Out of control. As state and federal authorities investigate the shady Center for COVID Control chain of testing facilities, the Illinois attorney general’s office says the operation’s closed here indefinitely.
■ Ex-employees tell Block Club Chicago the company told workers to lie about results and toss tests in the trash.
■ The Sun-Times runs down Chicago-area locations that, beginning next week, will be distributing free N95 masks.
‘The discipline … is not enough.’ A Chicago alderman and residents of his Little Village neighborhood are outraged at a slap on the wrist for city employees who let a 2020 demolition project bury the area in dust.
■ Mayor Lightfoot’s refusing to release the inspector general’s full report on the debacle.
■ An Illinois State University industrial sociologist warns the state’ll be in a bad way in the event of a monster heatwave, partly because nuclear plants don’t do so well in hot weather.
■ Remember talk about how pandemic shutdowns reduced air pollution? In other regions, yeah. But not in Chicago.
Clock stopped. Declaring “a perilous moment,” the Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has declined to roll back its metaphorical “Doomsday Clock,” gauging humanity’s proximity to destruction, from 100 seconds to midnight.
■ Read the Bulletin’s memo to “leaders and citizens of the world.”
■ And there’s a playlist.
They want your cops. The Sun-Times details other towns’ efforts to recruit Chicago police officers—and a new law that makes that easier.
■ The Chicago-based Freakonomics podcast asks—and answers—“Why is everyone moving to Dallas?”
Paging Ivanka. The House committee on the Capitol insurrection is inviting Donald Trump’s daughter to chat about what went down last Jan. 6.
■ The Daily Beast: “Investigators in two separate probes think she could be key to her father’s undoing.”
■ Congress is particularly interested in a two-hour period during which White House staff, including Ivanka, pleaded unsuccessfully with Trump to tell his supporters to go home …
■ … and in the outtakes from the video Trump eventually released—the one in which he told rioters, “We love you.”
■ In the investigation of a scheme to put forward fake presidential electors from seven states, three sources with direct knowledge tell CNN Rudy Giuliani was the ringleader.
■ Adam (Don’t Look Up) McKay is prepping J6, a feature film about the insurrection.
Correction. Yesterday’s Chicago Public Square messed up the link to ex-Tribune columnist Eric Zorn’s commentary on the pending merger between WBEZ and the Sun-Times. Here’s the right one (middle of his dispatch).
■ Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg addresses readers’ concern about the paper’s acquisition: “Will I be muzzled? Will I start solemnly intoning about global warming, instead of my usual chirpy, trivial, out-of-the-blue, oh-my-God-I-can’t-stop-talking blabbery?”
■ Friend of Square Chris Koenig made this edition better.
