Rain, rain. A fresh round of precipitation pounded the Chicago area overnight—with more and possibly worse to follow this evening.
■ Axios Chicago assesses the rising cost of the region’s climate disasters.
■ Naperville’s Centennial Beach was closed after the death of a man pulled from the water.
■ Thirty years after Chicago’s historic, deadly heat wave, Northwestern University officials offer 30 recommendations to avert future such tragedies.
■ The Tribune’s Christopher Borrelli (gift link): The 739 Chicagoans who died of heat that summer—many elderly, many people of color—were forgotten for years.
Disastrous delays. CNN: Federal Emergency Management Agency efforts to help Texans dealing with monstrous floodwaters ran almost instantly into Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s bureaucratic obstacles.
■ Meanwhile, The Daily Beast reports, Noem found time Sunday to ask her Instagram followers which image they preferred for her official portrait as South Dakota’s former governor.
■ Climate journalist Emily Sanders: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says megafloods are “just part of nature”—but the fossil fuel industry disagrees.
‘White women need to step up.’ Recounting her confrontation with “a group of large, burly men in camouflage shirts, masks covering their faces, and dark grey baseball caps huddled in front of a business,” columnist and former Illinois Rep. Marie Newman calls for more “white women to … start getting in between DHS officers and the people they are terrorizing.”
■ Wired: Homeland Security is telling cops “to treat even skateboarding and livestreaming as signs of violent intent during a protest, turning everyday behavior into a pretext for police action.” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
■ A federal judge has blocked President Trump’s attempt to deny citizenship to some babies born in the U.S.
■ Lawyer Robert Hubbell: “Federal judges continue to meet the moment.”
■ Law Dork Chris Geidner: “Evidence challenging the Trump admin’s immigration moves is now out in the open.”
■ Law professor Joyce Vance recaps a day of legal ping-pong.
‘Man Afraid to Ride Subway Named Head of NASA.’ Rolling Stone has the story.
■ Columnist and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich on the “twisted people” with which Trump’s surrounded himself: “The good news is they will all but ensure that he will overplay his hand. The bad is that, by then, they may have demolished much that is good about this country.”
State of disruption. The U.S. State Department’s firing more than 1,300 workers.
■ Wonkette’s Evan Hurst: “[FBI Director] Kash Patel Giving Lie Detectors To Smoke Out FBI Agents Who Make Fun Of Kash Patel.”
‘Here we go again.’A hundred years after the Scopes trial over the teaching of evolution—in which Chicago’s Clarence Darrow battled religious forces that would dictate public education—Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg says the fight continues.
■ Politico’s Shia Kapos: Two years after Illinois ended a tax-credit program to fund scholarships for kids attending private schools, Trump’s signed a law launching a similar federal program in 2027.
Travel mindfully. Axios: Summer vacations stand to fuel measles’ surge.
■ Columnist and former Tribune editor James O’Shea: “Republicans used President Trump's ‘Big, Beautiful’ tax law as cover for their true long-time goal: Killing government-funded healthcare.”
■ The American Prospect: Republicans’ budget bill “cuts food assistance benefits to households that pay for internet access.”
Turn Reich here. Elon Musk says his AI chatbot Grok—you know, the one that has praised Adolf Hitler, ranted against Jews and called itself “MechaHitler”—is coming within days to his Tesla vehicles.
■ Musk is columnist Lyz Lenz’s Dingus of the Week.
■ The Neuron: You now can buy a tiny, open-sourced, AI-programmed desktop robot for $299.
■ See it in action here.
Stuck on Chicago. Cartoonist Chris Ware—former Oak Parker, now a resident of Riverside—has co-designed a sheet of 20 stamps to mark the U.S. Postal Service’s 250th anniversary …
■ … and they have a distinctly Chicago-area feel.
Rip in peace. Ex-Cubs manager Lee Elia, famous for an expletive-filled 1983 rant against unsupportive fans, is dead at 87.
■ Two years ago, The Sporting News broke down his commentary line-by-line, concluding he wasn’t wrong about a lot.
■ Hear for yourself in all its unedited glory.
Leo’s home. The house in which the pope grew up is now owned by the village of Dolton.
■ Chicago’s long-hyped—but also stalled—Lincoln Yards development is shrinking: A developer plans to buy the northern half to turn it into a modest residential community.
‘Is that really Marco Rubio on the phone? What is Grok talking about? And is food saltier at the South Pole?’ The Conversation’s quizmaster, past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel, has assembled a fresh test of your news chops.
■ To top your Chicago Public Square columnist’s score, you’ll need to get at least 7 of 8 right.
‘Cigarettes: Except for causing cancer, they’re pretty great!’ Columnist Dave Barry mocks The New York Times for a story celebrating a despicable addiction’s rise into—this is an actual quote from the Times—“the upper echelon of culture.”
■ Press Watch columnist Dan Froomkin: “Washington Post Publisher Seeks to Crush Newsroom Dissent.”
■ The lone Democrat left on the Federal Communications Commission calls CBS’ decision to pay Trump $16 million “chilling.”
Battle creak. Nutella maker Ferrero Group is buying WK Kellogg …
■ … putting Frosted Flakes and Special K under the same roof as Nerds.
