‘A warning.’ Law professor Joyce Vance sees cause for alarm in a chat with a “young, smart … recent college graduate” who didn’t know the name Rudy Giuliani: “Don’t assume that those around us know everything we know about the upcoming election and what it means for the future.”
■ NewsGuard reflects on 2023, “The Year AI Supercharged Misinformation.”
■ Columnist Neil Steinberg’s 2024 resolution: “Preserve democracy”—the key to which, he says, is “fostering forgiveness,” even for benighted souls like failed Republican gubernatorial candidate and now Republican congressional candidate Darren Bailey, who “tweeted a strange photo of himself on New Year’s Eve.”
‘Seriously scandalous.’ The Daily Beast says special counsel Jack Smith “has compiled a very curious list of theoretical misdeeds that seem to telegraph potential bombshells” at Donald Trump’s upcoming trial in Washington.
■ Trump’s niece, Mary L. Trump, notes that presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has hired a leader of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection as his communications chief.
‘Ham-fisted.’ A Sun-Times editorial blasts Mayor Johnson’s handling of Chicago’s migrant influx—but also calls for President Biden to step up.
■ Block Club: Migrants arriving in Chicago have been spending nights inside CTA buses while awaiting spots in city shelters.
■ On CNN last night, Johnson accused Texas Gov. Greg Abbott of “sowing the seeds of chaos” by shunting migrants north …
■ … an increasing number of them to the suburbs.
■ NBC 5: Some City Council members have condemned Johnson’s plan to shift $95 million in COVID emergency funds to improve the city’s migrant housing.
Masks on. With COVID-19, flu and RSV surging, a growing number of Chicago-area hospitals—including Rush—have revived masking rules …
■ … notably because of the new, more contagious, JN.1 strain of COVID.
Cops out? The Chicago Board of Education’s considering removing all police officers from the city’s schools.
■ Chalkbeat Chicago: Three things to know about the board’s resolution on school choice.
‘We’re becoming a nation of sports gamblers, and as a sports gambler, I think that needs to change.’ Columnist Ben Krauss: “Betting from the couch is bad. … Make sports gambling less accessible.”
■ It’s a growing concern on college campuses, as The Conversation noted in November.
‘Not good enough.’ A Tribune editorial says Harvard’s president was right to quit, but it says the university’s board needs to come clean about just why she did.
■ The AP: A conservative attack fanned outrage against her.
■ ABC News offers a timeline of Gay’s “short, scandal-plagued tenure.”
Starbucks’ new deal. To cut waste, the company as of today will serve customers beverages in their own reusable cups—but those cups have to be clean.
■ Cannabis companies have dropped a plan to turn Chicago’s former Rainforest Cafe into a weed shop.
Royko’s feuds. Chicago historian Cate Plys is taking a deep—really deep—dive into legendary columnist Mike Royko’s estrangement from people that readers might have expected him to celebrate.
■ Today, it’s independent then-Ald. Marty Oberman.
■ A Facebook group declares “Mike Royko is God.”
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