Make it 5 / ‘More dangerous than you think’ / ‘Chicago became my home’

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Make it 5. The National Weather Service now counts that many tornadoes touching down in the Chicago area Monday.
■ The rains that day did a number on the city’s century-old Ruth Page Center for the Arts dance venue.
■ Block Club: Sewer geysers and exploding manholes may be Chicago’s new normal.
■ Headed to Lollapalooza? After good weather today, dress for rain.

Milwaukee wants our teachers. As Chicago’s school board prepared to vote today on big budget cuts, the city’s neighbor to the north is recruiting those laid off here.
■ Chalkbeat Chicago: The new budget would beef up special education staff.

‘Leave the man alone.’ Your Local Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina comes to the defense of COVID-19 response leader Anthony Fauci: “He absolutely made mistakes. … But … at some point … we need to start turning anger into something that actually fixes what’s broken.”
■ Law prof Joyce Vance: Fauci took the Fifth 111 times to avoid falling into Republicans’ perjury trap.
■ Jeff Tiedrich at Everyone is entitled to my own opinion: “Republicans don’t have a single idea right now for how to improve the lives of We the People, so they’ve decided instead to … keep the cultists distracted by reviving their six-year-old grievances against the hero who did his best to keep President Horsepaste McBleachguzzle from botching the COVID crisis.”
■ Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik: “The case against Fauci … rests on several false claims.”

‘More dangerous than you think.’ Columnist Thom Hartmann sounds an alarm about President Trump’s order for signs in front of Smithsonian buildings, warning of “inaccurate information” therein.
■ Pulitzer winner Gene Weingarten’s launching a new reader contest: “What institutions in America will the folks on the Domestic Policy Council cast their gimlet eyes on next, and what remedial/corrective actions will they recommend?” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)

‘A far-right organization that routinely distorts reality to suit its ideological goals.’ That’s how Popular Information describes the Newsmax TV channel—whose content Facebook’s corporate parent has agreed to use “to support AI queries across Meta’s apps and devices.”
■ Elon Musk’s AI company is suing Minnesota over its groundbreaking ban on “nudification” tech.

‘Chicago became my home.’ Glen Hansard, the folksinger maybe known best for the Academy Award-winning “Falling Slowly,” is dead at 56 …
■ WXRT morning host Marty Lennartz’s tribute: “A great talent … always embraced here as a Chicagoan.”

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Fauci’s Fifth / House of scandal / Rats! / Last call

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Fauci’s Fifth. Summoned before the Republican-controlled Senate, COVID-19 pandemic response leader Anthony Fauci today repeatedly invoked his constitutional right to remain silent …
■ … but not before slamming hearing leader Sen. Rand Paul for an “unhinged obsession” with Fauci’s administration …
■ See it happen here.
■ Law prof Joyce Vance: “A man with no national security expertise … was confirmed by the Senate 51-47 to be director of national intelligence.”

Four tornadoes. At least that many hit the Chicago suburbs Monday.
■ Investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein: Under President Trump, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is shifting its emphasis from disaster relief to “domestic terrorism.”

■ Chicago Public Schools won’t furlough staff for five days next year after all.
■ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (gift link): “The Trump regime is shifting billions from college into AI. That’s no accident.”

Housing crunch. Politico’s Shia Kapos says the national homes shortage took center stage at this week’s National Conference of State Legislatures in Chicago.
■ Crain’s real estate reporter Dennis Rodkin (gift link): To add housing capacity, Oak Park’s considering becoming the first Illinois community to wipe out zoning that allows only houses.
■ Following a raft of grocery store closings, Mayor Johnson says older Chicagoans can get free rides to stores still open.

House of scandal. The Sun-Times reports that, as Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch faces heat over his handling of sexual harassment charges against his now-former colleague Harry Benton, older accusations against Welch himself remain unresolved.
■ Hoffman Estates Democratic Rep. Fred Crespo writes for the Tribune (gift link): “I urge my colleagues … to call for the speaker’s resignation.”

Blitz blowback. In what Axios calls one of the few formal legal actions here in connection with the federal “Midway Blitz” assault, a Lakeview man is suing the feds for entering his property without a warrant.
■ As ICE arrests rise at the nation’s airports, a Chicago immigration lawyer who used to tell clients, “As long as you have an ID, you can travel domestically” now says, “If you are in the process of changing status, avoid any travel” (New York Times gift link).
■ Men Yell at Me columnist Lyz Lenz asks rhetorically of the immigration crackdown: “Who will you blame when they’re gone?”

Rats! A new report from Chicago’s inspector general dings the city for a less-than-proactive approach to its rodent problems.
■ He tells the Sun-Times: “If all you’re doing is essentially responding to complaints … you’re not dealing with the long-term causes.”

‘This is a public health emergency.’ Patients rallied in Daley Plaza yesterday to call on Gov. Pritzker to reopen two hospitals shuttered under incompetent leadership, West Suburban and Weiss Memorial.
■ Trib columnist Laura Washington (gift link) sees Pritzker and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel on a collision course in the 2028 presidential campaign.
■ Count Emanuel’s brother Ari among those championing Trump-compliant CBS parent Paramount’s takeover of Warner (Wall Street Journal gift link).

‘Fake historian.’ Let Popular Information introduce you to the right-wing Christian nationalist leading Trump’s crusade against the Smithsonian Museum of American History.
■ Poynter’s Tom Jones: 60 Minutes’ hiring of New York Times conservative columnist Ross Douthat—a guy with no substantial TV experience—as a correspondent looks like “a coup.”
■ Two-time Pulitzer winner Gene Weingarten: “This is just the latest example of how Bari Weiss—the baroness of journalistic entropy—is marauding CBS’s flagship news magazine.”

Last call. Today’s the final day for public comment on the FCC’s Trump-motivated challenge to ABC’s local TV station licenses …
■ … and people have been commenting in droves—more than 146,000 as of this morning.
■ You can have your say here.

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