Violent weekend. CWBChicago: Escalating a pattern of mayhem at this time of year, Father’s Day weekend shootings in the city doubled the total for the same weekend last year.
■ A shootout among three vehicles traveling along the Dan Ryan Expressway yesterday afternoon shattered the window of a CTA Red Line train, injuring a passenger.
■ Block Club: Drivers keep running over warning signs at a North Side intersection, but the city plans no big changes.
‘By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs.’ A three-time Olympian canoeist completing a 52-mile bike ride was arrested after touching the accursed Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool …
■ … whose algal bloom and other problems President Trump has—without evidence—blamed on vandalism.
■ Opinionator Jeff Tiedrich: “Donny’s decided to solve this self-inflicted disaster in the most Donny way possible: By declaring that if you touch his beloved Pool, you’re going to jail for a millionty skillion years.”
■ Talking Points Memo’s Sarah Posner: “The entire debacle has all the hallmarks of a flailing dictator story.”
■ Columnist Chris Geidner: “Being at the Reflecting Pool, I reflected. Four years ago today, I launched Law Dork.”
■ Former U.S. prosecutor Joyce Vance updates the Trump Kennedy Center legal fight: “Trump’s name is gone, but the case isn’t quite over.”
‘Trump is an asshole.’ That’s the translation of a right-wing Italian newspaper’s page-one banner headline over an account of the president’s conflict with Italy’s right-wing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
■ She calls Trump’s assertion that she “begged” for a photo with him “completely fabricated.”
‘These billionaires … wanted me to pay them, thousands of dollars … to have the privilege of speaking to them.’ Author and tech watchdog Cory Doctorow digs into his email trash folder to discover “how the Epstein Class recruits” …
■ … in this case through the secretive Dialog society …
■ … that was founded by, in A.V. Club’s words, “Peter ‘Literally named his data surveillance company after the evil all-seeing bauble from Lord Of The Rings’ Thiel” …
■ … and the revelation of which has put Hollywood stars on the defensive.
■ Popular Information lifts the curtain on “a network of purportedly progressive super PACs … funded by a Republican dark money group … to bolster Democratic candidates that Republicans believe will be weaker in the general election, including fringe candidates with repugnant views.”
■ British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s quitting, forced out by his own party after—among other things—appointing a friend of Jeffrey Epstein as U.K. ambassador to the U.S.
‘Tabloid garbage.’ Columnist and former Chicago TV news executive Jennifer Schulze says Bari Weiss’ latest hire at CBS “continues her jaw-dropping attack” on the network’s credibility.
■ A Quad Cities TV anchor’s on-air farewell message—complaining that local news has failed “to take people out of their bubbles and comfort zones”—has gone viral.
■ Dozens of Chicago-area journalists last night bade farewell to journalist Irv Leavitt.
‘They want to be worshiped at the office altar.’ A University of Pennsylvania organizational psychologist who’s surveyed thousands of executives, middle managers and frontline supervisors explains in The New York Times (gift link) “The Secret Reason Bosses Want Everyone Back in the Office, Every Day of the Week.”
■ Columnist and M.D. James Whalen uses the drug Prevagen to explore the dark side of direct-to-consumer drug ads.
Reasons to be cheerful. Axios: Life expectancy in Chicago’s hit a new high.
■ Summer’s officially here—with summerlike temperatures on the way … by next weekend.
Thanks. Mike Braden made this edition better.