‘Air you can wear.’ That’s what a senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Chicago tells the Tribune (gift link) you can expect in a week of dangerously hot weather—especially today through Wednesday …
■ … with temperatures that feel like 105º …
■ … and thunderstorms likely to follow.
■ As the heat propels more people to Lake Michigan, longtime boaters tell the Sun-Times Illinois needs more rules over who can buy or rent a water vessel: “There’s no such thing as a driver’s license for recreational boating.”
■ Street closures have begun for Taste of Chicago, which returns a week from Wednesday.
Court’s grand finale. At the end of another term, the Supreme Court today handed down rulings in several big cases, including …
■ … defeat of a Trump-led challenge to states’ practice of counting late-arriving mailed ballots …
■ … rejection of the president’s push to toss a jury’s $5 million finding that he sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll at a New York department store …
■ … and dramatic expansion of the president’s authority to fire the heads of independent agencies.
■ Law professor Joyce Vance sees a few reasons to be cheerful: “Is it too much to hope that the rule of law could be rebounding as we head into the Fourth of July?”
‘Now, we have to go after them.’ Oak Park Village Trustee Brian Straw and his lawyer, Chris Parente, explain in a new Chicago Public Square podcast how they derailed the Justice Department’s case against Straw and five others in the government’s prosecution of Broadview immigration enforcement protesters—and what they’re gonna do next.
■ The Sun-Times reviews the broad impact of their fight: “High-profile cases are collapsing, judges want answers, and defense attorneys are calling for an investigation—and the possible prosecution—of Chicago’s top federal law enforcement official.” (Photos: Todd Bannor.)
■ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (gift link): “The shocking 50-to-100-year prison sentences to leftist Texas protesters are more fascism than true criminal justice.”
■ Ctrl-Alt-Right-Delete columnist Melissa Ryan: “We’re all antifa (allegedly). The Trump Regime can’t define it. That’s the point.”
■ The Trib: The feds admit they detained for eight months and then deported a Chicago man to Venezuela because of a lousy “inadvertent error.”
Illinois passes. It’s one of several states opting out of Trump’s 250th anniversary celebration in Washington.
■ Ex-Jezebel editor-in-chief Laura Bassett: “No one showed up to the Great American State Fair except a masturbating Uncle Sam.”
■ Pulitzer winner Gene Weingarten went there: “I did not see throngs. I mostly saw small, scattered knots of folks who seemed stupefied.”
■ Everyone is entitled to my own opinion columnist Jeff Tiedrich: Trump’s “sleazy, for-profit attempt to hijack America’s 250th birthday … is quickly turning into a huge, stinky pile of shit” …
■ … and it’s getting worse.
■ Journalism watchdog Mark Jacob on a New York Times story about a billion-dollar mining deal that stands to benefit Trump’s sons (gift link): “The Trump regime has one goal: to stuff money in the Trumps’ pockets, no matter who gets hurt.”
‘As a centrist Democrat, I cannot accept new ideas. Or winning.’ USA Today’s Chicago-based columnist Rex Huppke mocks those who fear the party’s moving so far left that it might win.
■ Columnist and former U.S. Rep. Marie Newman: “Corporate Democrats’ tantrums are not going to work.”
■ Former Trib columnist Charlie Madigan—who spent the ’70s as a correspondent in the Soviet Union—dismisses Trump’s “loudly voiced fear that election victories by Democratic socialists in recent primaries are signs of an emerging Communism being pushed by Democrats.”
Comcast’s big split. The communications giant is severing its media brands—including NBCUniversal—from its broadband and wireless operations.
■ Axios: The plan “underscores the pressure that media companies face to evolve as technology upends the way consumers engage with content.”
■ Spyglass columnist M.G. Siegler speculates on potential buyers—including Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
■ Another Times gift link: As a corporate merger threatens to put CNN under the same regressive leadership now steering CBS, its journalists are bracing for the worst.
■ The corporate parent of Saks and Nieman Marcus is out of bankruptcy—with a new name.
Swisher’s big swing. The AP says longtime tech journalist Kara Swisher is “betting the influence that made her a Silicon Valley force will translate into politics.”
■ Flashback: Swisher mapped the “war for the web” in a 1998 interview with your Square columnist—a sit-down that now feels like a time capsule from the dawn of the consumer internet age.
■ John Oliver’s begging for a role in a TV soap opera has paid off—with roles in two shows.
To AI or not to AI? An invitation in Friday’s Chicago Public Square to comment on reader and contributor Jan Kodner’s use of AI to generate editorial cartoons generated so much thoughtful response that … well, take a look at the first Square letters page.
■ LA Times alumnus and Rebuilding Local News policy director Matt Pearce: “It’s not journalism’s job to make AI more accurate.”
Like it or not … Please know that reader financial support keeps Square coming.
■ If you’re already a supporter, thanks.
■ Mike Braden made this edition better.