What did they do? / ‘Prime Day is a scam’ / ‘A botched laughingstock’

What did they do? Local officials in one of the Texas counties hardest hit by catastrophic flooding had yet to detail what actions they took to keep people safe ahead of the Fourth of July storms.

■ Federal emergency workers tell The Handbasket’s Marisa Kabas that response to the floods was delayed and deficient under Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s leadership.

■ Timelapse video shows the water’s horrific rise.

■ Evan Hurst at Wonkette: “Nothing To Do But Pray, Say Exact Republicans Who Could Have … Done Something.”

■ Jeff Tiedrich, as ever, goes further: “Let’s not politicize this tragedy, whine the shitwads who politicize everything.”

■ PolitiFact: Beware viral—but fake—videos of Texas devastation.

■ The AP suggests safety questions for parents to ask before sending their kids off to camp.

‘Endangering the lives of patients.’ The Illinois-based American Academy of Pediatrics and five other big medical groups are suing Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over his decision to yank COVID-19 shots from a federal list of vaccines recommended for healthy kids and pregnant women.

■ The Tribune reports that adult education programs in Chicago—and across the nation—are in limbo as the Trump administration withholds funding.

■ Columnist Eric Zorn asks: “Where does the parental veto about what’s taught in public schools stop?”

Social insecurity. The Social Security Administration’s been blasting beneficiaries with false information about President Trump’s tax-and-spending overhaul.

■ Make no mistake: Social Security’s now in the propaganda biz.

■ Gov. Pritzker says 360,000 Illinoisans will lose food assistance under Trump’s budget overhaul.

‘I personally never use Amazon due to the way they treat their employees and Bezos’ behavior.’ Chicago Public Square reader Rosemary Caruk was disappointed to see yesterday’s Square link to a New York Times list of Prime Day deals.

■ Popular Information explains in detail why “Prime Day is a scam.”

■ To check whether a Prime price is truly a bargain, consider installing the Camel Camel Camel price tracker in your browser. (Image: Mostly Microsoft’s Copilot AI.)

Questionable cops on the rise. Invisible Institute and the Reader report that Chicago’s backing away from a 2017 pledge to release a list of secret “merit” promotions for police officers.

■ Police are warning South Side residents to beware a group of up to 10 people responsible for at least three robberies since mid-June.

‘A botched laughingstock.’ Sources tell investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein that what was intended as a federal show of force by immigration and customs agents yesterday in Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park proved instead an embarrassment.

■ The AP reports the park was empty—especially after children at a summer day camp were rushed indoors to minimize their trauma.

■ An American Prospect photo essay from L.A. shares “scenes of a city under siege.”

‘Wait till they learn that Superman was created by two Jewish immigrants.’ Journalist Bobby Silverman is among many on social media piling on conservative talking heads up in arms about Superman director James Gunn’s assertion—true!—that Superman is an immigrant.

■ The character’s been promoting diversity since the 1950s.

■ Early buzz on the movie, which opens July 11, is good.

‘Shameful.’ That’s how Jon Stewart, host of Paramount-owned Comedy Central’s Daily Show, describes his bosses’ settlement with Trump.

■ Stewart’s first guest back after a vacation, 60 Minutes alumnus Steve Kroft, says Trump’s suit was “a shakedown.”

■ American Crisis columnist Margaret Sullivan blasts Paramount-owned CBS and The New York Times for separate failures to fulfill their public mission.

■ Press Watch proprietor Dan Froomkin: One of the Times’ missions “is to take cheap shots at the left.”

■ Surveying CNN anchor Jake Tapper’s journalistic past, Stop the Presses columnist Mark Jacob concludes: “Don’t be surprised if he ends up on Fox.”

■ NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Llamas will anchor his Thursday show from Chicago.

■ Eric Zorn shares a tip for print subscribers to the Tribune: Opt out of charges for those so-called “premium” supplements with a simple email.

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‘i never read these so why clutter my inbox.’ Square yesterday lost a reader who offered that explanation.

■ You can help replace that reader by recommending Square to a friend.

■ A drop in the ol’ Square tip jar also eases rejection’s sting.

Worst fears fulfilled / Dear NASCAR … / Prime crime

Catch up quick. The news didn’t stop while you were taking a holiday break. See what you missed by scrolling back through the Chicago Public Square account on Bluesky.

Worst fears fulfilled. The death toll in Texas’ catastrophic flooding has grown to include more than two dozen kids …

■ … at a Christian camp attended 30 years ago by CNN’s Pamela Brown.

■ Updating coverage: A massive search for survivors and other victims continued—with more rain in the forecast.

■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: Coming after so many deep cuts to government spending, the Texas disaster “has opened up questions about the public cost of those cuts.”

■ Wonkette’s Rebecca Schoenkopf is more direct: “Trump and Elon Musk’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre … just killed 27 little girls.”

■ Jeff Tiedrich at Everyone Is Entitled to My Own Opinion: “The message that Donny farted out … was ‘none of this is my fault.’”

■ CNN’s Brian Stelter says the tragedy spotlights the dangers of misinformation—and “warning fatigue,” even when warnings are based in fact.

■ The National Weather Service warns beach-bound Chicagoans about dangerously high Lake Michigan waves: “Stay out of the water.”

Party on. Making explicit his split with the president over that tax-and-spending law, Musk says he’s forming a new party.

■ Trump calls the notion “ridiculous.”

■ PolitiFact: That law’s provisions could indeed hit Social Security benefits—especially for those born after 1967.

■ The American Prospect surveys 10 “nutty provisions” hidden in the law …

■ … including a “mass shooter subsidy.”

■ In Trump’s opposition to renewable energy—including wind power—economist Paul Krugman perceives “irrational, psychological—you might even say psychosexual—issues.”

■ Law professor Joyce Vance warns that “the week ahead is a week in Trump’s America. … The Supreme Court has freed Trump from the restriction of nationwide injunctions against even the most unconstitutional of acts.”

■ The Conversation explains why congressional Republicans just can’t quit Trump.

■ The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol has crafted a first-person confession that Trump might’ve written himself: “Honestly, I can’t believe it’s been so easy …”

Chicago’s violent weekend. Axios reviews at least three mass shootings from Wednesday to Saturday.

■ A 45-year-old mother accused of stabbing her three kids Friday—one fatally—before setting their home on fire allegedly said she believed them possessed by the devil.

■ A man was beaten to death on a downtown CTA platform Saturday night.

■ Technically, though: Chicago police report the least violent July 4 in at least six years.

■ A Chicago City Council member and her brother—both past park supervisors—say a lifeguard’s shooting and killing of a teenager at a city pool last week was the inevitable outcome after years of too few lifeguards, too little training and not enough security.

Dear NASCAR … Sun-Times sports columnist Steve Greenberg, in an open letter on behalf of Chicago to the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing: “Before you motored into our lives, we never knew we needed auto racing on our beloved lakefront. That’s because we didn’t need it.”

■ Oh, but didn’t Mayor Johnson look dandy in his NASCAR duds?

■ Johnson’s dodged questions about the race’s future in Chicago. (Photo: The mayor’s account on Twitter X.)

‘Classic racial profiling.’ That’s how The American Prospect’s Harold Meyerson (no relation) sees Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s raids across the nation.

■ Block Club Chicago: “Can local officials stop ICE agents from hiding behind masks? They’re trying.”

■ Vandals yesterday painted over a Pilsen mural showing Superman punching an ICE agent.

■ The Onion: “Insecure Woman Doesn’t Like Eating In Front Of Surveillance State.”

■ Onion chief executive Ben Collins in an interview with Status’ Oliver Darcy: “Every day, our writers take 150 headlines into a physical writers room in Chicago and whittle them down to maybe one or two. These people throw away the funniest sentence I will ever write in my life six times by noon every weekday.”

‘Making Measles Great Again.’ Popular Information: “Measles is back. The spread … is directly related to vaccine hesitancy” fueled by deadly misinformation from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

■ The Washington Post reports that U.S. measles cases have hit a 33-year high.

■ A new ranking puts Illinois nursing homes among the nation’s worst.

■ Columnist Neil Steinberg: “In one of those examples of lucky timing that would look trite in fiction but life doesn’t blush to serve up, 48 hours after we buried my mother, my wife and I flew to New York City to meet my new granddaughter.”

Prime crime. On the eve of Amazon’s big annual Prime Day sale, the company’s warning customers to beware fake emails about Amazon Prime membership subscriptions.

■ The New York Times offers a list of what it considers the best Prime deals so far.

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