‘They’re lying to you.’ An employee of Russia’s government-run Channel One interrupted the operation’s main news show yesterday to burst onto the set shouting “Stop the war! No to war!” …
■ … and then she disappeared.
■ See it here.
■ One of her colleagues recalls: “She never talked about politics.”
‘Imagine you are in downtown Chicago and there are daily attempts at evacuating Des Plaines because there are tanks there, and there’s a convoy coming from Schaumburg.’ A Chicagoan reporting from Ukraine for NPR conveys the situation in Kyiv in terms you might understand.
Trump’s sign of trouble. A Chicago City Council committee has advanced an ordinance that could—if Donald Trump is eventually convicted—cost him the right to keep his name on his Chicago tower.
War’s ‘most striking photo.’ Poynter’s Tom Jones discusses an image that showed “Russia would stop at nothing in its attack of Ukraine.”
■ Updating coverage: In a striking gesture of defiance against Russia, the leaders of three European nations—Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia—planned to visit Ukraine’s embattled capital, Kyiv.
■ The Washington Post explains how Kyiv’s outgunned defenders have kept Russian forces from capturing the city.
‘Imagine you are in downtown Chicago and there are daily attempts at evacuating Des Plaines because there are tanks there, and there’s a convoy coming from Schaumburg.’ A Chicagoan reporting from Ukraine for NPR conveys the situation in Kyiv in terms you might understand.
■ For present-day Chicagoans who fled Ukraine in World War II, the nation’s plight is a rerun of a nightmare.
■ In a video chat with the mayor of Kharkiv, Ukraine, Mayor Lightfoot promised that Chicago will “send all the aid that we can.”
■ Time: The hundreds of CEOs who have come out against Russia may have changed the nature of war forever.
‘Icky optics.’ Politico’s Shia Kapos flags a couple of Illinois state senators who appear ready to retire—leaving close friends and family members who turned in petition signatures on the last filing day with little or no competition.
■ The push is on for reform of Illinois’ arcane election laws—including requirements for stapling petitions together (2020 link).
■ A Democratic political action committee is asking the Federal Election Commission to find Trump in violation of campaign finance laws for allegedly raising and spending campaign cash without filing as a candidate for reelection.
‘Corporate lobbyists won the day. And now 3.7 million children are in poverty.’ Popular Information analyzes the consequences of the Senate’s failure to approve President Biden’s Build Back Better plan.
■ In a private speech last night to more than 200 Republican donors at a fundraiser for Trump-critical Rep. Liz Cheney, Sen. Mitt Romney reportedly warned that American democracy faces an “extraordinary challenge.”
OK, but next time for sure. Maybe. Yeah, Mayor Lightfoot’s deadline for Chicago cops to get vaccinated against COVID-19 came and went over the weekend, but she said yesterday, “We’re not doing mass firings today.”
■ Eleven City Council members want a special meeting Wednesday to press the mayor to back down from her vax requirement.
■ China is battling its worst COVID outbreak yet—and it’s spreading far faster than previous waves.
■ Even if this latest variant doesn’t make you sick, Poynter’s Al Tompkins predicts it will affect you—in the form of shortages at car dealers and “a zillion other industries.”
‘Ridiculous.’ A former judge accuses Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx of harboring “sour grapes,” because a special prosecutor in the Jussie Smollett case “performed better than … Foxx’s prosecutors.”
■ On Twitter, Smollett’s brother says he’s been moved out of a psych ward and into a jail cell with a bed.
Blues’ loss. Chicago radio legend Pervis Spann, “the BLUES man,” is dead at 89.
■ He ran for mayor in the 1991 Republican primary.
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