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■ And now the news:
Fauci declines. Citing the continuing threat of COVID-19, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci says he’ll skip Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
■ Politico: Will President Biden still attend—in a public split with his chief medical adviser?
■ … although the White House was quick to assert that—ouch—she was not a “close contact” of Biden in recent days.
■ The CDC says 75% of the kids in the U.S. have had it …
■ … although state, county and city health officials aren’t systematically tracking Chicago daycare facility outbreaks.
■ Sure: Lollapalooza single-day tickets went on sale at 10 a.m.
‘I take full responsibility.’ Two north suburban men avoided prison time for their participation in the 2021 Capitol insurrection after apologizing to their federal judge.
■ CNN summarizes 72 hours’ worth of revelations about the events of that Jan. 6 …
■ … including 2,319 text messages that “offer the most vivid picture to date of how Trump's inner circle, supporters and Republican lawmakers worked behind the scenes to try to overturn the 2020 election results and … reacted to the violence that effort unleashed.”
‘Nothing has changed.’ Block Club Chicago finds little evidence that security boosts on the CTA have cut violence or bad behavior.
■ Today’s City Council meeting could bring approval for a municipal transit- and gasoline-card giveaway.
■ An alderman is pushing to raise Chicago’s speed cam ticketing threshold from 6 mph to 10.
■ Another alderman’s ward superintendent has been charged with selling an illegal machine gun.
Grande ambitions. A Northwest suburban Starbucks and one in Peoria are the chain’s first Illinois stores to unionize.
■ Chicago parks face a lifeguard shortage this summer.
■ Popular Information: The pandemic—and government pandemic relief programs—brought large corporations “an unprecedented windfall and record profits” that they used “to reward shareholders and executives” while “workers, comparatively, received almost nothing.”
■ Route Fifty: COVID aid has been funding a pickleball court building boom.
■ Amazon will dodge federal penalties for the fatal collapse of its Edwardsville, Illinois, warehouse during a tornado in December …
■ … but the Labor Department is ordering it to review its emergency prep plans.
‘The next time some rich guy offers to rescue your newspaper, run the other way.’ That’s media watchdog Robert Feder’s take on the resolution of a fiasco that brought the Chicago Reader near to extinction …
■ … until one of those rich guys and a couple of his allies agreed yesterday to quit the Reader board, clearing the way for it to become a nonprofit organization.
■ The Reader staff giddily proclaims itself “Free—again—and still freaky.”
■ Disclaimer: The Chicago Independent Media Alliance, which will be housed under the umbrella of the Reader Institute for Community Journalism, includes Chicago Public Square.
Where have all the tweeters gone? Twitter says the disappearance of followers from high-profile accounts in the hours after Elon Musk arranged to buy the company was “organic.”
■ The departures were more noticeable on one side of the political divide.
■ Author and Deadspin founder Will Leitch: “Musk sees Twitter as the ‘public square’ … but it only seems that way to the people—like Musk—who are on it all the time. The rest of us are … wondering when you’ll come to your senses.”
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