A broken system. The Chicago Public Schools inspector general has documented widespread unfairness in a confusing elementary school admissions process.
■ At withering Southern Illinois University, an embattled chancellor has agreed to repay the school for some of the cost associated with hiring his daughter and son-in-law—a thing that seems to have happened at other jobs he’s held over the last decade.
‘I’d just call them scumbags.’ At City Council hearings on Chicago’s Ford Motor Co. plants, Chicago Ald. Nick Sposato sympathized with a woman who testified about losing her job of 18 years after reporting sexual harassment on the job.
■ Women who work at Chicago’s hotels are protesting a move to weaken the “Hands Off, Pants On” ordinance designed to protect them from harassment.
■ A former Chicago president of the National Organization for Women writes in the Tribune about harassment in Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s office: “For one year a man who clearly needed to be taken out of a supervisory role stayed employed.”
■ At least three Democrats running for governor want Madigan investigated, and two want him to quit.
■ A USA Today survey of hundreds of women in Hollywood finds almost every one has experienced some form of sexual harassment or assault during their careers.
‘Only one candidate can advance a Democratic agenda while staying independent of the Democratic machine.’ And so the Tribune is backing Chris Kennedy for the Democratic nomination for governor.
■ The Sun-Times recommends Bruce Rauner for the Republican nomination against Jeanne Ives, who “gave away her true self in that ugly campaign ad.”
■ All the Tribune and Sun-Times primary endorsements so far.
‘Goddamn, these kids are not messing around.’ The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah takes the measure of students who survived the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
■ Stephen Colbert: “I hope these kids don’t give up because this is their lives and their futures. Somebody else may be in power, but this country belongs to them.”
■ … and they’re getting help reclaiming it with big-bucks donations from Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg and George and Amal Clooney.
■ Surprise: The often-reclusive-after-massacres National Rifle Association says it’ll show up at tonight’s (8 p.m. Central time) CNN town hall broadcast with the Douglas students.
■ Updating coverage: Students are flooding Florida's capital demanding a ban on the gun that killed their classmates.
■ At least one Chicago-area high school is asking its students to stop playing “the assassins game.”
‘America’s pastor.’ Evangelist Billy Graham, who launched his religious career in DuPage County and went on to become counselor to a dozen presidents, is dead at 99.
■ His legacy includes a son who has advised President Trump and who has mocked both Islam and LGBT rights. (Photo: Warren K. Leffler.)
■ The New Yorker: Trump’s 2013 Miss Universe pageant may have helped him win the presidency.
Media troubles.
■ Newsweek staffers are threatening to quit because the publication won’t let them publish a story about the company’s ties to a mysterious religious sect.
■ Vox Media is laying off about 50, mainly with its so-called “social video” teams.
■ Motherboard notes fresh evidence YouTube has a credibility problem: “The #1 trending video on YouTube right now suggests that a student from the Parkland shooting is a crisis actor.”
■ Donald Trump Jr. liked tweets promoting that conspiracy theory.
‘He matters more than all the rest of them.’ A spoiler-rich assessment of Black Panther analyzes the role of “a comic-book villain so transcendent that he is almost out of place in a film about a superhero who dresses as a cat.”
■ Tribune columnist Eric Zorn on the controversy that cost The Chicago Reader’s new editor his job after just one issue: “We no longer tolerate clumsy or perplexing attempts to exploit the comedic potential of racist words and symbols.”
‘You kinda have to draw the line at puberty.’ With Justin Kaufmann on WGN Radio last night, author Anne Johnsos and your Square publisher shared thoughts on what parents should and shouldn’t document as they document their kids’ lives. Hear here.
■ Catch the stage version after work Thursday night.
Clarification. Illinois’ self-proclaimed “blogger laureate,” John Ruberry, noted that addition of the word the to the phrase “The Tribune runs down the tricks Chicago-area kids are using …” would have reduced ambiguity in yesterday’s Chicago Public Square. And so it has.