‘Pretty much a draw.’ That’s Sun-Times City Hall reporter Fran Spielman’s take on last night’s WGN-TV debate between Chicago mayoral candidates Brandon Johnson and Paul Vallas …
■ … who, as Block Club Chicago’s Quinn Myers puts it, “ripped into each other’s plans to combat crime and improve policing.”
■ Watch the whole session here.
■ Ex-Gov. Pat Quinn—who picked Vallas as his running mate for the 2014 gubernatorial race (2013 link)—is backing Vallas for mayor.
■ Columnist Julie Vassilatos: “With Vallas we’ll get more of the policing that has never addressed or solved violent crime in the South and West Sides.”
■ The Reader’s Ben Joravsky’s been asking experts to predict who’ll win—and he found a split between white Baby Boomers and millennials of all races and ethnicities.
■ WBEZ, the Sun-Times and the University of Chicago Institute of Politics want your questions for the mayoral candidates at a March 30 forum.
■ Also wanted: Hundreds of election judges.
■ When you’re ready to decide, the Chicago Public Square voter guide is here for you.
Not so fast. Two organizations long supportive of government reform are asking the Chicago City Council to slow down a reform plan—until after the next council’s elected.
■ The city’s inspector general condemns City Hall for leaving its chief administrative officer role unfilled for decades.
■ WalletHub ranks Illinois 36th among states for return on taxpayers’ investment.
‘It is well past time that you … take swift and comprehensive action.’ A coalition of state attorneys general—including Illinois’ Kwame Raoul—is demanding Kia and Hyundai to do more to fix a glitch that makes their cars easily stolen.
■ Read their letter.
Styrofoam stoppage? The Illinois House is sending the Senate a bill that would phase out the use of single-use, forever-trash plastic polystyrene in the state beginning next year.
■ The City Cast podcast spotlights a plan to legalize human composting in Illinois.
Fungus among us. Cases of the dangerous Candida auris have now been reported in more than half the United States …
■ … including Illinois.
■ The U.S. government is overhauling the nation’s organ transplant system—in part by breaking the monopoly held since forever by just one nonprofit …
■ … which an investigation finds has been sending livers to wealthier states at the expense of poorer states where liver disease is more common.
Shit talk at the Supreme Court. Justices were set today to consider a case about poop jokes.
■ You’ll be able to hear it here.
Bard barges in. Google’s entry in the AI chatbot race, Bard, is (almost) here …
■ Bloomberg: “Bard made us bored.”
■ A bug in ChatGPT reportedly exposed at least the titles of other people’s conversations.
Lolla lineup. Here’s who’s coming to Lollapalooza in Chicago this August.
■ Organizers say the fest will generate thrice the economic activity of NASCAR’s downtown thing—in less time.
Thanks. Steve Ignots made this edition better.
Coming April 5 to the Museum of Contemporary Art, On Stage: Frictions presents performances by three artists—Will Rawls, Shamel Pitts | TRIBE, and Barak adé Soleil—who explore blackness through bodily movement, the frictions that exist in a society shaped by race, and the transformative power of productive resistance. Save 20% on tickets to all three performances in the series. Learn more.