Chicago Public Square will take Friday off. Back Monday. As ever, you’ll find news updates between editions on the Square Facebook page.
He wasn’t done. The suspect in the Highland Park 4th of July parade massacre allegedly said he considered a repeat performance in Madison, Wisconsin.
■ He was denied bail after prosecutors said he confessed to firing more than 80 shots at parade-goers.
■ Illinois State Police are defending the decision to grant him a gun permit two years ago.
■ Axios Chicago: Death threats, knives and even a reported suicide attempt in April 2019 didn’t disqualify him.
■ Author and filmmaker Michael Moore: “Authorities in Illinois continue to refuse to describe the massacre as a hate crime. … Highland Park is 33% Jewish. 10,000 of its 30,000 residents are Jewish. What part of this don’t the police or the media get?”
■ An expert in terrorism tells WTTW that anti-Semitism is “part of the landscape” in the dark corners of the internet through which the suspect left a digital trail.
■ A University of Virginia professor says news reports describing him as a rapper have “everything to do with criminalizing rap.”
‘We … met eyes … I put my arms out, and she gave him to me.’ The man who took custody of a 2-year-old orphaned in the attack describes receiving him, wordlessly, from an unidentified woman who then laid down in shock.
■ People who left personal possessions behind as they fled can reclaim them at Highland Park High School.
■ Highland Park’s Ravinia Festival has canceled all concerts and events through Sunday.
■ Other area social gatherings are on the bubble.
■ Police have arrested a woman who allegedly phoned in a threat to Brookfield Zoo guests.
‘Our family is heartbroken.’ A cousin of Gary Mayor Jerome Prince was among those killed in a mass shooting early Tuesday.
■ A damning Texas State University critique says a cop armed with a rifle watched the Uvalde elementary school massacre gunman walk toward the campus but didn’t fire because he was waiting for a supervisor’s permission.
■ Columnist Neil Steinberg traces America’s plague of mass shootings back at least to 1949.
‘Highland Park and an illegitimate Supreme Court.’ The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik: “The massacre comes on the heels of the Supreme Court’s decision … to make it impossible for New York State to enforce its commonsense measure against the ‘concealed carry’ of handguns.”
■ A law professor who wrote a book about Supreme Court recusals tells Rolling Stone it’s “a problem” that a right-wing evangelical activist bragged about praying with Supreme Court justices and that they then cited her bosses in overturning the right to abortion.
■ British economist and persistently depressing blogger Umair Haque: “Theocrats and lunatics have captured the Supreme Court … to warp America back to the Middle Ages.”
Family matters. Decorated basketball coach John Quinn—brother of ex-Gov. Pat Quinn—is out at Fenwick High School following former students’ complaints of sexual harassment.
■ Ex-Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson—ex-Mayor Richard M. Daley’s nephew—is off to four months in prison for cheating on his taxes and lying to regulators.
COVID-19 pills. The FDA has cleared pharmacists to prescribe Pfizer’s antiviral drug Paxlovid directly to patients—no doctor necessary.
■ Author Will Leitch marvels at just how much is fading from collective memory of the pandemic: “I thought March 11, 2020, would live forever. It didn’t even make it to summer two years later.”
Traffic Report Dept.
■ The City of Chicago is reportedly down for a three-year stretch of NASCAR races along city streets.
■ Amazon Prime members now can get free restaurant deliveries through GrubHub.
‘Radio has a declining role in the market. My daughter doesn’t even listen to radio. I’m sure your kids don’t, either. You could probably say the same about TV news and print newspapers.’ Veteran Chicago media-watcher Robert Feder grants columnist Eric Zorn an “exit interview.”
■ Chicago rising at NPR: Former Tribune senior Washington editor Vickie Walton-James is the new acting managing editor for news and WBEZ veteran Ammad Omar is chief national editor.
‘A disjointed Marvel mess.’ Sun-Times critic Richard Roeper gives Thor: Love and Thunder a pounding …
■ … but the Trib’s Michael Phillips really likes the goats.
Chris Koenig made this edition better.