Shoulder up, tweens. Moderna is joining Pfizer in asserting that its COVID-19 shot strongly protects humans as young as 12.
■ United Airlines has launched a free-flights sweepstakes for those who are fully vaccinated. (You can enter here.)
■ United Airlines has launched a free-flights sweepstakes for those who are fully vaccinated. (You can enter here.)
■ Chicago’s pumping another almost-$80 million into its pandemic Emergency Rental Assistance Program for tenants and landlords. (People can apply here.)
■ Late-night TV shows are ready to welcome back full studio audiences.
‘The way to defeat Hamas is to negotiate civil and land rights for all Palestinians—in Gaza, the West Bank and within Israel.’ Veteran Chicago political strategist Don Rose says “the cessation of bombings and rocket fire in the most recent Israel-Gaza conflagration … did nothing to solve the longstanding problem.”
‘Insufficient reason to suspect Father Pfleger is guilty.’ In a letter to “the faith community” of Chicago’s St. Sabina Church, Cardinal Blase Cupich announced the pastor’s return to duty, cleared of sexual abuse charges.
■ Midday, the cardinal changed the wording of his statement from “no reason” to “insufficient reason.”
‘Staggeringly stupid.’ Noting that, “in Chicago alone, from January through March, more than 700 people have been shot,” columnist Rex Huppke calls U.S. paralysis against gun violence “embarrassing for all of us.”
■ Mayor Lightfoot’s out with her plan for a civilian commission to oversee the city’s police …
■ … a plan that falls short of calls to grant the panel power to hire the department’s superintendent.
■ An ordinance to create a database of Chicago cop misconduct stalled in the City Council after the city’s inspector general rejected the mayor’s proposal as too modest.
■ Chicago police were girding for today’s anniversary of George Floyd’s murder in the custody of Minneapolis cops. (Cartoon: Keith J. Taylor.)
■ University of California research concludes, “The harm from police killings of Black people goes beyond … to affect Black Americans far from the site of the killing, who may have never met the victim.”
Indigenous indignation. A Cook County Board vote on the renaming of Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day has been postponed as commissioners consider demands that tribes acknowledge their role in the institution of slavery.
■ Chicago’s Andrew Jackson Language Academy is positioned to become the first city school to get a new name under a plan to stop honoring slaveholders.
■ A Tribune editorial reflects on the University of Illinois’ decision to strip the name of slaveholder John Marshall from its newly merged Chicago law school: “Every American is in Marshall’s debt.”
■ The U.S. secretary of state pledges international support for war-ravaged Gaza without helping its Hamas rulers.
Summit set. President Biden is scheduled to meet Russia’s President Putin face to face June 16.
‘One of our architectural treasures.’ A push is on to restore Oak Park’s neglected post office.
■ Renovation of Chicago’s historic Congress Theater is set to resume.
■ Wild Chicago and Ben Loves Chicago TV documentarian Ben Hollis is out with a new movie—about himself.
Thanks to Pam Spiegel and Mike Braden for making this edition better.