Good news, bad news / ‘Outrageous, unethical’ / Ch-ch-ch-changes

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Chicago Public Square will take tomorrow off—except for your weekly Friday news quiz roundup.
■ Through the Independence Day weekend, check the Square Bluesky account for news worth knowing …
■ … you know, like these 1,300+ discerning folks.
■ Now, though, the news for today:

Good news, bad news. The worst of Chicago’s heat wave has passed, but dangerously high temperatures will linger for days …
■ … and thunderstorms threaten the region tonight into tomorrow.
■ Not that you’d want to do it tonight, but Block Club reminds you that you can camp out in the Cook County Forest Preserves.
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke: “Mother Nature is a radical leftist personification, possibly stemming from some meteorological wing of antifa, and now she’s threatening to ruin America’s 250th anniversary.”

Top cop taps out. Declaring a historic drop in Chicago crime, Police Supt. Larry Snelling is retiring in a couple of weeks.
■ … a departure that the Trump-controlled FBI’s social media account seems to be celebrating.

‘Outrageous, unethical.’ That’s how Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch describes behavior by Plainfield Rep. Harry Benton, who’s been accused of sexual harassment.
■ Welch’s formal statement: “If he does not resign, we will initiate the process of expelling him from the House.”
■ An aide to former Chicago City Council member Carrie Austin has been fined $20,000 and sentenced to three years’ probation for a scheme in which they used their clout to get home improvements from a developer seeking a deal in Austin’s ward.

It goes on. The New York Times reports (gift link) that, without the braggadocio of last year’s onslaught, federal immigration agents have detained more than 10,000 people in the last five days …
■ … even as Chicago’s embattled U.S. attorney concedes that more than 1,000 grand jury presentations are under review after dismissal of charges in the “Broadview Six” case against immigration enforcement protesters.

Nice grift if you can get it. Confronted about his jaw-dropping $1.2 billion in profit last year from various crypto holdings, President Trump deflected: “Everybody’s profiting.”
■ Columnist Heather Delaney Reese: “How is this even legal?”
■ Former Time editor Rick Stengel: “It took 250 years, but we finally have a chief executive who understands the full money-making possibilities of the Oval Office.”
■ Evan Hurst at Wonkette: “If you’re stupid enough to put your money in a Trump crypto venture, you deserve to lose your entire ass. … Still, wow, corruption!”
■ A new congressional report concludes that Trump used a shadow corporation embedded within the National Park Foundation to hijack the national anniversary for “political ideology and pet projects.” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich is incredulous: Did Trump “understand that he was talking to a fake Teddy Roosevelt?”
■ A real headline, from a real news organization: “Trump jokes about ‘threesome’ involving him, his sons and Medal of Honor.”
■ The Guardian goes inside Trump’s “dreadful” state fair: “A storm, overpriced food and a sad ferris wheel.”
■ Lyz Dye at Public Notice: “As the cowards in Congress prostrate themselves, an 82-year-old woman took on the president and won.”

‘Nip this abolish prisons thing in the bud.’ Columnist Eric Zorn says a New York Democratic socialist congressional candidate’s call to eliminate prisons puts Democrats across the country in a position of having to deny “the accusation that theirs is the party that wants to fling open prison gates.”
■ Investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein surveying populist Democrats’ primary surge: “The old guard extinction event is here. … party-approved candidates getting mowed down like a brontosaurus napping in the Yucatán circa 66 million years ago.”
■ NOTUS columnist—and Washington Post alumnus—Dana Milbank: “Israelis need to understand that America is about to file for divorce.”

AI’s worrisome skills. 404 Media reports that scientists asked artificial intelligence chatbots to impersonate 112 public figures: “What happened next is a ‘dire’ warning.”
■ Casey Newton at Platformer: “The tech industry can’t keep up with the AI backlash.”

Ch-ch-ch-changes. Chicago guitarist Joel Paterson has a new gig—as a member of Bob Dylan’s band.
■ CNN’s losing its first major on-air talent ahead of a pending takeover by Paramount Skydance.

Unsolicited Praise Dept. A couple of notes from readers made yesterday better:
■ “I appreciate Chicago Public Square and all the work that goes into it. It’s really comprehensive and so helpful to me when I want a 360-view of an issue.”
■ “It seems that I’m getting more complete news coverage from Chicago Public Square than from any of the broadcast outlets, though PBS is close behind.”
■ Messages like that—along with voluntary financial support from readers like you—keep this publication coming back after a break. Thanks.

‘This sort of shit should not happen’ / ‘A stunning victory’ / Dude, where’s your car?

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‘This sort of shit should not happen.’ NPR’s executive editor says he’ll be reviewing what went wrong to let 82-year-old Supreme Court correspondent Nina Totenberg’s erroneous report that Chief Justice Sam Alito was retiring make it to the web.
■ NPR public editor Kelly McBride: “Totenberg said on air later in the day, ‘It was a rookie mistake.’ But had a rookie made such a mistake, he or she would have been dismissed.”
■ NPR took the story off the web quickly, but not before the invaluable Internet Archive preserved it.
■ Poynter media critic Tom Jones: “Later in the day, Totenberg appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered and … somehow made things … worse.”
■ Funny thing, as noted in a column by retired cop—he was among those beaten in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection—Michael Fanone and journalist Peter Rothpletz: “Totenberg likely wasn’t wrong … only too early.”

‘Trump has been given dictatorial power.’ Nobel winner Paul Krugman says the Supreme Court’s overturning of 90 years’ precedent, giving the president power over the government’s regulatory machinery, has “stripped regulatory agencies of their independence from Trump’s whims and corrupt practices.”

Chicagoans relieved. The Supreme Court decision that kids born to people in the U.S.—whether those parents are here legally or not, temporarily or not—are indeed entitled to U.S. citizenship was good news for immigrant families here.
■ Trump’s not giving up: “We can easily make it up in Congress through Legislation.”
■ Columnist Heather Delaney Reese: “In just those few sentences, Donald Trump told us exactly how he views the Constitution. It isn’t the highest law of the land to him; it’s just an obstacle to get around.”
■ Pulitzer winner Gene Weingarten assesses the court’s vote split: “These three and a half men are really bad guys.”
■ Tribune, New York Times and Washington Post alumnus Susan Berger says the court’s decision is “a call for court reform: If birthright citizenship was not 9-0 something is profoundly wrong.”

Chicago in justices’ sights. The high court agreed to review whether assault weapon bans—like the city’s Cook County’s, which covers Chicago—violate the Second Amendment.
■ Lawyer and judiciary watcher Meagan Hatcher-Mays: “While the Court’s final rulings were a mixed bag, they mostly did Trump’s bidding … again.”
■ Columnist Brian Tyler Cohen: “The dam is breaking on Democrats embracing Supreme Court expansion.”
■ Wonkette’s Evan Hurst: “Any Democrat who doesn’t advocate for expanding the court to at least 15 or 21 justices should be laughed out of the primary in 2028.”

‘Transgender students have the right to fully participate in school activities, including sports.’ Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul says justices’ rulings in favor of other states’ bans on trans girls in girls’ sports doesn’t invalidate Illinois policies granting such kids inclusion.
■ Politico’s Shia Kapos: Raoul’s one of the winners in the court’s birthright decision.

‘A stunning victory.’ The AP marvels at a 29-year-old Democratic socialist’s Colorado primary defeat of a nearly 30-year incumbent member of the U.S. House.
■ The New York Times (gift link) dubs her a “left-wing insurgent” …
■ … and Politico says she’s “the insurgent left’s newest star.”
■ In what Politico calls “the latest sign of boiling anti-establishment rage,” U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet lost the Colorado gubernatorial primary to a far less well-funded but far more stridently anti-Trump candidate.
■ New Jersey Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr.—missing in action for four months—says he was being treated for depression.

Republicans, assemble! In a first, Trump’s announced September plans for a midterm Republican National Convention in Dallas to hype the party’s campaign to maintain control of Congress.
■ The Bulwark: “To which those of us who think it crucial that Trump and his party suffer a decisive defeat in this November’s mid-term elections could only say one thing: THANK YOU, President DONALD J. TRUMP!”
■ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (gift link): “Another Jan. 6 coup? Trump is screaming it out loud.” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)

‘A violent history of charges for using a tow truck to commit … crime.’ That’s what CBS News Chicago has unearthed about the three people in custody in connection with violent attacks on two of the station’s journalists Monday afternoon outside the Adler Planetarium.
■ Two people were shot—one of them killed—early this morning outside a River North hotel.

‘Check on your neighbor.’ Your Local Epidemiologist lists six things to know about heat illness.
■ Local advocates say Chicago’s not doing enough to help those most vulnerable in this heat wave.
■ Gov. Pritzker’s issued a disaster proclamation to aid the recovery of 11 counties—including Cook—from severe weather in the spring and summer.

Dude, where’s your car? Tech columnist Kim Komando says if your car key fob can’t find your vehicle, this trick may extend its range.
■ 404 Media: Apple’s “Hide My Email” tool isn’t hiding your email address.
■ Also: To cut the soaring costs of artificial intelligence engines, companies are making AI agents talk like cavemen.

‘Yes, make that movie!’ Thanks to Axios Chicago’s Justin Kaufmann for kind words about the latest Chicago Public Square podcast …
■ Mike Braden made this edition better.
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