‘Likely tornado.’ Another round of heavy rain and strong winds hit the Chicago area yesterday.
■ Camp Mystic, where 25 kids and two counselors were killed in last year’s catastrophic floods along the Guadalupe River in Texas, has filed for bankruptcy.
■ Reflecting on those floods, a meteorologist tells The Atlantic that, in an age of climate change, nowhere’s immune to flash floods: “All you need is rain. And that can happen almost anywhere” (gift link).
■ Northwest Indiana’s already endured up to five times as much rain this month as it’s seen on average over the last 30 years.
■ Chicago’s now set up to monitor air pollution neighborhood by neighborhood.
‘He’s having a fucking tantrum.’ That’s a senior Republican to NOTUS on Trump’s refusal to sign a housing reform law unless Congress OKs his clampdown on voting rights.
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich is typically blunt: “Colicky piss-baby melts down at Senate Republicans.”
■ The American Prospect: “Trump has found a way to soothe Democratic fears that Republicans in Congress will continue to savage the poor, funnel money to the rich, and make the nation safe for corporate dominion. He’s effectively shut down Congress.”
SCOTUSpalooza. In a raft of rulings handed down this morning, the U.S. Supreme Court …
■ … struck down a law limiting the presence of guns in certain businesses …
■ … cleared immigration officials to turn away asylum seekers at the border …
■ … approved the administration’s plan to end temporary immigration protection—and commence deportation—for more than a million people allowed to live and work in the U.S. because of crises in their home countries, such as Syria and Haiti …
■ … and blocked thousands of lawsuits claiming the weed-killer Roundup causes cancer—clamping down on one of the biggest cohorts of product liability lawsuits in U.S. history.
War some more. Berated by Trump over a narrow vote to tamp down on his assault against Iran, Senate Republicans caved.
■ Wonkette’s Evan Hurst: “Now Trump feels much more free to continue losing the war he started for the sole purpose of breaking things so that he could say he fixed it better than Barack Obama did.”
■ The Daily Show’s Josh Johnson: “Our status in the world went from ‘global superpower’ to ‘monkey who got loose at the zoo and has a knife.’”
■ Got questions you’d like asked? Email Qs@ChicagoPublicSquare.com.
‘Trump changed the rules for Park Police. Now an innocent man is dead.’ Popular Information: The Republican administration’s embrace of vehicle pursuits by U.S. Park Police was “played for laughs” last year.
CTA security boost. Cook County sheriff’s deputies are now patrolling Chicago Transit Authority trains, as Sheriff Tom Dart considers creation of a united police force to keep the peace on all Chicago-area mass transit.
■ A Tribune editorial pooh-poohs the notion of a Gun Violence Reduction Department: “More bureaucracy is no answer. … Mayors must be responsible for keeping the streets of Chicago safe. Period.”
Broadcast bloodbath. Radio giant iHeartMedia—you may remember it as Clear Channel Communications, now overseeing eight Chicago-area stations—has been laying off hundreds of workers across the country …
■ … including Chicago and the Quad Cities.
‘My mind went straight to the Monty Python song Every Sperm is Sacred—but satire has apparently become reality.’ That’s journalist Stephanie Zimmermann’s reaction to The New York Times’ report “Support Builds on the Right for Prosecuting Women Who Get Abortions.”
■ Gov. Pritzker’s signed a law shielding out-of-staters seeking abortions in Illinois from retaliation in their home states.
■ Here’s the Python song.
‘Make AIs fight.’ Tech guru Kim Komando spells out how she pits ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude against one another: “One AI, left alone, can turn into a yes-man with a keyboard.”
■ Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman ponders the question “Why does everyone hate AI?”
■ Columnist Neil Steinberg: “I will probably still be savoring examples of AI incompetence up to the moment the robot guards herd me into the camp.”
Want Obama Center tickets? More will open to the public July 8 …
■ … or July 1 for Obama Foundation founding members—one of which you can become here.
Correction. Yesterday’s Chicago Public Square—sadly, not for the first time—said “Iraq” when it should have said “Iran.”
■ Mike Braden made this edition better.