Chicago

Americans grappled with another wave of gun violence that left seven people dead after a shooting in a Chicago suburb while two new polls paint a grim picture of Americans’ views of President Joe Biden, his handling of the economy, and the country’s institutions in general.Here’s a rundown of what’s happened today:
A Chicago Sun-Times journalist wrote a harrowing account of the mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, that killed seven during an Independence Day parade.
Biden awarded the Medal of Honor to four army veterans who fought in Vietnam.
The head of Planned Parenthood talked to the Guardian about how the group will continue working to help women get abortions.
Inflation and the overall cost of living remains Americans’ top concern, according to a poll released today that casts doubt on Democrats’ hopes that concerns about abortion and gun access will reverse Biden’s poor approval ratings.
But if Biden is unpopular, he’s not alone. Americans’ confidence in almost all of their institutions has declined compared with last year, according to a different poll.
Local authorities also announced the names of three more victims which had not been known yet. The identity of the seventh – and so far last – victim has not been released. The three new names are: Katherine Goldstein, 88 Irina McCarthy, 35 Kevin McCarthy, 37At a press conference police have detailed two previous incidents involving the alleged shooter Robert Crimo. The first happened in April, 2019 when police got a report from Crimo’s family that he had attempted suicide. The second occurred in September, 2019 when there was a report that Crimo had been making threats that he wanted to “kill everyone” and had a collection of knives.Police visited where Crimo was living and confiscated a collection of 16 knives, a dagger and a sword. The New York Times has some heartbreaking details on the third victim to be identified. The paper reports: Steve Straus, 88.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}A father of two, grandfather of four and a financial adviser who, at 88, still took the train every day from his Highland Park home to his office at a brokerage firm in Chicago, Steve Straus “should not have had to die this way,” his niece, Cynthia Straus, said in a phone interview.
“He was an honorable man who worked his whole life and looked out for his family and gave everyone the best he had,” Ms Straus said. “He was kind and gentle and had huge intelligence and humor and wit.”
He was devoted to his wife, she said, and intensely close with his brother, and extremely health conscious: “He exercised as if he were 50.”Biden has no plans yet to visit Highland Park, Illinois, site of Monday’s mass shooting that killed seven people, his press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.“We don’t have any plans right now to go to Chicago”, the city of which Highland Park is a suburb, Jean-Pierre said. However vice-president Kamala Harris is scheduled to be in the city later today to to address the National Education Association, “and she will speak to the devastation that we that we all saw with our own eyes yesterday in Highland Park”, according to Jean-Pierre.Biden will travel to Cleveland, Ohio on Wednesday for a speech regarding the economy.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is holding the daily press briefing, and reiterated the Biden administration’s efforts to get WNBA star Brittney Griner released from prison in Russia.“We believe she was wrongfully detained. We believe she needs to come home, she should be home,” Jean-Pierre said, adding that Griner’s wife spoke with national security advisor Jake Sullivan over the weekend, their second phone call in the past 10 days.Griner wrote a letter to Biden asking him to push for her release, which Jean-Pierre said the president had read. “He takes this to heart, he takes this job very seriously, especially when it comes to bringing home US nationals who are wrongfully detained,” Jean-Pierre said.This post has been updated to clarify that Griner’s wife, not Griner herself, spoke to Jake Sullivan.’I’m terrified I might be here forever’: Brittney Griner appeals to Biden in letterRead morePresident Biden has ordered flags flown at half-staff across the United States and its embassies abroad until the end of the day on July 9 in memory of the people killed at the mass shooting in Highland Park.Biden had previously ordered flags flown at half-staff in May after the shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas that killed 19 children and two teachers.A seventh person has died following the July 4 shooting at an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois, NBC Chicago reports.The death brings the toll of wounded in the shooting to 46, according to the broadcaster. Police have said the man suspected of carrying out the attack planned it for weeks and dressed as a woman in order to conceal his identity.Mississippi’s restrictions on abortion were at the center of the supreme court’s ruling last month overturning Roe v. Wade, but the litigation isn’t finished in the state.The Associated Press reports that Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the plaintiff in the supreme court case, is suing to stop a law that would ban almost all abortions in the state:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} The law — which state lawmakers passed before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 ruling that allowed abortions nationwide — is set to take effect Thursday.
The Jackson Women’s Health Organization sought a temporary restraining order that would allow it to remain open, at least while the lawsuit remains in court.
The closely watched lawsuit is part of a flurry of activity that has occurred nationwide since the Supreme Court ruled. Conservative states have moved to halt or limit abortions while others have sought to ensure abortion rights, all as some women try to obtain the medical procedure against the changing legal landscape.
If Chancery Judge Debbra K. Halford grants the clinic’s request to block the new Mississippi law from taking effect, the decision could be quickly appealed to the state Supreme Court.Twenty-six states are expected to outlaw abortion entirely following the supreme court’s decision, and according to the Guttmacher Institute, six states have already done so.Maryland’s governor announced today that his state will change its requirements for licensing concealed weapons in response to last month’s ruling by the supreme court expanding Americans’ ability to possess a gun outside their homes.In light of a recent Supreme Court ruling and to ensure compliance with the Constitution, I am directing the Maryland State Police to suspend utilization of the ‘good and substantial reason’ standard when reviewing applications for Wear and Carry Permits.My full statement: pic.twitter.com/0wi1dzD8Aw— Governor Larry Hogan (@GovLarryHogan) July 5, 2022
As its term came to a close in June, the court’s conservative majority overturned a New York law that had placed strict limits on carrying a firearm outside the home, which affected states with similar laws on their books, including Maryland.New York’s governor Kathy Hochul last week signed legislation designed to counter the supreme court’s ruling by prohibiting the carrying of weapons in certain locations such as bars and restaurants that serve alcohol, schools, government buildings and airports, as well as requiring owners to consent to people carrying guns on their property.US supreme court overturns New York handgun law in bitter blow to gun-control pushRead moreIn other January 6 news, Adam Kinzinger, one of only two Republicans sitting on the House committee investigating the insurrection, has released a compilation of threatening and profane phone calls his office has received.Threats of violence over politics has increased heavily in the last few years. But the darkness has reached new lows. My new interns made this compilation of recent calls they’ve received while serving in my DC office.WARNING: this video contains foul & graphic language. pic.twitter.com/yQJvvAHBVV— Adam Kinzinger (@RepKinzinger) July 5, 2022
Last year, Kinzinger announced he would retire from Congress, where he’s served since 2011.A Georgia grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s attempts to subvert the 2020 election result in the state has issued subpoenas to a number of the former president’s attorneys and allies, including senator Lindsey Graham.The special grand jury empaneled in Fulton county, where the capital and largest city Atlanta lies, issued the subpoenas today, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} In addition to Giuliani, among those being summoned are John Eastman, Cleta Mitchell, Kenneth Chesbro and Jenna Ellis, all of whom advised Trump on strategies for overturning Democrat Joe Biden’s wins in Georgia and other swing states.
The grand jury also subpoenaed South Carolina U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s top allies in the U.S. Senate, and attorney and podcast host Jacki Pick Deason.
The subpoenas, were filed July 5 and signed off by Fulton Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who is overseeing the special grand jury. Unlike subpoenas issued to Georgians, the summons were required to receive McBurney’s blessing since they are for people who reside outside the state.Viewers of the January 6 committee’s hearings will remember Eastman, the lawyer who, according to testimony from witnesses before the lawmakers, worked with Trump on his plot to undermine the results of the 2020 election. Eastman is among those who asked Trump for a pardon before he left office.At the press conference, investigators said the suspect Robert E Crimo III, 21, had legally bought the rifle allegedly used in the shootings and recovered at the scene – a high-powered rifle styled after an AR-15 – along with at least one more, as well as some pistols.The attack had evidently been planned for weeks, said Covelli, though investigators had not been tipped off to the social media videos posted by the suspect before the shooting.Authorities have still not said what charges Crimo faces, though another press conference is scheduled for later today.All six people killed were adults, Covelli said, and more than 30 others went to hospitals with bullet wounds.Covelli said there is no indication targets were picked out based on race, religion or any other federally protected status.The suspect in the 4 July shootings in Highland Park pre-planned the attack for several weeks, according to officials, and wore “women’s clothing” in what investigators said they believed was an effort to conceal his identity.According to Chris Covelli, the leader of a police taskforce investigating major crimes in the Illinois county that includes Highland Park, local officers recognized the suspect in surveillance footage they reviewed after the shooting, which helped them track him down. The suspect has prominent facial tattoos. Details continue to emerge about the mass shooting in a Chicago suburb yesterday, while two new polls paint a grim picture of Americans’ views of President Joe Biden, his handling of the economy, and the country’s institutions in general.Here’s a rundown of what’s happened so far today:
A Chicago Sun-Times journalist wrote a harrowing account of the mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, that killed six during an Independence Day parade.
Biden awarded the Medal of Honor to four army veterans who fought in Vietnam.
The head of Planned Parenthood talked to the Guardian about how the group will continue working to help women get abortions.
Inflation and the overall cost of living remains Americans’ top concern, according to a poll released today that casts doubt on Democrats’ hopes that concerns about abortion and gun access will reverse Biden’s poor approval ratings.
But if Biden is unpopular, he’s not alone. Americans’ confidence in almost all of their institutions has declined compared with last year, according to a different poll.
High inflation is just one reason why economists are worrying that the United States is poised to enter a recession.But if the economy does contract, The Wall Street Journal reports that it may not look like more recent downturns such as at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic or the global financial crisis. One key difference is that waves of layoffs that accompanied those downturns may not occur.From their article exploring the “very strange” situation the world’s largest economy finds itself in:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Today, something highly unusual is happening. Economic output fell in the first quarter and signs suggest it did so again in the second. Yet the job market showed little sign of faltering during the first half of the year. The jobless rate fell from 4% last December to 3.6% in May.
It is the latest strange twist in the odd trajectory of the pandemic economy, and a riddle for those contemplating a recession. If the U.S. is in or near one, it doesn’t yet look like any other on record.
Analysts sometimes talked about “jobless recoveries” after past recessions, in which economic output rose but employers kept shedding workers. The first half of 2022 was the mirror image—a “jobful” downturn, in which output fell and companies kept hiring. Whether it will spiral into a fuller and deeper recession isn’t known, though a growing number of economists believe it will.
Some companies, especially in the tech sector, have given indications that they’re pulling back on hiring, though across the broad economy the job market has rarely looked stronger.Also unpopular with Americans: the country’s institutions.Gallup has today released a poll showing a decline in confidence for most of the 16 institutions they track, in particular the supreme court and the presidency.Americans’ confidence in major U.S. institutions has dropped to the lowest point in Gallup’s more than 40-year trend. https://t.co/G2frb7HXxk pic.twitter.com/OyWfUwXmjp— GallupNews (@GallupNews) July 5, 2022
In the yearly survey, confidence in the supreme court dropped 11 percentage points from 2021 to 25 percent, while the presidency suffered a 15 point decline to 23 percent. The least popular institution was Congress, in which only seven percent of respondent had confidence, down five points from last year. Just above them was television news, in which only 11 percent of Americans had confidence. Small businesses were the most popular institution of those surveyed, with 68 percent confidence, a decline of only two percentage points from last year. The military was up next with 64 percent confidence, followed by the police, with 45 percent confidence. More