‘Bulls**t and damaging’ / Another Dilbert dump / English major’s end?

‘Bulls**t and damaging.’ A fresh legal filing in Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox reveals that chair Rupert Murdoch referred thusly to Donald Trump’s 2020 election lies …
 … and that, in what CNN’s Oliver Darcy says “would be a major scandal at an actual news network,” Murdoch directed the channel’s head to help the Republican Party.
Media watchdog Tom Jones: “Fox is facing some serious headwinds.”
 Jimmy Kimmel responds to reports Trump pressured Disney to censor him: “Maybe this is why Donald and Melania sleep in separate bedrooms: She was laughing too hard at my monologue.”

Meanwhile … Media Matters slams CNN for failing to tell its audience during a discussion of the East Palestine, Ohio, conflagration, that one of its commentators had lobbied for the railroad responsible.
Poynter’s Al Tompkins: “Hazardous chemicals travel right next to each of us every day, and ruptures, crashes and spills are more common than you might believe.”
Lever Time: The Biden administration has yet to walk back a controversial Trump-era rule clearing trains to transport explosive liquefied natural gas.

Chicago Election Day’s dawned. Any trouble at the polling place? Report it here.
Voting by mail? You can drop your ballot in secured drop boxes across the city.
The Sun-Times’ Lynn Sweet: If progressive candidates Chuy Garcia or Brandon Johnson fail to make the runoffs, the movement’s leaders can blame themselves for failing to unite around one or the other.
Axios Chicago: Early-voting data “portends high overall turnout in largely white, lakefront wards, as well as Northwest and Southwest Side neighborhoods occupied heavily by city workers.”
Last call for checking the Chicago edition of this year’s Chicago Public Square voter guide
 … which will be updated in the days ahead to reflect the region-spanning contests to follow in April. (Photo: Seth Anderson in the Square Flickr group.)

‘I will burn the session to the ground.’ A Democratic Nebraska state senator vows to block every aspect of the lawmaking process until her Republican colleagues abandon anti-trans legislation.
Esquire’s Charlie Pierce: “This is one way to do it. … You draw attention to the true nature of what’s being done to constituents in ways that they and their donors find inconvenient. You slow down the process so that everybody gets a really good look at it. And with any luck at all (and we haven't had much of that these days), they hate what they see.”

Another Dilbert dump. Penguin Random House has scrapped plans to publish a “self-help” book by racism-scarred cartoonist Scott Adams.
Columnist Neil Steinberg parts with a Dilbert cartoon after 17 years: “I … tore it into small pieces and tossed it in the trash.”
Cartoonist Mattie Lubchansky: “Put me in charge of Dilbert, you cowards!

Health insurance cliff. The Tribune reports that as many as 700,000 Illinoisans could lose Medicaid health coverage this year.
On the line at the Supreme Court today: President Biden’s plan to wipe out billions in student loan debt.

Suburban challenges. At least two tornadoes touched down yesterday in Joliet and Naperville …
 … and three others were sighted around Champaign.
With employees increasingly working remotely, Walgreens aims to sell more than half of its Deerfield headquarters complex.

‘All the harms of surveillance, none of the benefits.’ After Volkswagen’s roadside assistance program refused to help Illinois police locate a car carrying an abducted toddler, journalist and science fiction author Cory Doctorow rants against automakers who’ve “filled our cars with surveillance gear.”
Amid growing concerns about security on TikTok, the Biden administration’s giving federal agencies 30 days to get it off all government-issued mobile devices.
A security breach earlier this month at the U.S. Marshals Service reportedly leaked plenty of sensitive information.
Advisorator provides an anatomy of a hack.

English major’s end? The New Yorker: “Humanities enrollments are in free fall at colleges across the country … and some universities have contemplated renaming their English departments or eliminating the major altogether.”
WBEZ reports that Chicago Public Schools are struggling to help non-English-speaking migrant students.

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