Skip the scams. The Tribune’s Angie Leventis Lourgos rounds up “8 tips to help protect against phony clinics” offering COVID-19 tests …
■ … like the Illinois-based company yesterday sued by Minnesota’s attorney general …
■ … after Block Club Chicago put the operation’s shady practices in the spotlight.
■ Chicago and Illinois cases of omicron may have peaked for now, but that doesn’t mean everything’s hunky-dory.
■ People living in apartment buildings have run into problems ordering free at-home tests from the government …
■ … but the Postal Service says help’s available here.
■ The Onion: “Intubated Man Informed That His Free COVID Tests Have Arrived.”
Blame the ‘hospital merger bonanza.’ Wonder why the U.S. has run short of hospital beds through the pandemic? Popular Information’s Judd Legum points to “a dramatic consolidation of non-profit and for-profit hospital networks.”
■ The Onion again: “Frustrated Hospital Worker Rounds Up Gurneys Patients Failed To Put in Parking Lot Corrals.”
What the Frappuccino? A week after the Supreme Court denied the Biden administration authority to require vaccination or regular COVID testing at big companies, Starbucks says it “will comply” with the ruling—even though the court didn’t limit Starbucks’ authority—and will no longer require vaccination for its workers …
■ … unlike workwear company Carhartt, which is going the other way and taking flak from the benighted.
The family that insurrects together … Three Illinoisans—two brothers and their cousin—are among the latest to be arrested on federal charges arising from last year’s Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.
■ Esquire columnist Charlie Pierce: “New Details About the ‘Peaceful Tourists’ Who Visited the Capitol Are Incredibly Dark.”
‘Kyrsten Sinema’s Moment of Infamy.’ New York’s Ben Jacobs details how things went down as Arizona’s “enigmatic” senator voted for the filibuster and against her party …
‘Judge jail.’ A Cook County Circuit Court judge caught on YouTube disparaging one of the lawyers who’d just appeared before him has been assigned to “restricted duties” and “gender bias counseling.”
■ The Illinois Supreme Court is considering whether elected officials should be able to use campaign funds to pay for their legal defense.
‘A damning indictment of smart TVs.’ The Verge reports that a Roku outage last night left users not only without streaming video but also without access to devices like cable boxes and gaming consoles connected to Roku products.
■ Consumer Reports’ roundup of “Best Deals on Electronics Right Now” includes, um, a Roku TV.
Could the WBEZ/Sun-Times deal ‘chill its most daring reporters and opinion columnists’? Acknowledging that it’s “hardly a disinterested party,” the Tribune editorial board spotlights reasons for concern about a historic merger.
■ Sun-Times alumnus Monica Eng, now at Axios: “I never thought I’d see the day when it was sold for nothing.”
■ Ex-Trib columnist Eric Zorn (in the middle of his email newsletter): “Where were these foundations when my former colleagues at the Tribune were (link corrected) desperately looking for big-money people to save the paper from the clutches of the hedge fund that has now taken over?”
A.V. Club unplugged. Chicago-based staffers at The Onion’s spinoff website have decided to take severance rather than accede to a demand they move to Los Angeles—without cost-of-living salary adjustments.
■ Slate’s Sam Adams: “The idea that you can screw over everyone who works there and all the writers they’re connected to and have anything left worth calling the A.V. Club is a sick, stupid joke.”
