‘Ghost’ buster. President Biden was set today to take executive action against a “gun violence public health epidemic,” tightening rules governing weapons—including “ghost guns,” untraceable devices built from kits.
■ An ex-National Football League player has been identified as the gunman who Wednesday killed five people—including a doctor, his wife and their two grandchildren—before killing himself early today.
■ Police have charged a man in connection with the Lake Shore Drive shooting that critically injured a 1-year-old.
■ The victim remained in a coma—facing long odds and, if he survives, a long recovery.
■ A Sun-Times editorial calls on Biden to make good on a campaign promise and end the federal death penalty.
Rest(aurants) in peace. The pandemic’s crippling blow to the lunch business has prompted the Chicago-based Roti chain to close 14 restaurants across the country, including six in Illinois.
■ Block Club Chicago: Of more than 4,100 people who’ve signed up for Chicago’s homebound vaccination program, only 532 have gotten vaccinated.
■ Should you worry about coronavirus variants? A virologist says yes.
■ Mayor Lightfoot says she expects some of Chicago’s summer festivals will happen this year.
Georgia, fact-checked. PolitiFact takes a deep dive into what’s really in the law that cost Atlanta baseball’s All-Star Game—and concludes it “has both the potential to expand voting as well as restrict it.”
■ Channeling a “reasonable Republican,” the Tribune’s Rex Huppke concludes, “I will no longer be watching Major League Baseball games. Or drinking Coke products. Or traveling on jets. Or using social media or cellphones or computers or banks.” (Cartoon: Keith J. Taylor.)
■ Trib columnist Dahleen Glanton: “Republicans can try to suppress Black voters, but they won’t succeed unless we let them.”
■ Cook County’s new circuit court clerk campaigned on a promise to give the public more access to records from that historically corruption- and patronage-plagued office. Injustice Watch says that, now that she’s in office, she’s walked back that pledge.
Hate for sale. The Markup: Google has a secret list to hide YouTube videos from people seeking to build ad campaigns around hate terms and slogans …
■ … but it’s full of holes.
■ A Chicago member of the racist Proud Boys group—a guy who was present at the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and who’s also threatened to run for the Illinois Senate—faces a battery charge, accused of beating a counterprotester last month at a Schaumburg rally against President Biden.
‘They don’t give anything back.’ Workers walked out of Amazon’s Southwest Side Gage Park mega-facility to demand, among other things, raises and un-cuttable 20-minute breaks.
■ A global electronics part shortage threatens production of Apple’s MacBooks and iPads.
Reporters’ ‘improbable win.’ Bloomberg credits two journalists who’ve since left the Chicago Tribune with the possible rescue of the paper and its siblings from the clutches of “notorious hedge fund” Alden Global Capital.
■ Trib alumnus Charlie Madigan: “I thought that was pretty hopeless. … I thought they would be gone … but forgotten.”
■ The deal would reverse years of newspaper biz consolidation.
■ The New Republic’s Osita Nwanevu: “The Democrats’ next big spending plan should include money to rebuild America’s ever-widening news deserts.”
■ Two top CBS Television Stations executives are out in the wake of a Los Angeles Times investigation of racism and sexism at the company’s local stations in Chicago and elsewhere.
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Thanks to Mike Braden for making this edition better.