Get vaxxed, get rich? Gov. Pritzker isn’t ruling out a lottery to persuade people to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
■ No luck required: The vaccinated can get a free haircut in Chicago.
■ A federal website lists perks national companies are offering vaccinated customers and employees.
■ Tribune columnist Rex Huppke’s modest proposal “to win over the vaccine-hesitant”: President Biden should offer, “If you show proof of vaccination, I will reinstate Donald J. Trump as president in two weeks.”
■ Chicago cops are seeking a man who verbally assaulted a pharmacist of Chinese descent yesterday as she walked her 20-month-old son to daycare near the University of Illinois at Chicago athletic fields—telling her to “take off your f___ing mask” and “go back to Asia” before adding a “White power!” declaration and storming off with his fist in the air.
‘We’re not talking about a responsible motorist here.’ Digging into the record of the driver who last week killed School of Rock drummer Kevin Clark, Streetsblog Chicago’s John Greenfield finds she was ticketed in April for running a stop sign and not having insurance but “was driving around uninsured again when she fatally struck Clark.”
■ The CTA has launched a massive overhaul of the Red Line and four of its century-old stations, to be completed by the end of 2024.
■ Here’s what they’ll look like.
‘Distasteful and not excusable.’ The Illinois General Assembly’s inspector general condemns Republican State Rep. Chris Miller for his remarks to the Washington rally that grew into an insurrection Jan. 6 but concludes he didn’t help incite the riot.
■ You may recall that his wife, U.S. Rep. Mary Miller, apologized for telling the rally that “Hitler was right” (Jan. 10 link).
■ A Trib editorial calls a government ethics overhaul headed to Gov. Pritzker a “fail.”
Adios, ‘alderman’? Also on its way to Pritzker: Legislation that would change government references across Illinois from “alderman” to “alderperson.”
■ A Sun-Times editorial condemns legislation to create an elected Chicago school board as “a joke,” almost certainly to be “dominated by the Chicago Teachers Union.”
‘He needs to be taken off our streets.’ A cousin of Anthony Alvarez, who was fatally shot in the back by Chicago Police Officer Evan Solano in March, is among those concerned that Solano remains undisciplined even after pulling his gun in a road rage incident last month.
■ The Chicago Police Memorial Foundation is funding dozens of billboards celebrating cops.
■ CNN’s Reliable Sources newsletter surveys the nation’s “local news crisis.”
■ FiveThirtyEight: “The market is simply not providing local newspapers the resources they need to deliver the civic benefits they’re capable of.”
Overdraft relief. Ally Bank is one of the first big financial institutions to eliminate overdraft fees …
■ … which critics have blamed for “the $38 cup of coffee” …
■ … and which Ally says have disproportionately squeezed families living paycheck to paycheck.
■ From now on, it says, smaller transactions will probably get approved even if a consumer’s account is short, but larger purchases may be declined.
Your Amazon bandwidth, shared. Have an internet-enabled Amazon or Ring gadget? The company’s set on Tuesday to connect it to a new network it calls Sidewalk—diverting a sliver of your devices’ connectivity for public use …
■ … unless you opt out—which isn’t hard.
■ SlashGear executive editor Chris Davies: “A shared mesh network like this isn’t necessarily bad … but whether you want Amazon to be the one managing it is a different matter.”
■ Amazon is dropping marijuana testing for most job applicants …
■ … and it’s set its annual Prime Day sale for June 21-22.
Later, Later! Critic Aaron Barnhart bids farewell to NBC’s 33-year-old late-late-late-night talk franchise.
■ Correction. Yesterday’s Square bore a bad link to a CNET article about a deal on Netflix plus Google’s Chromecast with Google TV.