Dead wait. Add a Chicago cemetery to the roster of institutions under investigation for improperly storing human remains awaiting their final disposition.
■ Illinois State Comptroller—and Chicago mayoral candidate—Susana Mendoza looks ahead to a law that next year will let her office quickly suspend crematory licenses.
Whoops. The Illinois Answers Project reports that two political campaign firms with close ties to men convicted of public corruption have gotten business from Gov. Pritzker’s reelection campaign and the Chicago Teachers Union.
■ Pritzker gets a shout-out in Euronews’ survey of “the invisible primary” for the 2028 Democratic presidential campaign—which has no official candidates yet.
Businesses behaving badly. Popular Information dives into campaign funding records to identify big companies supporting the congressional reelection campaign of an alleged domestic abuser.
■ Pro-Israel Political Update columnist Steve Sheffey on Michigan’s Senate race: “The general election is not a referendum on Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. It is a choice between El-Sayed and a Trump yes-man, a choice between Democratic and Republican control of the Senate.”
‘MAGA is suing for my emails.’ Columnist and former Illinois U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger—a Republican who voted to impeach Donald Trump—pledges to fight a Trump-aligned judicial group’s demand for all his communication with the FBI.
■ Civil Discourse columnist Joyce Vance marks the one-year anniversary of the military occupation of the District of Columbia …
■ … which Law Dork Chris Geidner calls “ongoing, unending, pointless—and very bad.”
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich on Todd Blanche’s ascendance to attorney general: “After casting the deciding vote to confirm a guy he absolutely knew to be a ginormous piece of shit, Bill Cassidy wants credit for thinking really hard about it and almost voting no.”
‘Bizarro-world version of civil rights.’ HBO’s John Oliver last night laid into the Trump Justice Department …
■ … with special attention to the department’s “absolute embarrassment” in prosecution of the Chicago area’s “Broadview Six.”
■ Oliver’s also escalating his legal taunting of the Buc-ee’s travel center chain.
Ballroom blitz. Law & Chaos reviews a weekend of “AI slop” posted by the president after a federal appeals court blocked construction of “Trump’s 90,000-square-foot Mar-a-Lago replica” at the White House.
■ The court’s description of him as “a temporary tenant” particularly struck a nerve: “We are not tenants. … We are PRESIDENTS.”
Water at risk. The Washington Post reports (gift link) that suspected Iranian hacks suggest U.S. water systems are ripe for cyberattacks.
■ The Onion: “This is why I drink urine. They can’t hack your bladder.”
■ Amazon is reportedly investing in a power plant that could become the biggest U.S. source of climate pollution.
■ The U.K. and France today were facing new temperature records in another heat wave.
Landlines’ sunset. As AT&T prepares to kill its analog copper wire phone service in Illinois, your Chicago Public Square columnist has been exploring alternatives …
■ … and recalling how the answering machine changed things.
■ The Guardian: Harry Potter fans have forced relocation of an undersea power cable to avoid “desecrating” the fictional burial site of house elf Dobby.
‘Get outraged, and active.’ American Crisis columnist Margaret Sullivan offers ways to fight the Federal Communications Commission’s efforts to remake the media in Trump’s image.
■ Award-winning former radio reporter turned media critic Rob Archer lays out in disturbing detail a nightmare scenario where the major news networks no longer exist and an earthquake hits Los Angeles.
If the government won’t do it … Now that the Trump administration has reversed its long-running universal recommendation of the annual flu shot, the American Academy of Pediatrics is stepping up to endorse it for kids 6 months and up.
■ Here’s the AAP’s formal guidance.
Look up. Way up. The Perseid meteor shower—with up to 100 of ’em per hour—returns Wednesday night into Thursday.
■ A total solar eclipse will darken Europe Wednesday for the first time in a quarter-century.
Square mailbag.
■ Reader Rob Breymeier disputes a reader note published in Friday’s edition: “The motor fuel tax doesn’t change based on the price of gas. It is a rate per gallon, not per dollar. Even more misleading, when gas prices go up, people pump less and the state collects less in motor fuel taxes.”
Correction. Friday’s edition promised—but did not deliver—a gift link to this item: Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch sees a stealth plan to end Republicans’ Senate majority. There you go.
■ Your thoughts are always welcome here.
■ Garry Jaffe and Mike Braden made this edition better.