Alligator allegations affirmed. Block Club Chicago updates “the search for a wayward alligator” in the Humboldt Park Lagoon.
Tootsie trouble. A chemical spill at a Tootsie Roll factory on Chicago’s Southwest Side triggered a hazardous material alert today.
■ Chicago is at risk of repeating the 1995 heat wave linked to more than 700 deaths in a week, according to a social scientist and a documentary filmmaker …
■ … whose new film exploring the disaster debuts this week.
‘Something you rely on every day to live, water, could be poisoning you.’ Mayor Lightfoot’s decision to pause the installation of new water meters tied to high levels of lead is escalating residents’ concern about the program and the city’s water.
■ A Sun-Times editorial: “The city should also do more to get the word out.”
‘Lightfoot will have to let Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson go.’ Trib columnist Dahleen Glanton says Johnson apparently “does not fully buy into the idea that the Police Department needs to change how it goes about business.”
■ Despite damning video showing a Chicago cop pushing a handcuffed patient violently into a wall, prosecutors have dropped their case.
■ The Sun-Times’ Maudlyne Ihejirika followed the mayor on one of her visits to violence-plagued communities after dark.
■ Lightfoot took a dive when asked why under-investigation spendthrift Ald. Carrie Austin still has a committee chairmanship.
■ The Beachwood Reporter’s Steve Rhodes: “With everything he’s got going on—from cheating his own company on camera to propping up a serial cheater—he can hardly be expected to stay on top of his property taxes.”
■ The stars of HGTV’s Windy City Rehab are in trouble with the law.
Rebel quell. Gov. Pritzker has banned a country rock band called “Confederate Railroad” from performing at an Illinois State Fair.
■ A Republican representative from Southern Illinois protests: “If Confederate Railroad is canceled, then Snoop Dogg should be canceled, too.”
■ Sun-Times columnist Phil Kadner on asylum-seekers: “I still don’t give a damn about immigration laws or the technical definition of asylum when people are … fleeing a place where they are beaten, murdered and treated like scum.”
Goose, gander. After an appeals court ruling barring President Trump from blocking critics on Twitter, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez faces a legal challenge for doing the same thing.
■ After the leak of documents in which he assessed the president and his administration as “incoherent,” “unpredictable,” “diplomatically clumsy and inept” and “uniquely dysfunctional,” Britain’s ambassador to the United States, Kim Darroch, is quitting.
■ A Brookings Institution fellow: Darroch “told the truth … and paid the price.”
■ A win for Trump: A federal appeals court has dismissed a suit accusing the president of profiting illegally from government visitors to his D.C. hotel.
Time to Taste, Chicago. Chicago’s annual foodstravaganza kicks off today and runs through Sunday.
■ Here’s the full menu.
■ And here’s who’s performing.
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Thanks to Christine Koenig for inspiration this issue.
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