
Afternoon Briefing: Neko Case recalls formative years in Chicago in memoir
Good afternoon, Chicago.
A packed Thornton Township meeting that started in high spirits devolved into a brawl after residents got up to speak.
Chaos erupted during the public comment period last night after community activist Jedidiah Brown called Supervisor Tiffany Henyard an expletive.
Following his comments, Brown was seen walking toward the table where Henyard and other township officials were seated before he spun around toward the back of the building where the fight broke out.
Here's what else is happening today. And remember, for the latest breaking news in Chicago, visit chicagotribune.com/latest-headlines and sign up to get our alerts on all your devices.
Subscribe to more newsletters | Asking Eric | Horoscopes | Puzzles & Games | Today in History
Early in their final pitch to jurors today, prosecutors displayed a screenshot from an undercover video: Michael Madigan, then the powerful speaker of the Illinois House, leaning forward with his hand out. That image, secretly recorded by alderman-turned-FBI mole Daniel Solis, is surely the portrait of Madigan that prosecutors hope jurors will take back with them to deliberations — a politician laser-focused on what he could get for himself. Read more here.
More top news stories:
OIG report finds Mayor Brandon Johnson's office improperly blocked access to gift room with Gucci bags, other designer items
Man found dead and bound with power cord, duct tape; police seek suspect
One or two medical office assistants work at each of the clinics, along with additional clinicians who support virtual care, and Advocate is working to find alternate roles for those employees, Advocate said in a statement. Read more here.
More top business stories:
Waukegan hospital asks court to remove coroner from death investigation; accuses her of 'vendetta'
Starbucks reports better-than-expected quarterly sales as turnaround efforts begin
While the Cubs' 26-man payroll rose to $176 million with the Ryan Pressly acquisition, according to Spotrac, that's still $112 million under the Dodgers. The Dodgers are one of four teams with a current payroll of $256 million or more. Read more here.
More top sports stories:
18-year-old fan who was hurt celebrating Philadelphia Eagles' win dies from his injuries
Column: To bet or not to bet? A Chicago sportswriter talks of the dangers of gambling
Neko Case has a new memoir, 'The Harder I Fight The More I Love You,' and in it, the music business becomes a 'hungry, exhausting bore,' which is somewhat obvious, as metaphors go. Read more here.
More top Eat. Watch. Do. stories:
'Paradise' review: A Secret Service agent goes rogue
Marriott Theatre preparing to open 50th anniversary season
President Donald Trump's budget office rescinded a memo freezing spending on federal grants, less than two days after it sparked widespread confusion and legal challenges across the country. Read more here.
More top stories from around the world:
President Donald Trump appeals his New York hush money conviction
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. struggles to answer questions on Medicare and Medicaid at confirmation hearing
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Bloomberg
41 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Musk Blinks First in Trump Feud That Cost Him $34 Billion
When Elon Musk and Donald Trump joined forces during the presidential campaign, there was always a question over how long their alliance would last and who would prevail if it didn't work out. After the public spat between the world's richest man and its most-powerful leader spun out of control on Thursday, the answer was clear: It was Musk who eventually backed down when Tesla Inc.'s stock price tanked and his net worth crumbled by $34 billion. The damage to Musk's business empire will be difficult repair — with Tesla's stock up only about 4% soon after the market's open, recouping just some of its previous day's slide.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Data fail to support Trump's justifications for latest travel ban
The Trump administration on Wednesday announced travel restrictions targeting 19 countries in Africa and Asia, including many of the world's poorest nations. All travel is banned from 12 of these countries, with partial restrictions on travel from the rest. The presidential proclamation, entitled "Restricting the Entry of Foreign Nationals to Protect the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats," is aimed at "countries throughout the world for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a full or partial suspension on the entry or admission of nationals from those countries." In a video that accompanied the proclamation, President Donald Trump said, "The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colo., has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted." The latest travel ban reimposes restrictions on many of the countries that were included on travel bans in Trump's first term, along with several new countries. But this travel ban, like the earlier ones, will not significantly improve national security and public safety in the United States. That's because migrants account for a minuscule portion of violence in the United States. And migrants from the latest travel ban countries account for an even smaller portion, according to data that I have collected. The suspect in Colorado, for example, is from Egypt, which is not on the travel ban list. As a scholar of political sociology, I don't believe Trump's latest travel ban is about national security. Rather, I'd argue, it's primarily about using national security as an excuse to deny visas to non-White applicants. Terrorism and public safety In the past five years, the United States has witnessed more than 100,000 homicides. Political violence by militias and other ideological movements accounted for 354 fatalities, according to an initiative known as the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, which tracks armed conflict around the world. That's less than 1% of the country's homicide victims. And foreign terrorism accounted for less than 1% of this 1%, according to my data. The Trump administration says the United States cannot appropriately vet visa applicants in countries with uncooperative governments or underdeveloped security systems. That claim is false. The State Department and other government agencies do a thorough job of vetting visa applicants, even in countries where there is no U.S. embassy, according to an analysis by the CATO Institute. The U.S. government has sophisticated methods for identifying potential threats. They include detailed documentation requirements, interviews with consular officers and clearance by national security agencies. And it rejects more than 1 in 6 visa applications, with ever-increasing procedures for detecting fraud. The thoroughness of the visa review process is evident in the numbers. Authorized foreign-born residents of the United States are far less likely than U.S.-born residents to engage in criminal activity. And unauthorized migrants are even less likely to commit crimes. Communities with more migrants -- authorized and unauthorized -- have similar or slightly lower crime rates than communities with fewer migrants. If vetting were as deficient as Trump's executive order claims, we would expect to see a significant number of terrorist plots from countries on the travel ban list. But we don't. Of the 4 million U.S. residents from the 2017 travel ban countries, I have documented only four who were involved in violent extremism in the past five years. Two of them were arrested after plotting with undercover law enforcement agents. One was found to have lied on his asylum application. One was an Afghan man who killed three Pakistani Shiite Muslim immigrants in New Mexico in 2022. Such a handful of zealots with rifles or homemade explosives can be life-altering for victims and their families, but they do not represent a threat to U.S. national security. Degrading the concept of national security Trump has been trying for years to turn immigration into a national security issue. In his first major speech on national security in 2016, Trump focused on the "dysfunctional immigration system which does not permit us to know who we let into our country." His primary example was an act of terrorism by a man who was born in the United States. The first Trump administration's national security strategy, issued in December 2017, prioritized jihadist terrorist organizations that "radicalize isolated individuals" as "the most dangerous threat to the Nation" -- not armies, not another 9/11, but isolated individuals. If the travel ban is not really going to improve national security or public safety, then what is it about? Linking immigration to national security seems to serve two long-standing Trump priorities. First is his effort to make American more White, in keeping with widespread bias among his supporters against non-White immigrants. Remember Trump's insults to Mexicans and Muslims in his escalator speech announcing his presidential campaign in 2015. He has also expressed a preference for White immigrants from Norway in 2018 and South Africa in 2025. Trump has repeatedly associated himself with nationalists who view immigration by non-Whites as a danger to White supremacy. Second, invoking national security allows Trump to pursue this goal without the need for accountability, since Congress and the courts have traditionally deferred to the executive branch on national security issues. Trump also claims national security justifications for tariffs and other policies that he has declared national emergencies, in a bid to avoid criticism by the public and oversight by the other branches of government. But this oversight is necessary in a democratic system to ensure that immigration policy is based on facts. Charles Kurzman is a pProfessor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The views and opinions in this commentary are solely those of the author.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Job growth held steady in May, but new signs of economic trouble emerge
Expectations heading into this week showed projections of about 125,000 new jobs having been added in the United States in May. As it turns out, according to the new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the totals easily exceeded expectations. NBC News reported: The United States added 139,000 jobs in May, more than expected but pointing to a labor market that continues to slow. The employment data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics exceeded forecasts for about 120,000 payroll gains but marked a decline from the revised 147,000 jobs added in April. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.2%, remaining near historic lows. Earlier this week, Donald Trump published a one-sentence statement to his social media platform, in which the president boasted, 'Because of Tariffs, our Economy is BOOMING!' The data suggests otherwise. There's nothing especially wrong with the preliminary topline totals from May — 139,000 jobs is a mediocre number but hardly a disaster — though there are other signs of trouble. For example, the revised jobs totals from March and April were sharply lower, pointing to a job market that appears to be cooling. Indeed, consider the broader context: Over the first five months of 2025, the latest data suggest the economy has added 619,000 jobs. Over the first five months of 2024 — when Trump said the economy was terrible — the total was nearly 898,000 jobs. Over the first five months of 2023, the U.S. economy added nearly 1.3 million jobs. If we exclude 2020, when the pandemic wreaked havoc on the economy, the first five months of this year are the worst since the Great Recession. A variety of adjectives come to mind, but 'BOOMING' isn't one of them. NBC News' report added, 'Even as the economy continued to add jobs at a relatively steady clip last month, the report showed other signs of a weakening labor market. The ratio of employed workers to the total population fell to 59.7%, the lowest rate since the pandemic. And an alternative measure of unemployment that includes 'discouraged' workers, or those who have stopped looking for work, returned to a post-pandemic high of 4.5%.' In recent weeks, there's been a lot of discussion in economic and finance circles about when and whether the White House tariffs and trade policies would start to affect the domestic job market. Real trouble hasn't yet arrived — it's tough to complain too much about a 4.2% unemployment rate — but concerned chatter is going to be noticeably louder in response to this new data. This post updates our related earlier coverage. This article was originally published on