Hi, 1864. Arizona’s Supreme Court has upheld a 160-year-old law that bans all abortions except those necessary to save a woman’s life …
■ … casting a legal chill over doctors, nurses and pharmacists in reproductive health care …
■ … although the state’s Democratic attorney general says she won’t prosecute …
■ … and, hey, even Arizona Republicans suddenly seem uneasy about “rolling back the clock to a time when slavery was still legal and we could lock up women and doctors because of an abortion.”
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “The Arizona law … was written by a single man in 1864 … [when] Arizona was not a state, women and minorities could not vote, and doctors were still sewing up wounds with horsehair and storing their unwashed medical instruments in velvet-lined cases. And … the United States was in the midst of the Civil War.”
■ Columnist Julia Gray: “Democrats are not without blame here at all.”
■ 404: Artificial intelligence-fueled “influencers” on Instagram are stealing (images of) women’s bodies.
‘No, Trump did not say that abortion rights should be left up to the states.’ Dan Froomkin at Press Watch: Credulous journalists have misreported Donald Trump’s comments on abortion and refused to correct themselves.
■ Progress Report’s Jordan Zakarin: “The media still couldn’t—or wouldn’t—see the obvious kayfabe of Donald Trump’s big abortion policy announcement.” (Chicago Public Square’s come around.)
■ Jimmy Kimmel: “Trump believes that every woman should have the right to drive 600 miles for healthcare.”
■ Trump’s former righthand man at his real estate empire’s been sentenced to jail for lying under oath.
‘What’s the point?’ Media writer Tom Jones questions the value of TV news networks’ press for Trump and President Biden to debate before November.
■ They’ve drafted a letter that had yet to be sent to the campaigns.
Last call—for now. Chicago Public Square’s free for all thanks to financial support from readers who subsidize the cost of publishing and distributing this service—people including Matt Baron (again!), Catherine Tokarski, Paul M. Moretta, Cate Plys, Joan Pederson, Jill Brickman, Jerry D. Mason, Ila Lewis, Avery Cohen, Stephanie Springsteen, Ann James, Tom Pritchett, Donna Rigsbee, Athene C, Logan Aimone, Wendy Greenhouse, David Layden, Tim Colburn, Kevin Lampe, Julie Martin, Ted Cox, Eric Hochstein, Paul Colombo, Chris Handzlik, Alice Cottingham, JoBeth Halpin, Paul Engman, Linnea Crowther, Brian J. Taylor, Marge and Hank Arnold, Stephanie Kiesling, Sandy and Jeremy Lipschultz, Sharon Halperin, Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin, Patrick Quinn, Jill Chukerman, Evan McKenzie, Michael Carniello, Ruth Hroncich, Dale Epton and Tom O’Malley.
‘Serious concerns about … the traffic stop.’ The chief of Chicago’s police watchdog group questions whether police lied about why they pulled over motorist Dexter Reed before killing him in a hail of 96 shots over 41 seconds …
■ … specifically, how they could have seen an alleged seatbelt violation through tinted windows.
■ You can count the shots yourself—especially if you slow down playback of the graphic bodycam video made public yesterday …
■ … under what Politico calls “an unprecedented move” by Mayor Johnson …
■ … who urged public calm in the aftermath of the release.
■ Two people were hurt—one hospitalized—in a protest outside a police station last night.
■ Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx says she’s considering criminal charges against the officers…
■ … who are on 30-day leave for now.
■ A Chicago cop accused of fondling a woman handcuffed to a police station wall has been stripped of his police powers.
They failed to halt ‘an oncoming runaway train.’ In a first for the United States, a Michigan judge has sentenced two parents to prison for missing repeated chances to have kept their teenage son from getting a gun and killing four students in November 2021.
■ A former Virginia elementary school assistant principal’s been charged with felony child neglect in connection with a 6-year-old student who shot his first-grade teacher.
■ A 4-year-old boy was in critical condition after getting shot as he rode in a car along North Avenue through Humboldt Park yesterday afternoon.
Time to vote—again. Chalkbeat Chicago explains how to cast a ballot in the city’s Local School Council elections today and tomorrow—whether you’re a parent or not.
■ Find your voting place here.
Who wants to open a grocery? Gov. Pritzker’s offering grants to those who set up shop in Illinois’ food deserts.
■ A Tribune editorial questions Trader Joe’s workers’ push to unionize.
■ Puck’s Matthew Belloni asks: With moviegoing plummeting, why haven’t more theaters closed?
■ Columnist and tech rabble-rouser Cory Doctorow sees an upside to global monopoly capitalism: “The same coordination tools that allow corporations to extend their tendrils to every corner of the Earth allow regulators and labor organizers to coordinate their resistance.”
Lunchables alert. Consumer Reports says its tests of lunch and snack kits targeted at schoolkids set off plenty of chemical and nutritional alarm bells—including the presence of lead.
■ It’s running an online petition drive to strike Lunchables from the U.S. Agriculture Department’s school lunch program.
■ The Biden administration’s launched the first-ever national limits on cancer-linked “forever chemicals”—PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances—in drinking water.
Long, hot March. Earth last month set its 10th straight record for global heat—in the air and in the oceans.
■ A new book spotlights the coyotes hiding in plain sight around Chicago.
Museum of Science and Mystery. Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg drags the Museum of Science and Industry for refusing to explain why it shut down last Wednesday afternoon—but he got an answer from the Air Force.
■ R.I.P. Peter Higgs, the physicist who proposed the notion of a “God particle.”
‘One of the strongest movies of the year.’ Critic Richard Roeper gives 3 1/2 stars to Civil War, which depicts an actual war in the streets of America, leaving viewers unsure “who’s on the ‘right side’ in this horrific conflict.”
■ The Guardian: A study of Americans who’ve bought guns over the past four years or who regularly carry loaded weapons in public finds they are open to political violence.
■ Roeper also likes Damaged, with Samuel L. Jackson as a Chicago detective investigating murders in Edinburgh.
■ To see your name tomorrow atop the final installment in this round of acknowledgments, join them for any amount—even just $1, once—here.
■ Joe Hass and Mike Braden made this edition better.
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