Chicago Public Square won’t publish Monday. Back Tuesday. And now, your news for Friday the 13th:
‘A mistake.’ Mayor Lightfoot has conceded her campaign shouldn’t have solicited Chicago Public School teachers to recruit students to work for her reelection campaign …
■ … but she said she wouldn’t fire the staffer who issued the pitch.
■ Turns out the campaign also strong-armed City Colleges faculty.
■ Neil Steinberg at the Sun-Times: “At least she hasn’t reached out to Chicago street gangs.”
■ USA Today columnist Rex Huppke: “Leaning on public school teachers to recruit students to help a political campaign is … not quite ‘Hey, teacher, nice classroom ya got there, be a shame if something happened to it,’ but it certainly resides in that ballpark.”
■ The ACLU says the campaign may have broken federal law.
■ The city’s inspector general has launched an investigation.
■ At Square’s email deadline—10 a.m. today—Injustice Watch was to get its day in court over a fight for Lightfoot’s administration to release records of city ordinance violations issued between 2001 and 2010.
■ It was to be viewable live on Zoom.
If you like your stove, you can keep it. An Associated Press fact check: The Biden administration isn’t banning gas stoves …
■ … and The Conversation explains why that would make sense.
■ USA Today’s Huppke again: “I’ll remain chained to this stove … at least until tomorrow, when I’m given a new thing to fear.”
■ A new study reported in the journal Science documents how ExxonMobil cast doubt on climate risks from oil and gas development even as its own scientists acknowledged the pace and severity of global warming.
Not chicken feed. Twitter and Tesla owner Elon Musk holds the new Guinness record for history’s largest loss of personal fortune.
■ Columbia Journalism Review ponders what the death of Twitter would mean for the news biz.
■ At The Nib, Kendra Wells suggests Musk is spreading himself thin.
A ‘greatest hit’? The Sun-Times’ Mitchell Armentrout celebrates a new entry in Illinois’ lexicon of corruption: Indicted ex-House Speaker Michael Madigan’s allegedly recorded boast of placing associates in cushy jobs with ComEd, “Some of these guys have made out like bandits.”
■ Madigan’s prosecutor, U.S. Attorney John Lausch, is leaving by March …
■ … which means he won’t—contrary to earlier reports—be leading the investigation of classified Obama administration documents found in Joe Biden’s home and former office space.
■ Charlie Pierce at Esquire: “Shame on the media for turning Biden’s old classified docs into a snipe hunt.”
■ Breaking at deadline: In what the AP calls “a symbolic, hardly crippling blow,” Donald Trump’s company has been fined $1.6 million—the max—for a scheme in which his top executives dodged taxes on lavish job perks.
In from right field. Nebraska’s conservative ex-Gov. Pete Ricketts—whose family owns the Cubs—has been appointed to represent that state in the U.S. Senate …
■ … but if he wants to keep the seat surrendered by Ben Sasse, he’ll have to run in a special election this fall.
■ Those who pitch in about 50¢ an issue to keep Square coming get into a Facebook group with early access to the quiz.
