‘Substantial and irrefutable’ misconduct. The Sun-Times says Chicago’s top cop’s moving to fire four officers accused of stealing cash and drugs and lying about the source of guns they took off the street without making arrests …
■ … a scandal that unraveled after two of them seized a woman’s purple gun.
Hey, kids! Bedtime! A Chicago City Council member’s calling for an 8 p.m. curfew on minors unaccompanied by adults in Streeterville or the city’s central business district.
■ CWBChicago: Police have released images of men who robbed and forcibly kissed a woman at the North-Clybourn Red Line station.
■ WTTW: Over the last two summers, Chicago police devoted more than a million overtime hours to “scarecrowing”—stationing cops in prominent locations with their lights flashing, even when no crime was present.
■ A Tribune editorial: “Potential victims are shooting back. This should raise alarms for Chicago.”
■ Also from the Trib: As Chicago’s summer begins, anti-violence workers are digging in.
■ Not just Chicago: Two brothers, ages 60 and 63, were found dead of multiple gunshot wounds in a burning Highland Park home yesterday.
Pritzker’s prize. Illinois’ governor has signed his sixth balanced budget in a row—the largest in state history …
■ … thanks in large part to continued limits on losses large corporations get to write off from their state income taxes.
■ A state judge has blocked a law Pritzker signed to keep legislative candidates who didn’t run in the March primary—many of them Republicans—from taking a slot on November’s ballot.
‘No-schoolers.’ A ProPublica and Capitol News Illinois investigation finds Illinois’ hands-off approach to homeschooling putting kids at risk …
■ … kids like a 9-year-old who went missing from school for two years, during which he was beaten and denied food. (Illustration: Susie Ang for ProPublica.)
■ It’s a problem John Oliver last year spotlighted on Last Week Tonight.
‘God help us.’ That’s former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden’s reaction to House Speaker Mike Johnson’s appointment of two Republicans with troubled histories to the House Intelligence Committee—giving them, in historian Heather Cox Richardson’s words, “oversight of the entire U.S. intelligence community,” including the FBI.
■ Columnist Ken Klippenstein offers three examples of Congress failing to hold the FBI accountable.
‘The Republican Party no longer believes you have a right to contraception.’ Law professor Joyce Vance assesses the Senate’s failure to approve legislation that would have secured that right.
■ Ryan Cooper at The American Prospect: “It is vanishingly unlikely that Senate Republicans would actually pass a bill to ban contraception, because that’s not how they do things. They’ll get the courts to do it.”
■ Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik: Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Katie Britt of Alabama “claim to be protecting IVF with a new bill. Don’t believe them.”
‘The Wall Street Journal owes its readers—and the public—better.’ CNN’s Oliver Darcy rips into a much-hyped story about President Biden’s mental acuity.
■ Media writer Tom Jones concludes it’s “a pointed piece based pretty much on quotes and opinions from those who don’t want to see Biden elected to a second term.”
■ Stephen Colbert: “This blockbuster lid-blower-offer also included this little nugget explaining that Biden is someone who has both good moments and bad ones—in a clear contrast with his opponent, who only has bad ones.”
■ Here’s the piece, which one editor says has “already gotten far more views or reads than the average law review article.”
Tornado terror. A twister that hit a suburb of Detroit without warning killed a 2-year-old boy and injured his mother.
■ U.S. Senate debate yesterday highlighted Democrats’ and Republicans’ split over climate change as the driving force behind skyrocketing homeowners insurance premiums.
‘They were aiming for Cleveland, but still, good for them.’ Jimmy Fallon was among late-night hosts who had fun with Boeing’s successful launch of its Starliner rocket, headed to the International Space Station.
■ SpaceX’s Starship rocket, which NASA hopes can get people to Mars, today pulled off a successful (that is, “without exploding”) test flight from Texas to the Indian Ocean.
Binge Star Trek. Cord Cutter Weekly’s Jared Newman has spotted an increasingly rare free-trial code for Paramount+.
■ Also: tips for streamlining Roku’s “increasingly distracting” interface.
Want a Chicago Public Square T-shirt? They’re not available to the public anymore—it’s all hoodies and sweatshirts these days—but you can have one of these collector’s items free if you support Square this week at the Booster level or better.
