‘It’s dangerous to continue this’ / Thursday: ‘Make Good Trouble’ / Classical hacks

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‘It’s dangerous to continue this.’ As climate-change-driven summer storms menace the Chicago area, the Tribune tracks rising concern that Trump administration cuts to the National Weather Service will make things worse (gift link, courtesy of Chicago Public Square supporters like you).
■ Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg, 30 years after Chicago’s deadly 1995 heat wave: “We pay lip service to problems, but the underlying social conditions are the same, or worse.”

‘They should have been paying attention.’ A lawyer whose two girls were rescued from Texas’ flood-devastated Camp Mystic reacts to Washington Post reporting (another gift link) that the camp’s executive director—who died in the onslaught—didn’t begin an evacuation for more than an hour after he got a phone alert.
■ The search for victims was to resume today—after yet another round of heavy precipitation.
■ Noah Berlatsky at Public Notice on the president’s rejection of any role in the disaster: “If Trump is never responsible for disaster, it makes sense that he shouldn’t prepare for disasters.”
■ Death threats against a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist who used the Texas tragedy to jab those who maintain “government is the problem, not the solution” prompted cancellation of a Buffalo event to support local journalism.
■ The American Prospect: “Trump administration policy is now to make all future clean-energy projects as unprofitable as possible.”

Thursday: ‘Make Good Trouble.’ Lawyer/columnist Robert Hubbell says the timing couldn’t be better for this week’s sequel to the “No Kings” rallies.
■ Find—or maybe you’d rather avoid?—an event near you.
■ Journalist Karen Attiah: “Resistance Summer School is officially in session! Columbia cancelled my class on Race and Media, but I’m teaching the people anyway.”

‘The Epstein scandal is unlike any Trump scandal before.’ Acknowledging that it can seem like just “an enjoyable distraction from democracy circling the drain,” columnist and Pod Save America host Dan Pfeiffer explains why Donald Trump’s links to dead sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is looking increasingly “like the kind of scandal that has undone second-term presidents.”
■ Judd Legum at Popular Information says it’s one of the first issues “to create a genuine rift between Trump and his MAGA base.”
■ Democracy Docket’s Marc Elias: Trump seems to have pivoted “from insisting that there are no Epstein files to acknowledging their fabled existence.”
■ … a thing that historian Heather Cox Richardson perceives as “an extraordinary rift in MAGA world.”
■ CNN’s Brian Stelter: The conspiracy theories that put Trump in power are “coming back to bite him.”

‘I triggered another federal investigation.’ Sources tell investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein “the California National Guard cut off soldier access to vital military information because of what I reported on Tuesday.”
■ Columnist and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich reassures readers concerned about his safety as he criticizes Trump and his acolytes: “I assure you I won’t take unnecessary risks. But I’m not going to stop speaking out.”
■ Jack Mirkinson at Discourse Blog: Journalist/entrepreneur Bari Weiss “is a perfect fit for the new CBS News … for the worst possible reasons.”

‘Making Immigration Great Again.’ Economist Paul Krugman says Trump’s inhumane actions have “reminded America that immigrants are people.”
■ The Tribune reports that a 47-year-old Lyons father in this country for decades—with a clean record—has become the face of a lawsuit against Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
■ The Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times has published a database of “more than 700 people who have been detained or appear to be scheduled to be sent” to the “Alligator Alcatraz” detention camp.
■ PolitiFact rates “Mostly True” the assertion that “ICE will now become the country’s largest federal law enforcement agency.”

Classical hacks. Hackers reportedly have exposed financial data, contracts, payroll information and more from Chicago’s storied classical music station, WFMT.
■ Corporate parent Sesame Workshop now says Elmo’s Twitter X account has been “secured” after having been hijacked by someone who used it to spew expletive-filled antisemitic rants and anti-Trump statements.
■ The author of a new book, Attention and Alienation, ponders whether the internet can become a place where kindness flourishes.

E-bike bewilderment. When it comes to who gets to ride electric bicycles where in Chicago’s suburbs, the Trib documents wide disparity—and confusion to match.
■ The Cyclist Choice website reviews laws across the state: “Sidewalks are a no-go, so steer clear of them.”

Thanks. Mike Braden made this edition better.

Rain, rain / ‘White women need to step up’ / Turn Reich here / Quiz

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■ 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.

‘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.
■ You can order them here.

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.

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