“He may end up being John the Baptist to someone else. Headless but remembered well.”

Cook County, Ill., Treasurer Maria Pappas, regarding a report that proposes scrapping or modifying the state’s Scavenger Sale law in favor of tax-cutting and other programs that would help homeowners of color accumulate generational wealth. The study blames the deterioration of many neighborhoods of color and the Black exodus from Chicago on redlining, which the Scavenger Sale law was supposed to be a solution to but it didn’t work. (Associated Press — July 19, 2022)

The National Rifle Association, in a tweet on July 18, following a shooting at a shopping mall in Greenwood, Ind., over the weekend in which a “good Samaritan” man shot and killed the gunman. The good Samaritan was lawfully carrying a firearm. (Reuters — July 18, 2022)

Melissa Robinson, a Democratic Kansas City, Mo., Council member, regarding the growing local debate about who should have control over the city’s police department. As it is now, the city does not have control of the police department, the police chief or how the department spends its tax dollars because of a 1930s-era law that gives that power to a five-member board whose members are mostly appointed by the governor. The local debate is coming to a head this summer and residents will vote in November on a constitutional amendment that would give the Legislature more control over the police department. (Associated Press — July 15, 2022)

Tops employee Rosalie Bishop, commenting on the reopening of the supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., two months after a white gunman killed 10 Black people in the store. (Associated Press — July 14, 2022)