Showtime. The Chicago City Council was to convene at 10 a.m. for its first full virtual meeting, to stream live here.
■ Gov. Pritzker says Illinois’ COVID-19 outbreak may not crest until mid-May, and Lightfoot says she may stretch her stay-home order into June.
Nonattendance Day. Fourth of July fireworks shows across the Chicago area are on the bubble.
■ The Illinois High School Association has killed its spring sports tournaments.
■ Major events worldwide—including Spain’s Running of the Bulls and Germany’s Oktoberfest—are dead for this year.
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‘The media is overblowing COVID-19.’ The Uline office supply company’s CEO— Liz Uihlein, one of the Republican Party’s biggest donors—says Wisconsin’s stay-home order violates workers’ constitutional rights.
■ Trib columnist and self-described “Georgia girl” Dahleen Glanton: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is “too afraid of Trump [to] stand up and do the right thing.”
■ Stephen Robinson in Wonkette: “Kemp has lost his damn mind.”
■ Disney family heiress Abigail Disney tweeted her outrage at the company’s decision to furlough hundreds of thousands of low-paid workers: “WHAT THE ACTUAL F***?????”
Relief plan. On its way to the U.S. House: A nearly $500 billion coronavirus response OK’d by the Senate—most of it targeted to bolster the Paycheck Protection Program for smaller companies.
■ President Trump is demanding Harvard give back the $8.6 million it got from the last round …
■ … but Harvard says no. (Update, 5:40 p.m.: Harvard backed down.)
■ The University of Illinois is waiving tuition increases and boosting student aid for next year.
■ With air travel grounded, Chicago-based Gogo, which provides in-flight internet, has furloughed more than 600 workers.
■ The Tribune spotlights small businesses denied a piece of the first relief pie …
■ … and some of the businesses cursed to have opened days before the great shutdown.
‘Child care will finally be recognized as essential work.’ That’s one of 11 ways the pandemic will change society, according to experts consulted by Vox.
■ Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown are seizing the opportunity to push new protections for consumers managing debt—including mortgages, rents, student loans, credit card bills and auto loans.
■ Axios: Zoom fatigue is a thing.
It was here before we knew it. Newly released autopsy results reveal two people died of COVID-19 in California’s Bay Area in February—now the earliest known U.S. deaths in the pandemic …
■ … and because neither of the victims had a history of travel abroad, Santa Clara County’s public health officer says they “probably represent many, many more infections” and “chains of transmission that go back much earlier.”
■ Would you volunteer to be infected? An Illinois congressman is urging the FDA to take more risks—including giving the virus to young and healthy people—to develop a cure.
■ Northwestern University researchers are working on a new COVID-19 test that would be quick, cheap, mass-producible and simple.
■ Moore to Stephen Colbert on last night’s Late Show: “We’re not going to be able to solar panel and windmill our way out of this.”
■ Variety: The film fails to find “a single corporate entity worldwide whose claims of ‘100% renewable’ energy usage are accurate.”
■ The Guardian: “Liberal A-listers … are attacked in this film as … pompous and complacent.”
■ You can watch it on YouTube.
■ The pandemic is turning Earth wilder and cleaner.
■ The Illinois Youth Climate Movement takes its annual Earth Day protest to Instagram tonight at 6. (Photo: Pins from the first Earth Day in 1970.)
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Thanks, Mike Braden, for identifying a way to make this issue better.