Trump’s fresh lie. The president this morning on immigration: “Crime in Germany is way up.” It’s not.
■ U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Chicago on Trump: “He is using fear of the immigrant. … That’s the first thing the Nazis did.”
■ Splinter’s Paul Blest deconstructs the Homeland Security secretary’s tweeted assertion that the administration has no policy of separating families at the border: “Kirstjen Nielsen is 100 percent full of …”
■ The Washington Post: Trump’s team “cannot get its story straight on separating migrant families.”
■ …but Trump adviser Stephen Miller is unconflicted: “It was a simple decision … to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period.” (Cartoon: Keith Taylor.)
■ The UN’s human rights chief calls the Trump administration’s separation of children from adults “unconscionable“ and “government-sanctioned child abuse.”
■ Trump’s former communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, says the president “has to end this… inhumane and atrocious policy.”
■ In a rare break with her abstinence from politics, former First Lady Laura Bush takes a stand: “This zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.”
■ Melania Trump weighs in—through a spokeswoman: “Mrs. Trump hates to see children separated from their families.”
■ Vox: Kids who cross the border meet with therapists and social workers—and what they say can be used against them.
■ In Texas, a police chase involving undocumented immigrants left five people dead.
‘Maybe Stormy Daniels will challenge Trump in 2020 and win.’ After Trump’s nemesis’ Chicago stand, Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg ponders the future.
■ Chicago buildings ranked by how much water they draw from the river.
Why not the Blue Line? The Tribune’s Mary Wisniewski ponders why Chicago needs Elon Musk’s underground tunnels connecting O’Hare airport and downtown Chicago when it already has direct-to-O’Hare rail service.
■ One transit expert: “Chicago already has better airport access via public transportation than cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and Houston, so a supercharged tunnel would not give Chicago a leg up.”
■ Five transformative Chicago transit visions that flopped.
■ A seemingly unprovoked punch that will cost a 65-year-old female Red Line passenger her eye has landed a 28-year-old suburban man in jail.
■ Apple says its next iPhone operating system will give 911 operators your exact location.
‘We rate his statement False.’ PolitiFact rakes Gov. Rauner over the coals for deflecting responsibility in a series of deadly Legionnaires’ disease outbreaks to “acts of God.”
■ WBEZ: How pollution has been woven into the lives of residents of one Chicago suburb.
■ Audi’s CEO is the highest-ranking Volkswagen official to be arrested in that pollution-cheating scandal.
Chicago’s homeless: 10,000 families. A new study— the first to combine the city’s official database with Chicago Public Schools data—suggests the city’s making progress.
■ In Naperville, high school students who survived the Parkland, Florida, massacre encouraged their contemporaries to register to vote, learn about the candidates and vote.
■ At a time when media monitor Robert Feder says WGN Radio faces “declining ratings, questionable programming moves and impending sale to Sinclair Broadcast Group,” he’s published a series of internal emails revealing what he calls “finger-pointing behind the scenes.”
■ … in what may be the most substantial WGN email leak since … um … oh, maybe … about eight years ago.