Dig this. Elon Musk’s Boring Co. is the winning bidder in the city’s plan to connect O’Hare and downtown Chicago via an underground high-speed rail line capable of making the trip in about 12 minutes.
■ The Guardian: At Musk’s Tesla car company, his promises “frequently go unfulfilled,” while “many factory workers feel that they have become collateral damage.”
Metra’s plight. A Better Government Association report concludes a reluctance to spend has left the rail system with cars decades out of date and “a bottom line that has never appeared bleaker.”
■ The CTA’s buying 20 quiet new electric-powered buses.
Capt. Kirk’s next frontier: Southern Illinois. William Shatner is on board with Solar Alliance, an alternative energy developer planning to convert an abandoned Murphysboro factory into a solar-powered Bitcoin mining operation.
■ Antarctica’s ice is melting three times faster than it was just six years ago.
‘I think Amy would like to sign.’ Mayor Emanuel jokingly theorizes his wife might help ex-Gov. Pat Quinn’s campaign to limit Chicago mayors to two terms—possibly derailing Emanuel’s reelection plans.
■ A Chicago alderman suggests a two-year moratorium on mayoral appointees leaving to run for elective office—something that would’ve forestalled mayoral challenger Lori Lightfoot’s campaign.
■ An indicted City Council member has changed his mind and says he’s going to run for reelection anyway.
Inside that ex-Walmart. For the first time since imposition of President Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy, the government let reporters tour a former supercenter now home to more than 1,400 immigrant boys—many forcibly separated from their parents. The Washington Post account is appalling.
■ NBC News: “Looks more like incarceration than temporary shelter.”
■ A Texas civil rights lawyer says the feds at a detention center took away an undocumented immigrant woman’s daughter during breastfeeding.
■ Medium contributor Umair Haque: “It’s Happening Here Because Americans Can’t Admit it’s Happening Here.” (Cartoon: Keith Taylor.)‘We are deeply troubled …’ Two congressional Democrats, Illinois Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, are demanding an ethics investigation of the Trump Education Department after a senior department official—hired straight out of the for-profit college sector—helped dismantle rules to protect students from fraud in the for-profit college sector.
■ The Wall Street Journal: After decades in which college debt was immune from the bankruptcy process, judges are actively trying to help students and ex-students.
■ The MacArthur Foundation is handing $2.4 million in grants to four local news organizations.
‘Bug bites, bruises and death.’ The Tribune goes inside Chicago’s worst nursing home.
■ A Reddit poster found little urgency among Chicago officials after reporting stagnant water breeding mosquitoes in a Logan Square kiddie pool.
■ The Atlantic: Is Trump ready for a global plague? “He has no background in science or health, and has surrounded himself with little such expertise.”
■ It’s also President Trump’s birthday.
■ … and his old friend, porn star Stormy Daniels, is threatening a birthday surprise for the president during her performance in Chicago tonight. (Sun-Times photo: Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times.)
■ New York State is suing the Trump Foundation.
