‘Pat Fitzgerald has to go.’ Sun-Times columnist Rick Morrissey says a two-weeks-in-July suspension for Northwestern’s football coach, who “allegedly didn’t know that some of his players were dry-humping teammates,” is “like suspending a bear during hibernation.”
■ Conceding he may have let Fitzgerald off too easily, Northwestern’s president, Michael Schill, acknowledges that he “focused too much on what … [Fitzgerald] didn’t know and not enough on what he should have known.”
■ The Score host David Haugh: “It’s inconceivable for a head coach to have such a tight hold on every aspect of the operation yet a loose grip on what goes on in his locker room.”
■ The Sun-Times’ Steve Greenberg: “The coming days … only will get more humiliating and awkward for Northwestern.”
■ Credit the story to Northwestern’s student newspaper, delivering what Poynter’s Tom Jones calls “some of the best reporting anywhere over the weekend.”
■ State Rep. Kam Buckner, who played football for the University of Illinois, tells Politico the charges at Northwestern amount to sexual assault.
■ Columnist and Northwestern alumnus Neil Steinberg: “Northwestern majors in sucking up money.”
■ Meanwhile Sunday: Disgraced Michigan State University sports doctor Larry Nassar, convicted of sexually abusing female gymnasts, was stabbed several times at a federal prison in Florida.
‘I was saddened … not because he’s dead, but because he didn’t die in prison.’ That’s how a former assistant U.S. attorney reacted to news that James Lewis—the only suspect in the 1982 Tylenol murders—died at his Boston-area home.
■ While denying he did it, Lewis once detailed for ABC 7 how the killer would have done it.
‘Our last chance.’ A Sun-Times editorial says Chicago’s summer of heat, floods and bad air is as clear a call as any for climate crisis action at the individual, local, state, federal and international levels.
■ If you’re counting on stable weather for Chicago this week, um, ah … no.
■ Film director and producer Adam McKay (Don’t Look Up, The Big Short): “Remaining ‘calm’ about climate change will kill us.”
■ Rarely optimistic economist Umair Haque sees a way forward: A carbon tax.
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke: “AI-powered robots will kill us. K, bye.”
■ A Japanese utility company stands accused of treating the Pacific like its “private sewer” with plans to dump more than 1 million cubic meters of radioactive water there as early as this summer.
‘A ready-made blueprint.’ A former director of the City Council’s Legislative Reference Bureau says Chicago’s history shows how to handle its influx of migrants.
■ The Conversation: Small wealthy suburbs are compounding regional housing problems.
■ Route Fifty explains why a 2016 law directing unused federal properties be used to help the homeless just ain’t working.
■ Charlie Pierce at Esquire: “California Gov. Gavin Newsom has decided to … go bare-knuckles with Florida Meathead-In-Chief Ronald DeSantis’ … clever-dick strategy of flying migrants all over the landscape without their knowledge.”
9-year-old killed. Police say a boy playing with other kids at his grandmother’s birthday celebration in Franklin Park fell victim to gunfire from a passing car.
■ Community activists are offering a reward for information leading to the arrest of a suspect in the sexual assault last week of a 4-year-old at Chicago’s Rainbow Beach.
‘I could offer my getting COVID after five, count ’em, five, vaccinations as proof they don’t work.’ But Neil Steinberg—who did catch the coronavirus—says he’s not, like presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, “lost in a paranoid fantasy.”
■ Columnist Matthew Yglesias: “What I got wrong about COVID.”
■ The pandemic’s waning has unleashed pent-up demand for travel—and passports, delivery of which has been backed up massively.
Is LGBT-themed kids’ clothing ‘obscene’? Popular Information dissects the contention from seven Republican state attorneys general that it may be.
■ The Intercept: The Russian militia is linked to American anti-trans and Nazi movements.
■ ProPublica and other investigative publications have teamed up to expose right-wing websites scamming the MAGA crowd with phony celebrity pitches.
Amazon deals. Ahead of the company’s annual Prime Day promotion, Consumer Reports offers a guide to getting the best bargains—from Amazon and its competitors.
■ Wired: “Why we don’t recommend [Amazon’s] Ring cameras.”
■ Bloomberg: Prime Day isn’t what it used to be.
‘Most successful product launch, ever.’ Inc.’s Jason Aten says the strategy behind the Threads social media app’s meteoric rise is “the one thing everyone hates.”
■ Pod Save America host Dan Pfeiffer: “Threads won’t solve the news crisis.”
■ Ars Technica dives deep into just what privacy-compromising info Threads and other would-be Twitter replacements are gathering about you.
■ Casting caution to the winds, these Chicago Public Square fans were first to follow Square on Threads: Wayne Falkner, Teri Gidwitz, Stan Zoller, Patrick Olsen, Mike Kennedy, Michael Weiland, Mary-Carol Riehs, Lj Anderson, Kurth Lampe Worldwide (plus Kevin Lampe himself), Ken Stroble, Jonathan Lattyak, Joe Lynn, Joe Germuska, Jerry Role, Janean Bowersmith, Hannah Carroll, Cathy Sullivan, Carole Simone Vasbinder, Ben Estes, Ann Fisher and Amy Savin Parker.
■ Thanks to Mark Jacob, who made this edition better.