June is busting out all over. With COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths plummeting, Mayor Lightfoot says Chicago will fully reopen June 11 …
■ … making it the largest U.S. city to do so by then.
Double, double—with little trouble. Thanks to newly announced and generous foundation grants, your contribution to Chicago Public Square in the Chicago Independent Media Alliance’s #SaveChicagoMedia campaign will be matched. One week left to give.
■ Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg on his first Wrigley Field visit in five years: “I looked around and … choked up.”
■ The Bud Billiken Parade returns Aug. 14.
■ The Chicago Marathon is back Oct. 10.
■ Abbott is closing a COVID-19 test-making plant that employed 2,000 people around the clock.
■ An infectious disease professor advises: “If you have symptoms of COVID-19, you should get tested … even if you are fully vaccinated.”
Help wanted—really. The post-pandemic recovery’s speed has set off a hiring scramble.
■ The Wall Street Journal: This recovery is “unlike anything you’ve seen.”
■ Men Yell at Me newsletter author Lyz Lenz declares “the office” her Dingus of the Week: “In a country that lacks access to affordable childcare and reliable mass public transit, it’s kind of hard to access for some people. And by ‘some people,’ I mean anyone who is not a white man with a wife at home.”
‘Troubling correlations.’ A designer who rated CTA rail stations for walkability and bikeability found that almost all those below the system average are in communities of color.
■ See how your station rates.
■ Aldermen are weighing the future of e-scooters in Chicago.
■ Consumer Reports offers 10 tips for squeezing the most out of a tank of gas.
‘A $3 cup of coffee should cost $3, not $38. If banks can’t understand that, the federal government should explain it to them.’ A Sun-Times editorial calls for the abolition of overdraft fees.
■ A poll conducted in March and April concluded Chicagoans were better suited than the nation as a whole to cover living expenses for two months after a job loss.
‘And yet some say our legislature is ineffective!’ Law blogger Jack Leyhane details how a bill to put polling places in all Illinois county jails mutated again and again into a bill moving the primary from March to June.
■ Politico: Gov. Pritzker’s giving an advisory job to the wife of his predecessor, with whom he’s not on speaking terms.
Trib tick-tock. Media monitor Robert Feder says some of the Chicago Tribune’s best-known bylines may disappear in a week, when the paper’s new owners notify employees whose applications for voluntary buyouts have been accepted.
■ Trib alumnus Irv Leavitt: New ownership means the paper won’t have to “pretend to cover the neighborhoods where people actually live.”
Facebook reversal. The company reportedly planned to end a policy that let politicians escape the kinds of content moderation that have applied to regular humans.
■ BuzzFeed News last year: “Facebook Fired An Employee Who Collected Evidence Of Right-Wing Pages Getting Preferential Treatment.”
Unrelated headlines.