Cash for the contagious. NorthShore University HealthSystem has agreed to pay more than $10 million—as much as $25,000 apiece—to hundreds of employees who faced dismissal for objecting to vaccination against COVID-19.
■ The settlement includes $2 million for the evangelical Christian organization that represented them.
■ Keep your masks at hand: More than a third of the COVID tests that Walgreens oversees are coming in positive.
■ Gov. Pritzker’s classified monkeypox as a public health emergency and declared Illinois a disaster area.
Abortion on the ballot. Among the things to watch in today’s primaries across the country:
■ For the first time since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, voters—in Kansas—get a say in whether lawmakers should be able to ban it altogether …
■ … but voters may be flummoxed by the referendum’s word salad.
‘Platinum-level duplicity.’ Popular Information reports that, after American Express pledged in January that it would “not make PAC contributions to congressional members who objected to certifying the Electoral College results,” it indeed made PAC contributions to two Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election results.
■ Columnist and ex-U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich: “How to stop rightwing media lies? Sue the bastards.”
■ Slow Boring blogger Matthew Yglesias tracks how the Green New Deal became the Inflation Reduction Act.
■ Columnist Irv Leavitt: “It is likely that 50 United States senators will vote against a bill intended to keep the world from burning up. Who would do that? Emperor Palpatine? Magneto?”
‘We’re perfectly positioned to complete this project.’ The CTA says extension of the Red Line to the Far South Side could happen by the end of the decade.
■ Profligate Chicago mayoral candidate Willie Wilson will be giving away more free groceries and gas tomorrow and Saturday.
■ $1.3 million could put you in the ballpark to buy a Rainbow Cone franchise in one of 12 other states.
Shrinking schools. Chalkbeat and The Associated Press track a financial plight for Chicago and other big cities: A growing number of schools with fewer than 300 students.
■ Chicago schools are on the hook to repay almost $90 million they got because of a coding goof by the Illinois State Board of Education.
■ A new report to be presented online tomorrow night details “how racial inequality is the root cause of challenges in the west Cook County region.”
‘There’s something … almost cruel … about highlighting Kass’s deficiencies.’ And yet columnist Neil Steinberg embraces the task of showing columnist John Kass where he went wrong playing the victim in Tribune coverage of his new Indiana home.
■ Columnist Eric Zorn (middle of today’s Picayune Sentinel): Kass’ “self-pitying tantrum” has drawn “way more attention to the information than it ever would have gotten if he'd been matter-of-fact about it.”
‘The loudest voice of any human being I have ever heard.’ Ides of March singer Jim Peterik is among those mourning the death of Shadows of Knight singer Jimy Sohns, who led the band’s recording of Gloria.
■ R.I.P., JoJo the Brookfield Zoo silverback gorilla.
■ Also dead—in a U.S. drone strike: 9/11 plotter Ayman al-Zawahri.