‘It darkens my skin.’ Mayor Lightfoot accuses a conservative political action group of blowing a “dog whistle” for its portrayal of her in a TV ad targeted at Gov. Pritzker.
■ One Democrat calls the ad “racialized carnage porn.”
■ Now that Pritzker’s landed the leadership he sought at the Illinois Democratic Party, he’s dropped $5.5 million into the party’s kitty.
‘Leave Christopher Columbus alone.’ A Tribune editorial says Lightfoot shouldn’t remove the Christopher Columbus statue from Grant Park, because “logic dictates that she should then immediately rename Columbus Drive.”
■ The mayor seems inclined to agree.
Republican ’22 wave? Maybe not. A Democrat’s victory in a bellwether New York district’s special congressional election signals that abortion concerns could stymie Republican hopes to regain control of the House this fall.
■ Florida Democrats have tapped a 25-year-old candidate likely to become Congress’ youngest member.
■ They’ve also picked a former Republican governor, Charlie Crist, to challenge Ron DeSantis.
‘The most successful business brains in American corporations took a look at Donald Trump’s MAGA and declared to themselves, I like it!” The Reader’s Ben Joravsky is taken aback by a research paper out of Harvard indicating the percentage of top executives at U.S. S&P 1500 firms who identify as Republican is increasing.
■ A nonpartisan group of reformers sees growing support across the country for ranked-choice voting.
■ Citing a rise in threats, the Internal Revenue Service is reviewing safety protocol nationwide.
No deal. A Chicago cop accused of a misdemeanor for joining the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol has declined prosecutors’ offer to let him off with no more than six months in prison.
■ Condemned by Mayor Lightfoot as a “total disgrace,” the officer is on no-pay status and reportedly living with his parents.
■ Read the government’s complaint against him, including texts in which he allegedly declared himself “busy planning how to fuck up commies.”
■ The latest Illinoisans charged in the Capitol riot include 55- and 56-year-old brothers from Chicago and LaGrange.
■ A nephew of one Chicago mayor and grandson of another, ex-Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson, is now in prison.
■ House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband has been sentenced to five days in jail for a drunk-driving incident—but he’s already served two and gets two off for good behavior … so, OK, one left …
■ … but, no, he’ll serve eight hours in a court work program in lieu of that time behind bars.
‘This will be the last vaccine that is freely [available] to the American public.’ Looking ahead to plans for updated fall COVID-19 booster shots, Your Local Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina mourns: “Congress has stopped funding the coronavirus response and has invested very little into pandemic preparedness. This will be a tragedy.”
■ Columnist Matt Yglesias: “Expect more—and worse—pandemics to come.”
‘Sometimes we make mistakes.’ Google’s pledged to restore the Cook County Circuit Court’s YouTube accounts …
■ … which have grown increasingly important and popular through the pandemic, but which were suspended last week without warning.
■ Prosecutors have filed murder charges against a man accused of a hit-and-run that left three people dead—accusing him of shouting moments before, “I’ve got something for you, you motherfuckers!”
TikTok jackpot. A federal court has OK’d payouts to users for collecting and using their personal data without permission …
■ … and Illinois’ groundbreaking Biometric Information Privacy Act means Illinoisans—and their children—who filed before the March 1 deadline stand to collect up to six times the cash for those in other states.
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