Smoking out smokers. Mayor Johnson’s signed an order to kindasorta discourage smoking on the Chicago Transit Authority …
■ … but his reliance on social workers to address the problem isn’t sitting well with a City Council member who wants stronger measures.
■ Bloomberg: Vaping’s banned altogether in Singapore.
‘A double whammy.’ Hot weather, combined with rising demand to power data centers, is pushing some Chicago-area residents’ electric bills up by triple digits.
■ Today’s heat doesn’t stand to break records, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be easy.
■ The Conversation explores ways cities can do more to beat heat.
■ President Trump’s EPA has reportedly drafted a plan that would put it out of the business of fighting climate change.
■ The American Prospect: “Home insurance executives are raking it in—at your expense. Performance-based pay packages incentivize claim denials.”
■ The Prospect also sees a rough road ahead for the U.S. battery industry: “It’s a race between technological progress and Republican malice” …
■ … or, as columnist Matthew Yglesias puts it, “Trump’s insane war on renewable energy.”
■ The UN secretary-general tells the AP that those clinging to fossil fuels could go broke doing it.
‘Call lawyer.’ That was a sign held to a window by a man at the Dirksen Federal Building yesterday as he also held a knife to his neck—triggering a standoff that emptied the place before it ended nine hours later with his transport to a hospital in good condition.
■ WBEZ notes a backhanded legal victory for gun-control advocates: “Federal officials didn’t violate the Constitution when they enforced a gun ban against an immigrant.”
‘I’ve lost everything.’ A Venezuelan mother of three whose husband has been deported from Chicago after three months in 10 different detention centers tells WBEZ she’s given up and now awaits news of a government flight taking her home.
■ Capitol Fax rips apart a Homeland Security news release about a man’s arrest in Chicago.
■ Chalkbeat: Trump administration changes to the Head Start program spell trouble for Illinois child-care providers.
Need a doctor? It’ll be tougher in the years ahead because, as the Tribune reports (gift link, courtesy of Chicago Public Square supporters), Trump’s new caps on federal student loans are keeping potential medical students from entering the profession.
■ HIV care and prevention’s also on the endangered list.
_uck and cover. (If anyone asks, that’s a D as in duck.) Slinking away from pressure to do something about the investigation of Trump pal and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, House Speaker Mike Johnson sent members home early for their summer break …
■ … along with doubled funding for home security.
■ Jimmy Fallon paraphrases Johnson: “Don’t worry, we will not deal with this the moment we get back.”
■ CNN’s uncovered video and photos confirming for the first time that Epstein attended Trump’s 1993 wedding to Marla Maples.
■ The founder of the reactionary Oath Keepers warns of “trouble” over inaction on the Epstein files.
■ USA Today’s Chicago-based columnist Rex Huppke offers “a message from the White House” to those demanding more: “We hear you, we share your concerns and we were wondering if instead we might interest you in some files on Martin Luther King Jr.?”
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “While this document dump appears to have been announced in order to distract from the Epstein files, it seems unlikely to do so.”
■ Shia Kapos at Politico: Epstein’s casting a shadow over Illinois Republicans.
‘Whenever Trump is backed into a corner, he needs to change the subject and throw red meat to the carnivorous base—and their favorite cut is filet of Obama.’ That’s Stephen Colbert, reflecting on Trump’s assertion that reporters should be investigating his predecessor instead …
■ … and Trump made up a word in the process.
■ HuffPost snarks: An Obama spokesman “dusted the cobwebs off his keyboard to type out a rare rebuttal to … Trump’s incessant nonsense.”
■ Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chief dismisses complaints about Colbert’s cancellation as “the partisan left’s ritualist wailing and gnashing of teeth.”
■ Colbert’s ratings have soared on news of his canning …
■ … but columnist David Dayen sees it as the beginning of the end of television as we’ve known it, warning that “news itself looks like it’s going to be left behind entirely in the streaming transition.”
■ Men Yell at Me columnist Lyz Lenz asks: With Colbert canceled and Homeland Security sharing ostensibly funny memes, “Who gets to be funny?”
■ After Trump threatened that Jimmies Kimmel and Fallon are “next to go,” Kimmel struck back.
‘Stewart’s approach left many inside the Times newsroom … furious.’ Status proprietor Oliver Darcy (behind an email-address paywall) says Jon Stewart’s softball interview with Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong on Monday was a head-scratcher, given that Soon-Shiong “is exactly the type of figure Stewart had just spent several minutes condemning.”
■ Poynter’s Tom Jones asks, “How much longer can The Washington Post bleed talent?”
Down on the farm. Coca-Cola’s announcement that it’ll add a cane sugar version of its regular stuff to its lineup this fall—a seeming concession to Trump—has Illinois producers of corn and high-fructose corn syrup on edge.
■ MSNBC debunks talk that sugar’s healthier.
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