Mayoral forecast / 'We are not monsters' / Unrelated developments

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And now the news:

Mayoral forecast. Politico’s Shia Kapos handicaps how the race could go Feb. 26.
■ The scandal in candidate Bill Daley’s (distant) past.
■ Candidate Lori Lightfoot’s first TV commercial ties four of her rivals to scandalized scandal-scarred Ald. Ed Burke.
■ A fresh batch of Tribune aldermanic endorsements backs a challenger to convicted ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s sister-in-law.
■ Get ready: The Chicago Public Square voter guide is here.

‘I hate that Joe Ricketts, through his poisonous words, tied the Cubs to Islamophobia.’ But a Sun-Times editor who’s a Cubs fan and a Muslim hopes she “can eventually go back to watching a game at the ballpark without being reminded that I am hated.”
■ A Muslim pediatrician from Naperville: “Until the Cubs organization works collaboratively with my community to call out bigotry with concrete measures, I’m out.”
■ Sports columnist Rick Morrissey on son Tom Ricketts’ efforts to diminish his dad’s connection to the team: “When your dad basically bought the club for you, it’s like a dollar bill trying to distance itself from George Washington.”
■ Illinois Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, who’s Hindu, calls on the team “to engage in a constructive dialogue regarding the importance of religious freedom.”

Fare-haired child. A baby girl was born on a CTA bus stuck in rush-hour traffic yesterday.
■ Block Club Chicago: Chicago bike shops have been hit by what looks like a coordinated web of thievery.
■ Streetsblog: “All the Bad Things About Uber and Lyft In One Simple List.”

Illinois’ minimum wage … would rise to $15 an hour under a plan advancing—but not all that quickly—in Springfield.
■ The Trump administration’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is moving to make life easier for America’s sleaziest payday lenders.

‘We are not monsters.’ On a new website, AbortionPatients.com, families who’ve chosen the late-term abortions inaccurately condemned by President Trump in his State of the Union address have a chance to share their stories.
■ The Cut: “Trump’s repetition of ‘the mother’s womb,’ as if it is simply an address without an owner, is fundamentally dehumanizing.”

‘A giant clusterf__k.’ That’s how one longtime Democrat assesses a trio of scandals for the party’s top three elected officials in Virginia.
■ CNN: None of the three wants to quit first.
■ Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren apologizes for calling herself a Native American on a 1986 Texas bar registration card.

Unrelated developments.
■ On Twitter, Trump flailed against congressional investigations of him, his family, his business and his political organization: “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT! It should never be allowed to happen again!”
■ Among hundreds of new emoji on the way to your keyboard under the latest Unicode Consortium update: One that may be useful for putting male egos in perspective.

Thanks … to reader Pam Spiegel for helping clarify the link to Rick Morrissey’s column above.