‘Send them packing.’ Columnist Paul Sullivan says Chicago should let the Bears move to Arlington Heights: “Best of luck with your mega-stadium in the land of Jiffy Lubes.”
■ Patch columnist Mark Konkol: “Soldier Field is kind of a dump.”
■ Sun-Times reporter Fran Spielman: Mayor Lightfoot “sounded almost resigned” to the Bears’ departure.
(Cartoon: Keith J. Taylor.)
■ One fan: A move would be “good for the Bears.”
‘A near-death experience.’ A man whose delivery truck was struck in a rolling gunfight through Chicago’s West Town district yesterday afternoon told the Sun-Times: “I could have died right now.”
■ An evidence technician described the crime scene as “almost a mile, two miles long.”
■ More than 100 firefighters turned out early today for a fire that consumed several houses on Chicago’s South Side.
‘A new model of … journalism.’ The board of WBEZ-FM’s parent organization, Chicago Public Media, has approved a letter of intent to “explore joining together” with the Sun-Times.
■ Here’s the formal announcement.
■ The Trib newsroom’s highest-ranking woman is leaving for an opportunity that her boss calls “the right move.”
■ Ex-Trib columnist Eric Zorn explains that he bailed out of a panel discussion at DePaul University to avoid “the sort of boisterous dogpiling we’ve seen before at DePaul.”
■ As the Chicago Reader marks its 50th anniversary, Reader alumnus Edward McClelland looks back at what “in its heyday …was the finest publication I’ve ever read, or written for.”
‘We think it’s wrong.’ Six Chicago aldermen—who, by the way, aren’t covered by Chicago’s city worker vaccine mandate—want Mayor Lightfoot to back off her deadline for city employees to get vaxxed.
■ Block Club Chicago: Customs and Border Patrol agents at O’Hare seized dozens of fake vax cards.
■ United Airlines is moving to fire 600 unvaxxed employees.
■ AT&T—one of the nation’s biggest employers—will require vaccines for all unionized workers … next year.
■ The Daily Beast: A MAGA medical group has launched a “bonkers” lawsuit to block the Pentagon’s vaccine mandate.
■ CNN’s Brian Stelter: Mandates are working.
■ The U.S. Centers for Disease Control considers you fully vaxxed even without a booster shot.
■ The Onion: “Nurse Carefully Weighs Whether She Better Off Getting Vaccine Or Losing Job And Dying.”
Ouch. WalletHub’s ranking of cities whose unemployment rates are bouncing back the most in the pandemic puts Chicago at No. 173.
■ South Side Weekly: Employees at Chicago’s El Milagro tortilla plants say they’re worked like machines.
‘Where are the government environmental sentries?’ A Sun-Times editorial calls for better pollution protection from the industries lining Lake Michigan’s shore.
■ Indiana Dunes National Park beaches are open again after U.S. Steel took a dump in the lake.
■ A Chicago alderman wants “a lot of people gone” from the Chicago Park District in a scandal over sexual misconduct in the district’s lifeguard ranks.
Biking where Black. A University of California Davis professor’s study of Chicago found tickets for riding on the sidewalk were issued eight times more often in mostly Black communities than in mostly White communities—which tend to have a lot more bike lanes.
■ The widow of an Illinois man killed Saturday in the derailment of a passenger train on its way from Chicago to Oregon is suing Amtrak.
‘How many politicians in American history start politics in the Green Party … and are now on the verge of sinking the largest climate-change initiative in history?’ Political observer and ex-U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich writes an open letter to Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.
■ Popular Information: “Walmart calls for ‘strong climate policy now,’ backs campaign to kill strong climate policy.”
■ Updating coverage: As a midnight deadline loomed, a partial shutdown of the federal government was looking less likely.
■ The Conversation: Intensifying heat waves mean tens of thousands of American classrooms—in Chicago and elsewhere—will be too hot for students to learn in.
‘Pretty flippin’ great, only they don’t say flippin’ on this show ’cause you can swear on Apple TV+.’ Richard Roeper gives 3 1/2 stars to Jon Stewart’s return to television.
■ The Daily Beast’s Matt Wilstein: Stewart’s “no longer going for applause lines, but he’s too often leaving the humor out altogether.”
■ Insider’s Ben Gilbert: “I canceled my Amazon Prime subscription right as the pandemic lockdowns began. … I don’t miss it at all.”
Suggestions from readers Mark Wukas, Chris Koenig, Marcia Lythcott and Andrew Huff made this edition better.