Jimmy Kimmel's plea / Firing Trump / Fidget fight

JIMMY KIMMEL’S PLEA. Recounting his newborn son’s near-death last week,

Kimmel last night implored his TV audience to support affordable health care: “If your baby is going to die and it doesn’t have to, it shouldn’t matter how much money you make.”
A Planned Parenthood ad puts U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam—a Republican whose Chicago-area district voted for Hillary Clinton—among “extreme politicians” who would “have a devastating impact.”

FIRING TRUMP. The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos details the two main paths for removing a president from office—and their feasibility in the case of Donald Trump.
Straight Dope columnist Cecil Adams: “For some reason, readers have suddenly become preoccupied with the notion of a president being psychologically unfit to serve.”
 Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson: Trump’s 100th-day speech may have been “the most hate-filled presidential communication in modern history.”
 Tribune columnist Dahleen Glanton: “Let’s not condemn Donald Trump for suggesting that people ask, ‘Why was there the Civil War?’”
A woman is on trial for laughing during Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ confirmation hearing.
AP study: Trump’s tweets don’t carry the clout they used to.

BACK AGAIN. Barack and Michelle Obama return to Chicago tomorrow to raise the curtain on preliminary designs for the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park.
 Post columnist Marc A. Thiessen pronounces Trump’s first 100 days “a disaster for Democrats.”

UNITED STRAITS. United Airlines’ embattled CEO, Oscar Munoz, has been groveling before a U.S. House committee today, discussing the dragging of a passenger off a plane in Chicago. Video here.
Chicago’s four top airport security jobs are now unfilled.

‘WE’RE NOT TRASH.’ The wife of an immigration detainee explains his lawsuit against Chicago police, who he says wrongly put him in their so-called “Gang Database”—and then shared it with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, triggering “a nightmarish chain of events.”
Border crossers complain “extreme vetting” leaves them feeling like criminals.
An ex-South Carolina cop caught on video opening fire at the back of a black man running away has agreed to plead guilty.

‘I HATE IT WHEN CRIMINALS PIMP CHRISTIANITY.’ Columnist Mary Mitchell condemns the relatively light sentence for Chicago’s disgraced ex-schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett as “ridiculous.”
The Trump administration is moving to relax Obama-era “healthy lunch” requirements.
Oscar Mayer claims to be the first national hot dog maker to dump artificial preservatives and stop adding nitrates and nitrites.
Chicago eateries hogged last night’s restaurant industry “Oscars,” the James Beard Foundation Awards.

‘WGN SOON WILL BE IN THE HANDS OF OUT-OF-TOWN OWNERS.’ Media critic Robert Feder says if Fox, which also owns Ch. 32, is the winner of the Tribune Media TV chain that includes Chicago’s Ch. 9, the result could be what one executive calls a “bloodbath” of jobs lost.
Next out at Fox News Channel: Sean Hannity?
On a list of the 200 worst jobs of 2017: Radio DJ (195), broadcaster (199), newspaper reporter (200).

FIDGET FIGHT. A flock of new toys purported to enhance kids’ attention is getting banned in schools.
Columnist Rex Huppke: “Amid the incessant whir of spinners … a Chinese invasion would have been downright refreshing.”

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