Sun-Times + WBEZ? Tonight could bring a vote by the Chicago Public Media board—which oversees WBEZ-FM—to combine its ownership with that of the Sun-Times.
■ The station’s CEO in an email to staff: “We are currently exploring partnerships and opportunities.”
■ Update, 10:50 a.m. The Sun-Times’ CEO confirms “talks … to determine if there is an opportunity to become a combined entity.”
Bears → Arlington Heights? The team’s reportedly signed a deal to buy Arlington International Racecourse …
■ … but, as Midway Minute explains, it’s just the “start of the soap opera” as the team continues to talk about a new or renovated home in Chicago.
■ Mayor Lightfoot says the Bears have yet to tell Chicago what they want to stay.
YouTube crackdown. Breaking from its historical hands-off philosophy, Google’s video sibling is yanking content that questions any approved medical vaccine, including shots targeting COVID-19 …
■ … and it’s banning prominent anti-vaccine activists.
■ Lightfoot’s standing by her requirement that city workers get vaxxed by Friday—including cops, whose union has objected.
‘You can cut the ribbon but don’t cut us out.’ As Barack and Michelle Obama celebrated groundbreaking for his presidential library along Chicago’s lakefront, activists gathered to warn it threatens displacement of the area’s poor residents.
■ Columnist John Kass doesn’t begrudge Obama the project: “Can’t the man have a nice place to visit when he flies in from his mansion in Martha’s Vineyard?”
Biden out. The president’s canceled his plans to travel to Chicago today …
■ … to focus his attention on the fight for a $3.5 trillion government overhaul.
■ Popular Information surveys the corporate campaign to tank the plan.
■ Confused by all the legislative machinations? You’re not alone.
■ Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg: “The totalitarian menace did not end with Trump’s defeat. It’s just beginning.”
■ The new chief of the Capitol Police: “We have never had the level of threats against members of Congress that we’re seeing today.”
■ The Onion mocks: “GOP Stalls Government Funding Bill By Detonating 50 Tons Of Explosives Inside Capitol Building.”
(Cartoon: Keith J. Taylor.)
‘I think he’ll be welcomed back into Chicago.’ U.S. Rep. Danny Davis says he sees a second chance here for convicted sex offender R. Kelly.
■ Bill Cosby’s a fan, too.
■ The Atlantic’s Spencer Kornhaber: “One system of abuse has been cracked open with this verdict, but it’s disturbing to wonder how many less famous ones still survive.”
Not so fast. The chancellor of the private Benet Academy says he’s “deeply troubled” by the school’s decision to reverse itself and hire a lacrosse coach in a same-sex marriage …
■ … raising the prospect that the on-again-off-again-on-again job offer may be off again.
‘Oh, sh*t! A dog!’ An 11-pound Miniature Schnauzer reportedly foiled an armed carjacking in Old Town.
■ Six people have been indicted in a more civilized form of car theft: Using fake IDs to finance purchases at Chicago-area dealerships.
■ Chicago-area expressway shootings so far this year: At least 181.
Gone, gone, gone. In a rare move, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has declared the ivory-billed woodpecker and 22 other animal species extinct.
■ The Washington Post reports: “The scientist who wrote the obit cried.”
■ U.S. Steel said its pollution that turned part of Lake Michigan orange contained “elevated concentrations of iron” but had yet to clarify the threat to public health, the environment or wildlife.
Amazon + Disney. Amid an upchuck of new product announcements yesterday, Amazon revealed that it has a deal to put its Echo devices in Walt Disney World hotel rooms.
■ Bloomberg: Amazon’s new home robot, Astro, is a product in search of a reason to exist.
■ The Conversation: An autonomous robot may already have killed people—demonstrating how such weapons could prove more destabilizing than nuclear arms.
Chicago’s geniuses. Two Black women who credit Chicago for shaping their work have landed coveted MacArthur Foundation “genius grants.”
■ Here’s the full list.
Reader Marcia Lythcott made this edition better.