Dead wait / ‘MAGA is suing for my emails’ / Landlines’ sunset

Dead wait. Add a Chicago cemetery to the roster of institutions under investigation for improperly storing human remains awaiting their final disposition.

■ Illinois State Comptroller—and Chicago mayoral candidate—Susana Mendoza looks ahead to a law that next year will let her office quickly suspend crematory licenses.

Whoops. The Illinois Answers Project reports that two political campaign firms with close ties to men convicted of public corruption have gotten business from Gov. Pritzker’s reelection campaign and the Chicago Teachers Union.

■ Pritzker gets a shout-out in Euronews’ survey of “the invisible primary” for the 2028 Democratic presidential campaign—which has no official candidates yet.

Businesses behaving badly. Popular Information dives into campaign funding records to identify big companies supporting the congressional reelection campaign of an alleged domestic abuser.

■ Pro-Israel Political Update columnist Steve Sheffey on Michigan’s Senate race: “The general election is not a referendum on Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. It is a choice between El-Sayed and a Trump yes-man, a choice between Democratic and Republican control of the Senate.”

‘MAGA is suing for my emails.’ Columnist and former Illinois U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger—a Republican who voted to impeach Donald Trump—pledges to fight a Trump-aligned judicial group’s demand for all his communication with the FBI.

■ Civil Discourse columnist Joyce Vance marks the one-year anniversary of the military occupation of the District of Columbia …

■ … which Law Dork Chris Geidner calls “ongoing, unending, pointless—and very bad.”

■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich on Todd Blanche’s ascendance to attorney general: “After casting the deciding vote to confirm a guy he absolutely knew to be a ginormous piece of shit, Bill Cassidy wants credit for thinking really hard about it and almost voting no.”

‘Bizarro-world version of civil rights.’ HBO’s John Oliver last night laid into the Trump Justice Department …

■ … with special attention to the department’s “absolute embarrassment” in prosecution of the Chicago area’s “Broadview Six.”

■ Oliver’s also escalating his legal taunting of the Buc-ee’s travel center chain.

Ballroom blitz. Law & Chaos reviews a weekend of “AI slop” posted by the president after a federal appeals court blocked construction of “Trump’s 90,000-square-foot Mar-a-Lago replica” at the White House.

■ The court’s description of him as “a temporary tenant” particularly struck a nerve: “We are not tenants. … We are PRESIDENTS.”

Water at risk. The Washington Post reports (gift link) that suspected Iranian hacks suggest U.S. water systems are ripe for cyberattacks.

■ The Onion: “This is why I drink urine. They can’t hack your bladder.”

■ Amazon is reportedly investing in a power plant that could become the biggest U.S. source of climate pollution.

■ The U.K. and France today were facing new temperature records in another heat wave.

Landlines’ sunset. As AT&T prepares to kill its analog copper wire phone service in Illinois, your Chicago Public Square columnist has been exploring alternatives …

■ … and recalling how the answering machine changed things.

■ In an article that quotes Square reader and chief counsel at the Uniform Law Commission Ben Orzeske, Wired surveys the challenges of bequeathing your digital assets to your survivors after you’re gone. (If you hit a paywall, open that link in an incognito browser window.)

■ The Guardian: Harry Potter fans have forced relocation of an undersea power cable to avoid “desecrating” the fictional burial site of house elf Dobby.

‘Get outraged, and active.’ American Crisis columnist Margaret Sullivan offers ways to fight the Federal Communications Commission’s efforts to remake the media in Trump’s image.

■ Award-winning former radio reporter turned media critic Rob Archer lays out in disturbing detail a nightmare scenario where the major news networks no longer exist and an earthquake hits Los Angeles.

If the government won’t do it … Now that the Trump administration has reversed its long-running universal recommendation of the annual flu shot, the American Academy of Pediatrics is stepping up to endorse it for kids 6 months and up.

■ Here’s the AAP’s formal guidance.

Look up. Way up. The Perseid meteor shower—with up to 100 of ’em per hour—returns Wednesday night into Thursday.

■ A total solar eclipse will darken Europe Wednesday for the first time in a quarter-century.

Square mailbag.

■ Reader Rob Breymeier disputes a reader note published in Friday’s edition: “The motor fuel tax doesn’t change based on the price of gas. It is a rate per gallon, not per dollar. Even more misleading, when gas prices go up, people pump less and the state collects less in motor fuel taxes.”

Correction. Friday’s edition promised—but did not deliver—a gift link to this item: Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch sees a stealth plan to end Republicans’ Senate majority. There you go.

■ Your thoughts are always welcome here.

■ Garry Jaffe and Mike Braden made this edition better.

What’s Square worth to you? Choose what you pay.

‘You could smell the rot’ / Blanche stanch? / Quiz! / Square mailbag

‘You could smell the rot.’ The Cook County medical examiner’s office reports dozens of human remains “improperly stored” at a Chicago funeral home.

■ Neighbors tell the Sun-Times the foul odors date back to the winter.

ICE vs. sheriff. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is threatening criminal charges against Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart if he doesn’t turn over inmates in its sights.

■ It’s also pressing the Twin Cities Minneapolis’ sheriff.

■ Despite a Supreme Court smackdown, President Trump’s still trying to limit birthright citizenship.

■ The ACLU says it’s ready to fight him again.

■ Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman: “This is an administration of lying liars. … The new information is how much this administration lies to itself.”

Blanche stanch? Trump’s nomination of his sycophant Todd Blanche (April link) to become attorney general was looking iffy after Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski said she’d vote no.

■ In states like South Dakota, Nebraska and Idaho, “where the Democratic brand is trash,” Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (gift link, corrected) sees a stealth plan to end Republicans’ Senate majority.

■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke channels a Republican legislator: “I am rendered powerless before the awesome strength of a lame-duck president with a 32% approval rating. My party might control both houses of Congress, and our job description might technically include reining in the executive branch, but still, it’s just not a thing we can do. His gaze alone makes our brains seize up.”

■ The Onion: “New DNC Fundraising Email Urges Voters To Find Something Better To Do With Their Money.”

Registered to vote? Law prof Joyce Vance says, “If you aren’t … the time to get that fixed is now!”

■ Columnist and MS NOW contributor Brian Tyler Cohen: Almost 60 of Trump’s confirmed judicial nominees have refused to say Joe Biden won the 2020 election—“and they’re about to have real power over the 2026 midterms.”

‘A crude political stunt.’ That’s how a lawyer for former federal COVID fighter Anthony Fauci describes a Senate committee’s vote to hold him in contempt.

■ Columnist and AI-assisted cartoon concocter Jan Kodner sees Republicans “salivating at the prospect of a criminal prosecution of this 85-year-old lifelong public servant … for the crime of reasonably helping America get through a worldwide killer pandemic through science rather than bleach drinking.”

McConnell on the move. Headlines say missing-in-action Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell “says” he’s left a rehab center to return home …

■ … but columnist Jeff Tiedrich reminds you that it was just a statement from his office: “Who’s more brain-dead, Mitch McConnell or the press covering him?”

‘Unlawful on its face.’ That’s the assessment of the one dissenting Democratic Federal Communications Commissioner on yesterday’s FCC vote to eliminate a nationwide cap on TV station ownership …

■ … a victory for WGN-TV and Radio owner Nexstar.

■ Award-winning former radio reporter turned media critic Rob Archer: “Radio licenses used to be worth millions. Cumulus [owner of four Chicago stations] just gave one back.”

■ The Cumulus Podcast Network’s on the ropes, too.

‘What are the kids up to?’ That’s the unifying theme for this week’s challenge from The Conversation’s quizmaster, past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel.

■ Your Chicago Public Square columnist’s disappointing score: 5/9 correct.

Chicago, busy. Axios rounds up all the fun things likely to cause traffic jams through the weekend.

■ … including the Bud Billiken Parade’s 97th year.

■ Now surrounding a 1902 monument to George Washington on the South Side: A tribute to “Other Washingtons.”

Square mailbag.

■ Dean Martin, in response to the lead item in yesterday’s Square: “No one should be profiting from this war, but there is some hypocrisy going on here. [Gov. Pritzker] didn’t return the money the state made off the sales tax from high gas prices. He used it to balance his budget.”

■ Alan Hoffstadter: “I love the fact that you print every contributor’s name! … It gives me great comfort to see how many of them there are! Thank you so much for what must be a tedious task.” Not tedious! An honor and a privilege to thank all the readers who’ve made clear with their financial support that they find value in this service—including, as we wrap up this roll call, Pamela Jameson, David Henkhaus (again!), Mark Hanover, H. Evan Williams (again!), Randy Young (again!), Christopher Giorno, Ted Naron, Heather Kenny, Brian Cassidy, Jan Kodner, Julie Martin, Peter Fuller, Mary Cronin, Mark Edwards, Michael Conway, Marc Morency, Justin Walker, Timothy Baffoe, Jim Parks, Clifford Johnson, Athene C, Michael Weiland, Amy Carlton, Susan Yessne, Shara Miller, Sheila Wolfe, Nancy Hess, Jim Owens, Deborah Montgomery, Avis Rudner, Alexander Domanskis, Eric Reinert, Ryan Bird, Orin Day, Leo Bonnie Dohogne, Bill Herbert, Gail Frost, Ken Hooker, John Gilardi, Daniel Parker, Sherry Kent, Eileen O’Loughlin and Mike Cramer.

■ Join them anytime, for any amount, and see your name in lights here. (Or not, if you prefer anonymity.)

■ Julie Charlip made this edition better.