Death in ‘the house of God.’ In another of the horrific school shootings that have plagued the U.S. for decades, two children are dead and 17 others were wounded in an assault at a Minneapolis Catholic school’s church.
■ A photo captures the horror: A mom, running shoeless, toward the scene of the crime.
■ A 10-year-student says a schoolmate protected him: “My friend Victor, like saved me, though, because he laid on top of me, but he got hit.”
■ Columnist and AP veteran Ron Fournier: “Republicans say ‘thoughts and prayers.’ Democrats say limit and regulate guns. I say: All of the above, and more.”
■ Inside Medicine: “Minnesota has permissive gun laws. Yesterday showed us what that means for kids.”
■ Lawyer Robert Hubbell: “We must ban assault rifles. We must restrict access to guns. We must impose liability on those who fail to secure their guns. We must permit families of victims and survivors to sue gun manufacturers.”
■ The FBI says the shooting’s under investigation as a hate crime targeting Catholics.
■ Law enforcement’s identified the shooter—found dead in the parking lot, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot—as a transgender person whose mother worked at the church for five years.
■ Minneapolis’ mayor: “Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community … has lost their sense of common humanity.”
■ Self-described “Writer. Queer. Army Vet. Texan. Hoya” Charlotte Clymer: “You are far, far more likely to be killed by a mass shooter who isn’t trans.”
■ Add Chicago’s Advocate Health to the roster of institutions pulling back on gender-affirming care medication for those under 19.
Un-controlled. In what her lawyers call a dismissal for standing up for science, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s been fired …
■ … after reportedly refusing to fire several administrators and to “rubber-stamp” vaccine recommendations …
■ A resignation letter from one warns: “The intentional eroding of trust in low-risk vaccines … will bring us to a pre-vaccine era where only the strong will survive and many if not all will suffer.”
■ Jen Rubin at The Contrarian: “The biggest threat to our health and safety is in the Oval Office.”
■ Your Local Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina: “Public health only works when the people leading it are strong, principled and supported in their duty to protect and serve individuals and communities. Right now, that foundation is eroding at a speed I never thought possible. The nation’s health security is at risk.”
■ The American Prospect: President Trump’s health chief, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who long railed against the data privacy compromises of smartwatches and similar tech, now curiously wants a gadget on every body.
■ The Washington Post (gift link): Days after Trump’s aborted Alaska summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, he and his national intelligence director have fired the CIA’s top Russia expert.
Invaders Trump’s OK with. The president’s at odds with Gov. Pritzker over plans to crack down on invasive carp in the Great Lakes.
■ To make his case that Chicago needs no National Guard reinforcements, Pritzker led reporters on a walk through the South Side.
■ Highlighting what Axios sees as a divide among Chicago’s black leaders, repeatedly failed mayoral candidate Willie Wilson embraces Trump’s threat to send the Guard to Chicago.
■ Ex-U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich’s counsel to Democrats: “Say safety is critically important, but local police rather than federal troops are best at dealing with it. Don’t stop there. Hammer Trump for pardoning the 1,500 criminals who violently attacked the United States Capitol … and for then firing the federal prosecutors who held them accountable.”
■ Law professor Anthony Kreis on news that the Guard deployment in D.C. has been assigned to spread mulch at federal monuments: “Congratulations, President Trump has remade the Civilian Conservation Corps.”
■ The Seattle Times: Federal immigration agents arrested firefighters working a fire on the Olympic Peninsula.
■ Snopes: Some people have been taking seriously satirist Andy Borowitz’s joke about National Guard troops refusing Chicago deployment due to bone spurs.
‘Go back to where you came from.’ Comments like that from fellow Chicago police officers have prompted one cop to sue the city for failing to protect him from discrimination.
■ A Chicago Teachers Union vice president writes for the Tribune: “Resist the efforts to revive the racist policing of the past.”
■ WTTW: Chicago paid $100,000 to a 14-year-old boy pinned to a Park Ridge sidewalk by an off-duty Chicago cop.
■ The police department’s launched a new podcast series* promising “candid, unfiltered conversations with members of CPD, residents and others who work closely with law enforcement.”
And so it goes. In what The Washington Post (gift link) calls “the most ferocious attack on the Ukrainian capital since President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s summit in Alaska failed to yield a ceasefire,” at least 17 are dead and 48 wounded.
Death of a newspaper. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is killing its print edition and going all-digital after Dec. 31.
■ Northwestern University noted last year that only about a third of the country’s more than 1,000 daily newspapers still print seven days a week.
‘I will walk out the motherf***ing door.’ Vanity Fair staffers have threatened a revolt if the magazine’s new editor follows through on the notion of putting First Lady Melania Trump on the cover.
■ “As a Jewish daughter of a father once in poor health,” Chicago author and columnist Elaine Soloway writes an open letter to Trump’s daughter Ivanka: “Insist he resign.”
‘Deal with the devil.’ Status reports that Google’s sibling YouTube TV cable TV alternative is adding the conspiracy-peddling One America News channel to its lineup …
■ … even as it struggles to keep the Fox collection of channels in the family.
■ Columnist Eric Zorn pronounces the Netflix documentary on Jussie Smollett’s lies a dud.
■ Historian Robert Loerzel marks the arrival on YouTube of David Letterman’s May 3, 1989, show at the Chicago Theatre.
Need a thing? Environmental activist website one5c’s out with a guide to “Where to rent (almost) anything.”
You (probably) owe ’em. If you’re reading Chicago Public Square for free, thank the people whose support has kept it coming all these years—including Al Slater, Christine Cooper (again!), Jill Brickman (again!), Judith Alexander, Peggy Swanson, Jeanette Mancusi, Dave McGovern, Arlene Thurow, Julia Gray, Ryan Arnold, Mike Krauser, Jon Hilkevitch, Angelika Kuehn, Jim Holmes, Stephen Schlesinger, Jeanne Mcinerney, Aris Georgiadis, Sandra Slater, Louise Dimiceli-Mitran, Maggie Ellsworth, Carol Hirschtick, Cheryl Foertsch, Ellen Mrazek, Frank Heitzman, Denise Mattson, Kevin Lampe, Mark Hines, Cathy Sullivan, David Boulanger, Vicki Seglin, Sandra Black, Chris Beck, Susan Gregoire, Alan Hoffstadter, Linnea Crowther, Linda Paul, Amy Lee Goodman, Kevin Weller, Martin Fischer, Sonya Booth, Ryan Bird, Tom Barnes, Ken Shiner, L ShoulterKarall, Victoria Quero, Lucy Tarabour, Doug Strubel, Allan Hippensteel, Marie Dillon, Mary Meegan, Karyn Esken, Timothy Mennel, Tom Macek, Jean Lubeckis, Kathy Burger, MJ Garnier, Mike Fainman, Suzy Carlson, Kevin Tynan, Elaine Soloway, Alice Cottingham, Dave Miretzky, Paul Zavagno, Helen Marshall, Rick Lunt, Betsy Blew-Ochoa, Susan Hardy, David Henkhaus, Andy Buchanan, Anne Frederick, Patricia Solano, Jan Kodner, Justin Walker, Alex Riepl Broz, Paul Clark, Ian Morrison and Andrew Thackray.
■ And that wraps up this periodic roll call of Square supporters—except for those who pitch in as little as $1, just once, today. They’ll get a shout-out in tomorrow’s end-of-summer edition.
■ Mike Braden made this edition better.
* For which—full disclosure—your Square columnist offered (without compensation) critical feedback to the department’s producer: An old friend, host and WBBM Newsradio alumnus Mariam Sobh.