Hi again. Glad to be back in your inbox after a week off.
‘Do what my dad did not.’ The son of 1983 Chicago mayoral candidate Bernard Epton, famously defeated by Harold Washington, offers counsel to 2023 candidate Paul Vallas: “No victory is worth the price Chicago would pay if a Vallas victory depended on an appeal to white supremacists.”
■ Columnist Laura Washington sees the Vallas-Brandon Johnson contest as a job interview: “The most nagging unanswered question is how both candidates will manage their relationships with their chief benefactors and endorsers.”
■ Axios Chicago weighs Vallas’ billionaire baggage.
Two down. After the failure of two big banks—Silicon Valley and Signature—President Biden assures Americans the nation’s financial systems are safe.
■ Business Insider: “Silicon Valley Bank’s spectacular implosion shows how digital banking can decimate a lender in 24 hours.”
■ The Intercept: Two of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s former senior aides were top lobbyists for Silicon Valley …
■ … and one of the architects of the government’s since-weakened plan to keep the financial system from failing has for six years been on Signature’s board.
■ The Lever: Months before the collapse, Silicon Valley’s lobbyists opposed a plan to force banks to step up their payments to the fund that protects depositors.
■ Poynter’s Al Tompkins says this is a good time for journalists to explain the banks’ failure without needlessly creating panic. So here you go.
■ ProPublica: If you made less than $73,000 in 2022, you can file your income tax return for free.
‘President Trump was wrong.’ In some of his strongest remarks yet on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, ex-Vice President Mike Pence told the Gridiron Dinner over the weekend that Trump’s “reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day.”
■ Sun-Times D.C. bureau chief Lynn Sweet—a former Gridiron Club president: “Pence knew exactly what he was doing. … Let’s see if he does it again. And where.”
■ NPR television critic Eric Deggans: “Only took him three years to speak up. And he still didn’t call out Fox News or Tucker Carlson.”
■ Pence pulled off some decent jokes, including: “Some of those classified documents they found at Mar-a-Lago were actually stuck in the president’s Bible. Which proves he had absolutely no idea they were there.”
■ Public Notice: An indictment could boost Trump’s presidential campaign.
DeSantis prankster revealed. A woman who on Friday presented Govs. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Kim Reynolds of Iowa with handcrafted paper snowflakes that they accepted smilingly and cluelessly—even though the flakes were formed with the repeated word fascist—has identified herself …
■ … who for years, in fact, has been doing this kind of thing to politicians.
‘Florida book bans are not a hoax.’ Popular Information slaps back at potential presidential candidate DeSantis’ dismissal of its reporting on his school library purges.
■ Free-speech advocates are sounding an alarm about his moves to keep the public from learning what government officials are doing—or from criticizing them.
Almost everything, almost all at once. Everything Everywhere All at Once dominated last night’s Oscars.
■ Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield: It was “the best Oscars in years.”
■ Here’s the full list of winners.
■ Vulture: “Jenny the Donkey’s Oscar cameo was all a fraud.”
Hope it was a good one. Yesterday marked the sixth annual National Support Chicago Public Square Day.
■ Thanks to new—or newly renewed—supporters Timothy Jackson, Lynne Stiefel and Alexander Domanskis. You can join ’em here.
■ Mike Braden made this edition better.