Locked doors, no answers / Hotel-turned-prison / Quiz!

Locked doors, no answers. As feared, Chicago’s Weiss Memorial Hospital was closed today—with no explanation from its absentee owner.
 Lyz Lenz’s Dingus of the Week: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose defunding of mRNA vaccine research “is really good news if you are longing for the sweet release of death.”

‘A nuclear war that will end representative democracy.’ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch says Donald Trump’s efforts to remap Texas’ congressional districts is “a way to hold the 2026 midterms, yet effectively … canceling out your vote” (gift link, underwritten by those who support Chicago Public Square).
 Columnist Harold Meyerson (no relation) calls it “The War Between the States, Part II.”
 Stephen Robinson at Public Notice:Trump’s Confederacy rises again.”
 Marking today’s 100th anniversary of a Ku Klux Klan march through Washington, the Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg hears those footsteps echoing today.

‘He’s a warning.’ Columnist/lawyer Mitch Jackson: A guy who screamed “Kill them!” at police on Jan. 6, 2021, now has a key job with the Justice Department.
 The New York Times (another gift link): A senior agent who helped oversee the FBI’s response to that insurrection has been fired.

‘Little more than political theater.’ Courier correspondent Camaron Stevenson dismisses the threat that FBI agents will hunt down Texas lawmakers taking refuge in Illinois.
 Gov. Pritzker: “I hope they take in the State Fair … but they won’t be arresting anyone because there is no U.S. federal law that prohibits those Texas House Democrats from being here.”
 Civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill: Blame this redistricting mess on the Supreme Court.
 The Lever: “By fighting gerrymandering with gerrymandering, Democrats are betraying their own democratic principles.”
 David Dayen at The American Prospect: “We need many more members of Congress”—and proportional representation for individual districts instead of “winner-take-all elections for single seats.”
 NOTUS: A Republican representative from Pennsylvania has a secret helicopter he’s been hiding from financial disclosure.

Hotel-turned-prison. Injustice Watch and The Intercept: An Immigration and Customs Enforcement contractor locked an immigrant and her baby at an O’Hare-area hotel for five days.
 USA Today’s Rex Huppke: “You might recognize Immigration and Customs Enforcement from its recent appearance on the popular cartoon South Park. Don’t watch that episode. It might turn you into a lib.”
 Protesters yesterday disrupted a downtown Chicago job fair where ICE was offering $50,000 signing bonuses, student loan forgiveness and “enhanced” retirement benefits.
 Make it now four federal judges blocking Trump’s move to withhold citizenship from kids born to people who are in the U.S. illegally or temporarily.
 Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “Trump has no power … to declare that undocumented immigrants won’t be counted.”
 Sen. Dick Durbin and Rep. Mike Quigley were among those celebrating the almost 1,000 people sworn in as U.S. citizens yesterday at Wrigley Field.
 Durbin: “We are a better country because you’re here.”

‘Set your clocks back to More Expensive.’ Stephen Colbert marked the arrival of President Trump’s new tariffs—the highest since the Great Depression.
 The AP surveys what to expect.

‘In less than 24 hours … more than 600 people unsubscribed.’ Columnist and former Illinois U.S. Rep. Marie Newman recounts the response to her labeling of Israel’s assault on Gaza as “genocide.”
 Israel’s planning to take over Gaza City.

‘A whole bag of ellipses.’ That’s what back-from-vacation past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel brings to the table for this week’s news quiz.
 To do better than your Chicago Public Square columnist, you’re gonna have to be perfect.

Stroke! Stroke! After years of bureaucratic struggles, organizers have won clearance for the first Chicago River Swim in almost a century.
 You can apply to do it through 10 p.m. Monday here.
 After a sellout first event, tickets were going fast for Sun-Times columnists Lee Bey and Neil Steinberg’s architectural boat tour, “Roast of the Chicago Skyline.”

Itching to go solar? With a federal tax credit set to disappear at year-end, Consumer Reports explains how to do your homework on a tight deadline …
 … in part with an online solar panel savings calculator.

Square mailbag. Reader Cate Plys writes: “Just saw your reader’s comment that you can’t tell from looking whether a district is gerrymandered. I suppose that’s technically true, but nobody has to figure it out for themselves. See the Princeton Gerrymandering Project for all the information you might need—along with the Electoral Innovations Lab. … The project home page … has a map showing that Illinois gets an F in every possible category.”

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Not so safe / ‘It’s inhumane’ / Last rites

Not so safe. Texas Democrats seeking refuge in Illinois to forestall a controversial congressional redistricting vote were evacuated—along with hundreds of others—from a St. Charles hotel after a bomb threat.
 They’re now pleading for donations to fund an exile that they say could last weeks or months.
 Or not: Texas Sen. John Cornyn says the FBI’s agreed to help hunt down those Texas lawmakers.
 USA Today explains how a new Texas map could help Donald Trump. (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
 The AP: Ignoring the 14th Amendment, Trump wants the census to ignore some people.
 The Trump administration’s dropped two long-running civil rights and fair housing cases in Chicago.

About Illinois’ maps. Reader Elizabeth Austin responds to questions about Illinois’ odd-shaped congressional districts: “You cannot tell whether a district is gerrymandered by looking at it. I’m not saying the 13th was fairly drawn—but compliance with the Voting Rights Act can make districts look weird even when they’re fairly drawn.”
 From the archives, she shares the Brennan Center’s 2021 analysis dubbing Texas’ existing scheme “one of the most politically and racially skewed maps of this redistricting cycle.”

A disaster. July’s flash flooding has merited official disaster declarations for Chicago and Cook County—which could mean financial help for those most affected.
 Our air quality sucks again today.
 Meanwhile, The American Prospect reports, Federal Emergency Management Agency employees have been reassigned to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

‘It’s inhumane.’ An ex-worker at ICE’s “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention camp describes what she saw.
 Answering a Homeland Security call that historian Heather Cox Richardson says “continues to echo the language of Nazis,” Trumpian ex-Lois & Clark Superman actor Dean Cain says he’ll take the oath to become an ICE agent.
 Columnist Evan Hurst: “The next ICE agent you call a microdick loser might be Dean Cain!”
 Hollywood Reporter: Last night’s South Park brutally mocked Homeland Security boss Kristi Noem as “a puppy-shooting, face-melting ICE villain” …
 … and, Variety says, had Vice President Vance offering to rub baby oil on Satan.
 The Guardian: Vance’s team had the Army Corps of Engineers take the unusual step of raising an Ohio river’s water level to accommodate his family’s boating trip.

Constitutional flaw. The Library of Congress has explained why big chunks of the U.S. Constitution vanished from its official website …
 … coincidentally, People notes, parts of the document that Trump doesn’t like.
 Investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein notes a meme spreading “like a virus” through the Trump bureaucracy: “Nihilistic violent extremism.”
 Popular Information explains why you might not know that 2024 was America's safest year since the ’60s.

Last rites. WBEZ and the Sun-Times report that Chicago’s struggling Weiss Memorial Hospital—set to lose major federal health insurance cash this weekend—will likely close tomorrow.
 The guy who owns Weiss and Oak Park’s West Suburban Medical Center has been M.I.A.
 An Arm and a Leg offers a guide to shopping for health insurance.
 USA Today’s Rex Huppke: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vax policies will kill people.

‘Is there anything you can say to reassure panicked transit users … we’re not going to go over the fiscal cliff?’ Streetsblog Chicago’s John Greenfield grills Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch on the future of the CTA and the RTA.
 Chicago magazine’s Ted McClelland answers the question “Why does Chicago have elevated trains?

Grounded, delayed. Travelers at O’Hare and airports across the nation found their itineraries disrupted last night after a technical problem hosed United Airlines’ technology.
 It tells customers the problem’s fixed, but says to expect residual delays.

Nice work if he can get it. WTTW reports: Former Ald. Walter Burnett stands to collect $121,000 a year from his city pension while earning $311,000 a year as head of the Chicago Housing Authority.
 Meanwhile: Mayor Johnson says Chicago’s finances have reached “a point of no return.”

Outta gas. The lead singer of the Lollapalooza-featured band Silly Goose—handcuffed after delivering a pop-up concert at a downtown gas station late Saturday night—tells the Sun-Times it’s “kind of funny.”
 Dead bars: Chicago’s McKinley Park News has mapped dozens of taverns closed in its neck of the woods.

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