Violent weekend / ‘Trump is an asshole’ / ‘Tabloid garbage’

Violent weekend. CWBChicago: Escalating a pattern of mayhem at this time of year, Father’s Day weekend shootings in the city doubled the total for the same weekend last year.

■ A shootout among three vehicles traveling along the Dan Ryan Expressway yesterday afternoon shattered the window of a CTA Red Line train, injuring a passenger.

■ Block Club: Drivers keep running over warning signs at a North Side intersection, but the city plans no big changes.

‘By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs.’ A three-time Olympian canoeist completing a 52-mile bike ride was arrested after touching the accursed Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool …

■ … whose algal bloom and other problems President Trump has—without evidence—blamed on vandalism.

■ Opinionator Jeff Tiedrich: “Donny’s decided to solve this self-inflicted disaster in the most Donny way possible: By declaring that if you touch his beloved Pool, you’re going to jail for a millionty skillion years.”

■ Talking Points Memo’s Sarah Posner: “The entire debacle has all the hallmarks of a flailing dictator story.”

■ Columnist Chris Geidner: “Being at the Reflecting Pool, I reflected. Four years ago today, I launched Law Dork.”

■ Former U.S. prosecutor Joyce Vance updates the Trump Kennedy Center legal fight: “Trump’s name is gone, but the case isn’t quite over.”

‘Trump is an asshole.’ That’s the translation of a right-wing Italian newspaper’s page-one banner headline over an account of the president’s conflict with Italy’s right-wing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

■ She calls Trump’s assertion that she “begged” for a photo with him “completely fabricated.”

‘These billionaires … wanted me to pay them, thousands of dollars … to have the privilege of speaking to them.’ Author and tech watchdog Cory Doctorow digs into his email trash folder to discover “how the Epstein Class recruits” …

■ … in this case through the secretive Dialog society …

■ … that was founded by, in A.V. Club’s words, “Peter ‘Literally named his data surveillance company after the evil all-seeing bauble from Lord Of The Rings’ Thiel” …

■ … and the revelation of which has put Hollywood stars on the defensive.

■ Popular Information lifts the curtain on “a network of purportedly progressive super PACs … funded by a Republican dark money group … to bolster Democratic candidates that Republicans believe will be weaker in the general election, including fringe candidates with repugnant views.”

■ British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s quitting, forced out by his own party after—among other things—appointing a friend of Jeffrey Epstein as U.K. ambassador to the U.S.

‘Tabloid garbage.’ Columnist and former Chicago TV news executive Jennifer Schulze says Bari Weiss’ latest hire at CBS “continues her jaw-dropping attack” on the network’s credibility.

■ A Quad Cities TV anchor’s on-air farewell message—complaining that local news has failed “to take people out of their bubbles and comfort zones”—has gone viral.

■ Dozens of Chicago-area journalists last night bade farewell to journalist Irv Leavitt.

‘They want to be worshiped at the office altar.’ A University of Pennsylvania organizational psychologist who’s surveyed thousands of executives, middle managers and frontline supervisors explains in The New York Times (gift link) “The Secret Reason Bosses Want Everyone Back in the Office, Every Day of the Week.”

■ Columnist and M.D. James Whalen uses the drug Prevagen to explore the dark side of direct-to-consumer drug ads.

Reasons to be cheerful. Axios: Life expectancy in Chicago’s hit a new high.

■ Summer’s officially here—with summerlike temperatures on the way … by next weekend.

Thanks. Mike Braden made this edition better.

Michelle Obama vs. Trump / Tollway torment / Quiz / Dingae of the week

Michelle Obama vs. Trump. Wonkette’s Evan Hurst says that, without mentioning Donald Trump’s name, the former first lady’s speech at yesterday’s dedication of Chicago’s Obama Presidential Center “f*cked Trump up BAD”—and Hurst has the receipts.

■ See her remarks here and the full three-hour-plus show here.

■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich thanks Barack Obama for reminding the nation of a time when the president “wasn’t a malignant toad.”

■ Observing a crowd studded with celebrities, the Tribune’s Chris Borrelli (gift link) noted the absence of “Kid Rock, Milli Vanilli, anyone slated for that now-scrapped July 4 concert in Washington”—but that left “empty seats for Stephen Colbert, Dave Chappelle, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Tyler Perry, Oprah Winfrey, George Lucas and David Letterman.”

■ MS NOW yesterday was all about the Obama Center—with a primetime special set for tonight.

■ Better Government Association chief David Greising has questions about the center’s impact on the Woodlawn neighborhood: “Will new levels of spending and prosperity drive longtime residents out of their homes?”

■ The Onion offers a mocking guide to “The Obama Presidential Center By The Numbers”—including the number of months until Trump adds his name.

‘This pace is not normal.’ The Trib says that, just halfway through 2026, Illinois is already close to shattering its 2024 record of 142 tornadoes in a year.

■ We’re the new “tornado alley”: Illinois has led the nation for tornadoes in three of the last four years.

Tollway torment. Brace for increases of about 45 cents per toll when traveling the Illinois Tollway system.

■ A Trib editorial ruefully recalls the state’s promise that the tollways would become freeways by … um … 1973.

Simpler hospital bills? Hah. A Sun-Times investigation finds a federal law designed to untangle “a medical pricing system that some say is … the result of secret negotiations between hospitals and insurance companies that occur before patients even walk in the door” has flopped.

■ Some online tools can make shopping for planned diagnostic tests a bit easier.

‘Trump was sodomized by Iran.’ Pulitzer winner Gene Weingarten: “This war, which has ended in groveling capitulation … to a small, religiously strangled country, wasn’t the biggest foreign policy blunder in world history, or even in American history. It may qualify as the stupidest and most humiliating, though.”

■ Ex-Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler: A decade of Trump’s attacks on Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran “reads like an indictment of the agreement he has now signed.”

■ Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman: “Trump’s disastrous Iran war has delivered a huge boost for renewable energy around the world—except in the U.S.”

■ Jordan Klepper on The Daily Show: “Basically, we go back to where we were before the war, except Iran gets $400 billion. And to add insult to injury, the ayatollah is using all that cash to build himself a sweet-ass ballroom.”

■ The AP says fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon has canceled talks between the U.S. and Iran, raising new questions about whether the war’s over yet.

■ Meanwhile, columnist and Air Force veteran Christopher Armitage notes, “As we talk about the Kennedy Center and Iran, the Epstein files remain unprosecuted.”

■ Speaking of prosecution, the collapse of the “Broadview Six” case has another parallel—in the dropping of charges against suspects accused of trying to rob undercover federal officers in the suburb of Country Club Hills.

■ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (gift link): “The ‘Minneapolis 15’ ICE-protester indictments are meant to shut you up. … They want to make you very afraid—five months before an election that they are practically screaming they plan to do everything in their dictatorial powers to steal.”

‘What did Trump shout at Netanyahu?’ That’s one of the puzzles awaiting you this week, courtesy of The Conversation’s quizmaster, past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel.

■ Also: Screwworms.

Dingae of the week. Lyz Lenz’s pick: The photosynthetic organisms covering Trump’s renovated D.C. reflecting pool …

■ … now suffering what The Washington Post (gift link) reports is its biggest algal bloom in at least five years.

Happy Juneteenth. Today’s public opening of the Obama Presidential Center isn’t a coincidence.

■ Here’s more of what’s happening to mark the occasion around town.

■ Dave Barry: “Sunday is Father’s Day, a time when we pause to appreciate Dad, and the special qualities that make him Dad, such as a willingness to admit that he farts.”

Corrections. Yesterday’s Square misstated columnist Eric Zorn’s position on the practice of pricing based on what companies know about you from the internet: He favors a ban.

■ Also: Barack Obama’s middle name is spelled Hussein.

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