She gone. Updating coverage: Trounced again by Donald Trump in Super Tuesday primaries, Nikki Haley has bailed on her Republican campaign for the presidency …
■ … but she pointedly didn’t endorse Trump …
■ … a thing that Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell now has done.
■ Rebecca Schoenkopf jokes at Wonkette: “Should Joe Biden even be allowed to run for president after [his] humiliating loss in American Samoa” …
■ The Daily Show put Haley supporters on the spot—asking them to choose between Biden and Trump.
■ Columnist Matt Yglesias calls out “Debbie Downer progressives.”
And that’s saying something. North Carolinians have nominated what columnist Mehdi Hasan calls possibly “the most offensive Republican candidate in America.”
■ In what Public Notice’s Noah Berlatsky calls “great news for Dems,” independent (formerly Democratic) U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona is bowing out.
■ Wonkette’s Evan Hurst: “This means Arizona will get the two-way Senate race it deserves.”
‘She could’ve done so much more.’ The Handbasket columnist Marisa Kabas finds Taylor Swift’s much-anticipated comment on yesterday’s vote … disappointing.
■ Stephen Colbert: “We haven’t seen a celebrity take a stance this boldly neutral since Rob Lowe went to an NFL game with a hat that said ‘NFL.’”
■ Of the 115 U.S. House seats sought in yesterday’s primary, only about eight look competitive for November.
■ Ready to vote (early) in Illinois’ March 19 primary? The Chicago Public Square Voter Guide Guide’s ready and waiting.
White out. Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg dives into cop complaints about a Chicago Police Department video recruiting candidates for sergeant—a production that lacks white faces.
■ A jury yesterday took just two hours to convict a man accused of shooting and killing Officer Ella French and wounding her partner.
■ Chicago police have released surveillance video of a West Side shooting that left two cops injured Sunday.
■ The American Prospect’s Rick Perlstein: “Swatting”—calling police about a phony emergency at the address of a harassment target—“is the latest incarnation of … an infrastructure of fear.”
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Fear and hygiene. Migrant refugees in Chicago’s shelters tell the Tribune that staffers have been rationing hygiene products and penalizing women who’ve accepted donated pads.
■ Axios: Most migrants living in those shelters aren’t eligible to work.
■ Mayor Johnson’s dodged questions about whether he’ll force thousands out of the shelters after next week.
‘We urge the governor to stand firm.’ A Sun-Times editorial is skeptical of a joint Bears-White Sox stadium: “Two wealthy sports teams joining forces to get huge taxpayer subsidies.”
■ Broadway in Chicago CEO Lou Raizin: “When that piggy bank opens, Team Culture deserves a seat at the table.”
■ Chicago native actor, comedian and screenwriter Ike Barinholtz is headed to the “real” Jeopardy! semifinals tomorrow night.
It wasn’t you. If you thought your Facebook, Messenger or Instagram account had been hacked yesterday, no, that was just, in the words of a company spokesman, “a technical issue” …
■ … that the U.S. government said seems not to have been related to “any specific election nexus nor any specific malicious cyberactivity” …
■ … but that humiliatingly drove the company to communicate with users via competitor Twitter X …
■ … giving X overlord Elon Musk an opening for snark.
■ Still, not as bad as Facebook’s “epic” October 2021 outage.
■ YouTube had some challenges around the same time yesterday.
■ Lurie Children’s Hospital says that, more than a month after a cyberattack crippled its information infrastructure, most of its systems are back online.
■ Apple’s issued an iPhone operating system revision with an advisory to “update now” for protection from at least four security threats.
■ Also: New emoji.
‘The lie that’s inflating your credit card bills.’ As the Biden administration preps a crackdown on late fees, The Lever reports card companies are threatening to raise interest rates again “on the false claim of inflated financial risk.”
■ A credit union industry leader says the crackdown could backfire, eliminating cards altogether for people with lower credit scores.
■ And then you get some rewards.
■ Mike Braden made this edition better.