Ryan out. Developing coverage: U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan won’t run for re-election.
■ Meanwhile, in the Chicago area, where a Nazi has already claimed the Republican nomination to Congress, there’s now a “Republicans for [Democrat] Dan Lipinski” Facebook group.
■ Letter to the Sun-Times editors regarding Ryan’s colleague, Chicago-area Republican Rep. Peter Roskam: “I’ve grown increasingly frustrated by his unwillingness … to meet with constituents in anything but carefully choreographed and controlled circumstances.”
■ Ryan’s predecessor, John Boehner, who used to be “unalterably opposed” to the legalization of marijuana, is joining the board of a cannabis company.
‘Get ready Russia.’ Berating Russia for standing by Syria’s President Bashar Assad—“a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!”—President Trump took to Twitter to threaten Syria with “nice and new and ‘smart’” missiles.
■ Trump on Twitter in 2013: “I would not go into Syria, but if I did it would be by surprise and not blurted all over the media like fools.”
■ Phil Kadner in the Sun-Times: “Assad ought to be removed from power. A fellow who does not hesitate to murder his own citizens, in the cruelest imaginable way, will not hesitate to export chemical weapons and terror.”
■ New York magazine: Trump’s tweets may also have inadvertently confessed to obstruction of justice.
■ ABC News: Fired FBI Director James Comey has compared Trump to a mob boss.
Raidy season. PolitiFact analyzes Trump’s “attorney-client privilege” complaints about the FBI’s raids on his lawyer.
■ A European commission investigating abuses in the sports broadcasting industry has raided the London offices of Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox.
Megachurch upheaval. After a Tribune investigation disclosed claims Willow Creek Community Church founder and pastor Bill Hybels engaged in decades of inappropriate behavior with women in his congregation—charges Hybels had previously dismissed as “flat-out lies”—he’s qutting.
■ The Washington Post: Hybels served as spiritual adviser to President Clinton around the time of the Clinton’s sex scandal.
‘It is unconscionable that the city would allow this to even occur on our public property.’ A Chicago mom is appalled by the shooting of a TV show sniper scene near her son’s school yesterday.
■ A federal court has tossed a lawsuit demanding Chicagoans get the right to elect their school board.
Tear up that ticket. If you got a citation for parking in a Chicago street-sweeping zone Monday, you can forget it—because the snow canceled the city’s cleanup plans.
■ Illinois’ richest man, Republican Ken Griffin, is donating $10 million to prevent violence in Chicago.
■ Democratic lawmakers have two weeks to override the governor’s veto of a bill to create a new state licensing system for gun shops.
A unionized Tribune newsroom? Journalists working for the historically union-averse Chicago Tribune this morning advised management they’re ready to organize.
■ At the Tribune’s formerly sibling paper, The Los Angeles Times, union organizers say parent company Tronc underpays women and people of color.
■ Other senators’ clueless questions to Zuckerberg prompted mocking “Mr. Zuckerberg” memes on Twitter.
■ Zuckerberg hinted at the prospect of a more private, paid version of Facebook.
■ Updating coverage: In Round Two before the U.S. House, Zuckerberg acknowledges his own personal data was stolen and says regulation of his industry is “inevitable.”
■ How to see Zuckerberg’s House testimony today.
■ In Chicago, protesters slammed Amazon for a “Hunger Games” approach to picking its HQ2 city.
Announcements.
■ Yesterday’s Chicago Public Square was missing a closing quotation mark—an omission noted by faithfully observant reader Mike Braden.
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