Measles is here. For the first time this year, two cases have been confirmed in Cook County—one, an adult Chicagoan who traveled internationally through O’Hare airport.
■ Wired: Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services Department has ordered a lab studying deadly infectious diseases to knock it off.
■ Illinois hospitals overall have moved up 10 spots from last year in Leapfrog Group’s rankings for safety—but more are getting Ds.
■ Check your hospital’s rating here.
■ Culture Study columnist Anne Helen Petersen praises Max TV’s hospital-based series The Pitt, which she says is really “a show about America.”
‘No extra dolls for you, little girl.’ Columnist Charlie Sykes on Trump’s dismissal of concerns that his tariffs will mean a shortage of toys for kids at Christmas: “I hesitate to speak for Trump voters, but I’m skeptical that this is what they thought the Golden Age would actually mean.”
■ Evan Hurst at Wonkette: “Remember to tell a MAGA child exactly who stole Christmas this year.”
■ Everyone Is Entitled to My Own Opinion opinionator Jeff Tiedrich: “I know you’re not going to believe this—but the lifelong failure who failed at running a real estate empire, and failed at running casinos, and failed at running an airline, and failed at running a football team, and failed at fighting a pandemic, and failed at selling steaks, and failed at selling water … has failed to preserve the strong economy he inherited from Joe Biden.”
■ USA Today’s Chicago-based columnist Rex Huppke: “Here we are with our shrunken economy, looking at empty ports and staring at pain yet to be felt, with a so-called leader who’s only capable of blaming others for his own failures.”
■ The Daily Show’s Desi Lydic: “Now, obviously, the economy is a complex interaction of multiple markets, so it’s difficult to point to any one factor—but it’s all Trump. It’s Trump. It’s Donald Trump.”
■ The Sun-Times: As higher prices loom, the Chicago Tool Library is stepping up to help people repair stuff they might otherwise have to replace.
‘Destroying America was the plan all along.’ HuffPost’s Paul Blumenthal says Trump’s determined to smash the country built in the 20th century.
■ The American Prospect and the Revolving Door Project: “This administration’s attack on … the Freedom of Information Act in general will harm the public in ways that will be difficult to directly appreciate for some time.” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
■ Author and columnist Cory Doctorow: Republicans have found a way to make student debt worse.
■ Popular Information: Beginning in the next school year, Oklahoma students will be required to learn about Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was tainted by fraud.
Mass deportations signups. The Associated Press reports that the number of local police departments and state agencies joining Trump’s drive for mass deportations has now passed 500.
■ A judge has freed a Columbia University student activist Trump wants deported.
■ The American Prospect suggests “one weird trick” to keep the feds out of your city.
■ Press Watch proprietor Dan Froomkin calls “Trump’s ludicrous tattoo tirade … a great case study for journalists.”
■ WBEZ’s Chip Mitchell reports that Chicago saw fewer murders last month than in any April since … 1962.
If Pritzker were running for president … Illinois’ governor has waved off questions about his White House aspirations, but his media schedule this week sure suggests otherwise. Tonight it’s a shot on Jimmy Kimmel’s show.
■ Dismissing Republican complaints that Pritzker’s New Hampshire encouragement of “mass protests … mobilization … disruption” against Trump’s regime constitutes an incitement to violence, columnist Eric Zorn says it was a “call for protests and rhetoric, not a call to take up bear spray, baseball bats and flagpoles, as those who answered the call from Dear Leader did on Jan. 6, 2021.”
■ The Daily Beast: Trump’s attorney general’s been bragging about plans to kill Americans.
‘A graveyard for political ambitions.’ Chicago magazine’s Ted McClelland dismisses Pritzker’s pick to succeed Dick Durbin in the Senate, Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton: “There’s a long history of lieutenant governors trying to move up … and a history just as long of lieutenant governors failing.”
■ Stratton—so far the only confirmed high-profile candidate for the job—was unable to tell Capitol News Illinois what her first bill would be should she win.
Musk out? The Wall Street Journal (gift link, courtesy of Chicago Public Square supporters) reports that Tesla’s board has opened a search for a CEO to replace Elon Musk …
■ … who yesterday held what Axios’ Alex Isenstadt says “had the feel of a de-facto exit interview” at the White House.
■ Wired: Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” assigned a college student to use artificial intelligence to rewrite government regulations.
■ New York Times columnist Julia Angwin (another gift link): “DOGE is building a surveillance state.”
■ The Reader: More than 1,400 pieces of Illinois public art are in limbo after DOGE’s downsizing assault.
‘We have never admitted our guilt in this genocide, never apologized, never shown a speck of remorse, never made any reparations.’ Filmmaker Michael Moore says yesterday—the 50th anniversary of the end of the U.S. war on Vietnam—should have been a national holiday.
■ The forest-devastating herbicides dropped by the U.S. still haunt the people of Vietnam.
Touch that dial, please. WGN Radio* is bringing Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s show to its airwaves begining Sunday.
■ The audience at a town hall session hosted by WGN’s corporate sibling, NewsNation, burst into laughter when Trump said he hasn’t made any mistakes since returning to the White House.
■ The White House has launched its own Drudge Report-like news site designed to, in Axios’ words, “present itself in a positive light.”
Free TV. PCWorld: You don’t need a Roku device to watch the Roku Channel at no charge.
Thanks. Mike Braden made this edition better.