‘Multiple tornadoes’ / Quizzes / ‘Disappointment Day’

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‘Multiple tornadoes.’ The National Weather Service was working today to confirm just how many twisters ravaged the Chicago region yesterday.
■ NBC Chicago surveys the “war zone”-like devastation, power outages and more—including video of the moment a man was pulled from the rubble of a Streator home.
■ Merrillville got hit bad.
■ Also: A derecho …
■ … but the Mumford & Sons concert at Wrigley Field went on—eventually.
■ NPR’s public editor takes a critical look at the network’s elimination of its climate desk team.

Broadview Six fallout. Among the consequences of the federal government’s botched prosecution of Chicago-area immigration enforcement protesters, the discredited U.S. attorney’s office is dropping charges against two defendants in a Loretto Hospital scam.
■ Nurses at Chicago’s St. Mary Hospital in Ukrainian Village yesterday staged a one-day strike.
■ Its last functioning elevator now dead, the whole Oak Park campus of West Suburban Medical Center has been fully closed.
■ Under the banner “End Assisted Suicide,” disability rights and patient advocacy groups are suing to block an Illinois law that, effective in September, would let terminally ill adults obtain medication to end their lives.

‘It’s not really news anymore. In fact, it’s bullshit.’ Press Watch columnist Dan Froomkin calls on news organizations to stop putting whatever Donald Trump says in headlines.
■ Witness: Yesterday’s cancellation of threatened new strikes on Iran.
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich: “Donny is clearly unfit for office—so why do we even have a 25th Amendment if we’re never going to use it?”
■ Author and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich shares an alarm from two congressional alumni: “Trump’s rolling coup is already underway.”

‘If God wanted the White House to be struck by lightning, that would have happened 18 months ago, so I think they’re pretty safe.’ Jimmy Kimmel’s unimpressed by UFC CEO Dana White’s pledge that Sunday’s combative birthday celebration for the president will go on “even if lightning strikes.”
■ Can’t look away? Here’s how to watch …
■ Or watch a concert assembled by the resistance—including Jane Fonda and Patti Smith.

Meanwhile, in the Upside Down … An Illinois Republican fundraiser today in Elk Grove Village was prepping to welcome keynote speaker Nick Shirley, the YouTuber credited with sparking the federal crackdown on the Twin Cities.
■ In what Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! host Peter Sagal calls “a subtly sharp report,” The Wall Street Journal (gift link) reviews the Turning Point USA Women’s Leadership Summit’s “clear message for this moment in American politics: How to be a woman in the Trump 2.0 era.”

‘MAGA toady’s political career is finally finished.’ Columnist and former D.C. cop Michael Fanone—among those beaten in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot—sheds no tears for the political career of Rep. Nancy Mace …
■ … whose defeat in South Carolina’s gubernatorial primary has become the source of internet comedy.

‘June, that wonderful month of weddings, strawberries and the summer solstice … none of which figure in this week’s news quiz.’ That’s your call to action from The Conversation’s quizmaster, past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel.
■ The score to beat—if you want to do better than your Chicago Public Square columnist—is 4/8 correct.
■ Axios’ Justin Kaufmann quizzes your memories of 1996, “one of Chicago’s biggest years.” The score here: 8/10.

‘Elon Musk, human Ponzi scheme.’ As SpaceX today becomes a publicly traded company, economist Paul Krugman predicts that “Elon Musk will eventually collapse,” but at the expense of “ordinary Americans who have in effect been forced to buy in.”
■ Today’s initial public offering could make Musk the world’s first trillionaire.

‘Disappointment Day.’ Former WGN-TV critic Dean Richards gives Steven Spielberg’s latest aliens-are-here movie, Disclosure Day, a C-—partly for scenes at a small Missouri TV station “that would never ever ever happen in real-life local TV.”
■ Block Club has 30—count ’em, 30—things to do this weekend in Chicago …
■ … but Axios counts 31 …
■ … with traffic jams to match.

‘I love the inflation’ / ‘A summer of resistance’ / Sweet irony

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‘I love the inflation.’ Yep, President Trump said that yesterday …
■ … and then, historian Heather Cox Richardson says, he “slid into a fantasy rewriting of the history of his war on Iran and his decision to launch it.”
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich: “This is some serious Marie-Antoinette-level let-them-eat-inflation bullshit.”
■ Democratic political strategist and sometime Fox News contributor Jessica Tarlov: “Democrats just won the midterms.”
■ As the White House springs leaks, someone close to the administration tells Politico: “Knives are out. … I mean, people are stabbing people. Like, it’s chaos.” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
■ Columnist Shanley Hurt: “The room built for national security was reportedly used to manage the political fallout from the Epstein files, which tells us exactly what this administration considers an emergency.”
■ Trump’s recent physical set a new record: More physicians involved than in any examination of any previous president.

‘A summer of resistance.’ Columnist Dan Froomkin recommends marking your calendars for a series of events leading up to the November election …
■ … beginning with Sunday’s “Rise Up, Sing Out: A Concert for the First Amendment,” to be staged in New York by the No Kings Coalition to compete with Trump’s cage fight spectacle—and streaming free online or in watch parties across the country.

Wanted in cross-burning. Police have released photos of a person of interest in the apparent act of hate committed Tuesday in Grant Park.
■ Cardinal Blase Cupich calls the incident a reminder of “the sickness of spirit … not only in the pages of history but in our present day.”

‘I’m very disturbed by that question.’ Chicago schools chief Macquline King had several such moments yesterday as she faced an inquisition from hostile Republicans on the House Committee on Education and Workforce …
■ … led by Chicago-born Michigan Rep. Tim Walberg, who expressed gratitude that he wasn’t educated in Chicago’s schools.
■ King’s fallback answer: “We comply with all local, state and federal law.”
■ Axios: Chicago lawmakers weren’t there, but they issued a letter condemning the hearing.
■ Chicago school board member Carlos Rivas Jr., writing in the Tribune (gift link): “A school system cannot help students succeed if it first asks some of them to hide.”
■ A bill on the governor’s desk would require the state to consider access to reproductive and gender-affirming care before placing foster children in other states.

Trees downed, power out, windows shattered. Intense thunderstorms slammed the Chicago area yesterday …
■ … and two more waves—with a tornado threat, too—loomed today.
■ The AP: The Pacific Ocean’s El Nino natural warming cycle is back—threatening to turbocharge extreme weather worldwide and to break records set by 1997’s devastating cycle.
■ Emmy-winning Chicago TV news alumnus Matt Rodewald: “Sometimes storms catch people off guard. … But you know who’s almost always ready for it? The Midwest dad.”

Getting the lead out. The Austin neighborhood’s getting $22 million in federal cash to replace lead pipes contaminating drinking water …
■ … but that’s just a drop in the bucket for the up to $10 billion it could cost to replace all of Illinois’ lead lines.

‘Catch that train!’ Block Club says videos of costumed Chicagoans running to CTA terminals are going viral.
■ This one’s been viewed more than 20 million times and liked 4 million times on TikTok.
■ A City Council committee’s OK’d a plan to buy the downtown Greyhound bus terminal from the vampiric hedge fund that also owns the Tribune.

‘Everyone already knew the case was bullshit.’ Columnist Neil Steinberg marvels at newspapers’ tiptoeing around a grand juror’s use of profanity to describe the failed charges against the Broadview Six immigration crackdown protesters: “The news value of this development is zilch except for the colorful obscenity. Which isn’t printed.”
■ As you’ll recall, yesterday’s Chicago Public Square split the difference.

Sweet irony. Columnist Eric Zorn: By kicking researchers out of a conference because they were distributing copies of an anti-Trump editorial published in its own journal, the American Diabetes Association ensured that “many more will see it” …
■ … and so he encourages you to see it and share it here.
■ See also: “The Streisand Effect.”

‘I still have nightmares about City News.’ And yet alumnus Mary Wisniewski celebrates as “a miracle” a new book about Chicago’s legendary training ground for young journalists.
■ Poynter’s Kristen Hare flags the importance of helping local newsrooms preserve their online and broadcast archives.

Really: Just $1. Just once. That’s all the contribution it takes to put your name up in lights on The Legion of Chicago Public Squarians page.
■ Soundtrack for production of today’s edition: This song on repeat. And this version.

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