‘Ugly.’ Politico’s Shia Kapos says Tuesday’s CBS Chicago mayoral debate—including Brandon Johnson’s accusation that Paul Vallas has dissed him because he’s Black—exemplifies the campaign so far.
■ It took moderator Irika Sargent four commendable tries, but she finally got Johnson to concede that he’d called for “defunding” police—although now he pledges not to.
■ Vallas apologized for making the “mistake” last summer of addressing the troglodytic group Awake Illinois.
■ They both pledged to “phase out” the city’s speed cams.
■ Mayor Lightfoot’s political organization says she wasn’t consulted about an anti-Johnson mailer with her photo—paid for by the Vallas campaign.
■ Vallas before the City Club of Chicago yesterday: “Our downtown is … a ghost town in the middle of the workweek. … Every public agency is facing a financial cliff.”
■ The Sun-Times and WBEZ take a critical look at the candidates’ plans for public education.
■ Columnist Julie Vassilatos makes the case for Johnson: “Are we going to listen to voices that allude to ‘dark days’ and blood baths in the streets? Or are we going to listen to a man who has a vision … rooted in love and practical experience?”
■ Now that the Reader is nonprofit, columnist Ben Joravsky says he can’t make an endorsement in the mayor’s race: “Not that my anger at … Vallas in any way suggests who I might be voting for.”
■ Find out who is endorsing whom in the Chicago Public Square voter guide for the city and suburbs.
■ Semafor: “Why Chicago’s mayoral race is going down to the wire.”
■ Block Club Chicago: Outside cash is fueling almost every Chicago City Council race this year.
But … Men Yell at Me columnist Lyz Lenz says the most important election of this year takes place next Tuesday in Wisconsin, where a Supreme Court race could swing next year’s presidential contest.
■ Meanwhile, in Idaho: Republican legislation would make that state the first to restrict interstate travel for abortion.
One of our guys. An officer hailed as a hero for killing the Nashville school shooter grew up in Chicago.
■ You can see footage from his bodycam here …
■ … but note Poynter columnist Al Tompkins’ concerns that the release of such footage constitutes “pure sensationalism.”
■ Nashville police: The shooter was under a doctor’s care for an emotional disorder, bought the guns legally, but hid them from relatives.
■ As details of the killer’s gender come into focus, a trans community leader tells NBC News: “We were already fearing for our lives. Now, it’s even worse.”
‘If going to school in America feels like fighting in World War II … things are seriously f___ed up.’ Daily Show guest host John Leguizamo ripped into Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett for citing his World War II veteran father in asserting that gun control would be pointless.
■ Stephen Colbert: “It reminds me of that sign on the subway: ‘If you see something, whatevs. Bombers gonna bomb.’”
■ Noah Berlatsky at Public Notice: “The GOP supports guns as part of a principled commitment to a death cult.”
■ Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg: “Imagine if parents tried to tamp down gun ownership with half the zeal they use to go after books?”
‘At 3:15 this man is on video, alive. … At 4:30 a.m., he was pronounced dead.’ A judge has set $3 million bail for a CTA worker accused of fatally beating a man at a CTA Blue Line station.
■ A prosecutor says the defendant threw the victim down a stairway “like so much garbage.”
■ Police are advising Chicago businesses to be on alert after the armed robbery of four 7-Eleven stores in two hours early Monday.
Even Elon Musk’s Twitter has its limits. The company temporarily locked Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s account after she repeatedly posted about a “Trans Day of Vengeance.”
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke mourns the pending loss of his blue Twitter checkmark: “It’s like having a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame erased, if that star was imaginary and wholly irrelevant to most people on earth and ‘Hollywood’ was not a real place.”
‘The Guardian’s reckoning with its past.’ The publication’s editor-in-chief is apologizing for its first editor’s profiteering from slavery.
■ One of those to whom your Square columnist owes his career—legendary broadcaster and ex-WXRT-FM news director C.D. (Charles) Jaco—in an interview broadcast a quarter-century ago today: “The broadcast media business is run by a bunch of … suits in corner offices who may or may not be evil, but they’re the closest approximation you’re going to come to in this lifetime, simply because they don’t care about … the public good.”
Thanks. Bill Bunkers and Stephan Benzkofer made this edition better.
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