Another night, another storm. For the second night in a row, the Chicago area got hammered by severe weather.
■ The storms left more than 100,000 customers without power overnight.
■ Illinois’ state climatologist—did you know Illinois had an official climatologist?—warns that the state is already feeling the effects detailed in that stark UN report on global warming. (Cartoon: Keith J. Taylor.)
■ And yet, President Biden is calling on OPEC to step up its production of oil.
■ Popular Information: “Climate change is not a problem that can be solved by a few companies making voluntary pledges.”
■ Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg: “The same people denying climate change also … quote the Book of Revelation and announce the world is ending. … But let the world’s scientists join hands and chant, ‘Yes, the world is indeed ending, at least as the cool green place we’ve known and loved,’ and suddenly they’re covering their ears and humming.”
‘We don’t have 20 minutes for this s---.’ Chicago Police First Deputy Supt. Eric Carter is the target of anger from cops who wanted to give slain Officer Ella French a final bagpipe-augmented farewell as her body was taken to the medical examiner’s office.
■ Surveillance video shows the traffic stop that preceded the shooting.
■ The mother of two brothers accused in the crime was arrested after trying to visit one of them in the hospital.
■ WTTW News: How “straw purchasers” fuel the illegal flow of guns into Chicago.
■ A man who says he was tortured by Chicago police into signing a false confession that led to 29 years in prison is suing the city, the county and the cops.
Unwelcome sign. For the first time since April, Chicago’s pandemic travel advisory now includes a majority of the United States.
■ Chicago’s top doc warns the unvaccinated: “Now is really the time with delta very much here.”
■ Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is encouraging vax resistance: “They can’t arrest all of us.”
Highways—information and otherwise. Leaping a major hurdle, the U.S. Senate has OK’d a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that would update roads, bridges and transit systems and make high-speed internet more widely available …
■ … and that would include money to replace at least some of Chicago’s brain-damaging lead water lines.
■ But the Senate split along party lines today to OK an even bigger bill for the overall budget.
■ A Stanford history prof warns that spending on infrastructure doesn’t always end well.
Cuomo’s out. New York’s scandal-scarred Gov. Andrew Cuomo is quitting—but not for two weeks.
■ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Abraham Gutman: Cuomo’s departure is evidence that “everything is impossible until it isn’t.”
■ On deck to replace him as the state’s first female governor, Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul …
■ … whose political evolution New York traces “from upstate moderate to statewide liberal.”
■ MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow recaps Hochul’s ascendance through a series of “gross, creepy” political scandals that felled men.
■ The Daily Beast: “Cuomo Goes Down Like He Ruled—With Lies, Excuses, and Insults.”
■ The Conversation: Cuomo and his protectors were a textbook example of silent complicity around sexual harassment.
■ The resurrected Gawker is tracking, as Gawker does, all the “fallen assholes” Cuomo’s taking down with him.
■ Two from The Onion: “Cuomo Apologizes For Role In Hiring So Many Crazy Liars Who Sabotaged His Political Career” and “Cuomo Scandal A Somber Reminder That Leaders Bad At Job Can Have Dark Side Too.”
■ Now, media writer Tom Jones asks, what about Cuomo’s brother—CNN anchor Chris Cuomo?
Another 606? Block Club Chicago reports that a railroad track running through the West Side could become a landscaped greenway like the Bloomingdale Trail.
■ Chicago’s famed Drake Hotel is up for sale.
Tribune exit at the top. After 18 months as the paper’s editor-in-chief, Colin McMahon is quitting.
■ The next guy: An Illinois native and University of Illinois at Springfield graduate who led Charleston’s Post and Courier to a 2015 Pulitzer, Mitch Pugh.
■ Newcity publisher Brian Hieggelke: “I picked up on a sense that McMahon … was certainly no fan of arts and culture coverage. So who knows, maybe Mitch Pugh will be an improvement.”
■ Pugh, the paper’s fourth editor in five years, told staffers yesterday that he doubts the Trib’s new overlords at Alden Global Capital will gut the paper as they did the Denver Post.
■ Ex-Trib editor Jim Squires warned in a 1993 interview about “the corporate takeover of American newspapers”: “The press … now labors under a single compulsion … to behave like every other business and to constantly worry first about return to the stockholders.”
■ WTTW’s two new Chicago Tonight anchors, Brandis Friedman and Paris Schutz, join the latest Chicago Public Square podcast to discuss the changing news landscape—across the city and in their own organization.
‘The humor hits the spot.’ Sun-Times critic Richard Roeper gives Marvel’s new animated series What If…? three stars.
■ Batman’s Robin finally comes out.
Colbert’s correction. Stephen Colbert says a Daily Mail report linked from Monday’s Chicago Public Square was wrong: He didn’t go to Barack Obama’s birthday bash.