‘Multiple tornadoes.’ The National Weather Service was working today to confirm just how many twisters ravaged the Chicago region yesterday.
■ NBC Chicago surveys the “war zone”-like devastation, power outages and more—including video of the moment a man was pulled from the rubble of a Streator home.
■ Merrillville got hit bad.
■ Also: A derecho …
■ … but the Mumford & Sons concert at Wrigley Field went on—eventually.
■ NPR’s public editor takes a critical look at the network’s elimination of its climate desk team.
Broadview Six fallout. Among the consequences of the federal government’s botched prosecution of Chicago-area immigration enforcement protesters, the discredited U.S. attorney’s office is dropping charges against two defendants in a Loretto Hospital scam.
■ Nurses at Chicago’s St. Mary Hospital in Ukrainian Village yesterday staged a one-day strike.
■ Its last functioning elevator now dead, the whole Oak Park campus of West Suburban Medical Center has been fully closed.
■ Under the banner “End Assisted Suicide,” disability rights and patient advocacy groups are suing to block an Illinois law that, effective in September, would let terminally ill adults obtain medication to end their lives.
‘It’s not really news anymore. In fact, it’s bullshit.’ Press Watch columnist Dan Froomkin calls on news organizations to stop putting whatever Donald Trump says in headlines.
■ Witness: Yesterday’s cancellation of threatened new strikes on Iran.
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich: “Donny is clearly unfit for office—so why do we even have a 25th Amendment if we’re never going to use it?”
■ Author and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich shares an alarm from two congressional alumni: “Trump’s rolling coup is already underway.”
‘If God wanted the White House to be struck by lightning, that would have happened 18 months ago, so I think they’re pretty safe.’ Jimmy Kimmel’s unimpressed by UFC CEO Dana White’s pledge that Sunday’s combative birthday celebration for the president will go on “even if lightning strikes.”
■ Can’t look away? Here’s how to watch …
■ Or watch a concert assembled by the resistance—including Jane Fonda and Patti Smith.
Meanwhile, in the Upside Down … An Illinois Republican fundraiser today in Elk Grove Village was prepping to welcome keynote speaker Nick Shirley, the YouTuber credited with sparking the federal crackdown on the Twin Cities.
■ In what Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! host Peter Sagal calls “a subtly sharp report,” The Wall Street Journal (gift link) reviews the Turning Point USA Women’s Leadership Summit’s “clear message for this moment in American politics: How to be a woman in the Trump 2.0 era.”
‘MAGA toady’s political career is finally finished.’ Columnist and former D.C. cop Michael Fanone—among those beaten in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot—sheds no tears for the political career of Rep. Nancy Mace …
■ … whose defeat in South Carolina’s gubernatorial primary has become the source of internet comedy.
■ The Onion: “Mace Introduces Bill To Separate Gubernatorial Races By Gender.”
‘June, that wonderful month of weddings, strawberries and the summer solstice … none of which figure in this week’s news quiz.’ That’s your call to action from The Conversation’s quizmaster, past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel.
■ Axios’ Justin Kaufmann quizzes your memories of 1996, “one of Chicago’s biggest years.” The score here: 8/10.
‘Elon Musk, human Ponzi scheme.’ As SpaceX today becomes a publicly traded company, economist Paul Krugman predicts that “Elon Musk will eventually collapse,” but at the expense of “ordinary Americans who have in effect been forced to buy in.”
■ Today’s initial public offering could make Musk the world’s first trillionaire.
‘Disappointment Day.’ Former WGN-TV critic Dean Richards gives Steven Spielberg’s latest aliens-are-here movie, Disclosure Day, a C-—partly for scenes at a small Missouri TV station “that would never ever ever happen in real-life local TV.”
■ Block Club has 30—count ’em, 30—things to do this weekend in Chicago …
■ … but Axios counts 31 …
■ … with traffic jams to match.