals.”
‘The DOGE Boys and the barely-crypto Nazi punk overlords have, at baseline, slowed this down to the point where they’re making money on the deal by not sending it to a qualified American (me).’ Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Jack Ohman is having trouble collecting on his Social Security.
■ The pool of future Social Security contributors is shrinking: The U.S. fertility rate hit an all-time low last year.
■ The Wall Street Journal (gift link): The administration’s backing down from an effort to pause health research funding.
■ The American Prospect: “Privatizing veterans’ health care will be a disaster.”
Wildcuts. Squeezed by Trump administration spending freezes, Northwestern University’s eliminating 425 positions.
■ Bloomberg introduces you to a young man who “could have been an artist, or a builder, or someone dedicated to seeing a great historical mystery through. Instead he wound up at the Department of Government Efficiency, slashing, dismantling, undoing.”
Got a car insurance story? The Sun-Times reports Illinois’ secretary of state—pushing for reform—wants your tales of how non-driving factors like age, credit score and ZIP code have affected insurance rates.
■ Block Club: Milwaukee Avenue through Wicker Park will go car-free once a month.
■ Chicago’s Northwest Side has a newly improved bike-and-pedestrian route.
The Trump-CBS deal ‘is even worse than you thought.’ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (gift link, courtesy of Chicago Public Square supporters) envisions how the network’s news division will function—or not—in a year.
■ ABC News alumnus Terry Moran: Trump’s cronies have moved in at CBS.
■ Now in the Trump-compliant Federal Communications Commission’s sights: Comcast/NBCUniversal.
It’s corrections week. Embarrassingly enough, an item in yesterday’s Square about fact-checking … um … got a fact wrong. Snopes, not PolitiFact, confirmed as True that video showing Trump cheating at golf in Scotland.
Square No. 2,000’s coming. Sometime in the next few weeks—we haven’t done the final projection—this service will deliver its bimillennial edition.
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■ Mike Braden made this edition better.
