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.”
■ The Onion: “Trump Gives Russia 10-Day Deadline To End Ukraine.”
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.
■ A federal judge has issued an order protecting the nation’s Planned Parenthood clinics from Trump’s “defunding.”
■ 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 …
■ … but Carfax finds big year-over-year increases in the price of used cars.
■ 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.
