Biden’s ultimatum. Conceding that U.S. bombs have killed Palestinians in Gaza, President Biden warned Israel on CNN: “If they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons.”
■ Politico: “It’s hard to overemphasize what a big deal this is.”
■ The first shipment of humanitarian aid was on its way from Cyprus to a U.S.-built pier in Gaza.
■ Wired: “Misinformation has been everywhere” in coverage of campus protests.
■ Tribune critic Michael Phillips talks to Second City’s director of comedy studies about why that Saturday Night Live open about protests fell flat.
‘His presidency was chaos.’ On a fundraising swing through Chicago, Biden demonstrated his increasing willingness to address Donald Trump’s campaign head-on.
■ Before that, the president was in Racine, touting job creation—prompting historian Heather Cox Richardson to observe that “the Biden administration has been scrupulous about making sure that money from the funds appropriated to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure and manufacturing base has gone to Republican-dominated districts … appealing to a population that has been dispossessed economically.”
■ Route Fifty: Illinois is in the forefront of states moving to hire people with disabilities.
An ‘unpardonable delay.’ Columnist Eric Zorn mourns the indefinite postponement of Trump’s trial on charges he mishandled classified documents.
■ Law and Chaos: Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision to postpone that case was “remarkably craven.”
■ Live updates: Stormy Daniels was set to return to the witness stand in Trump’s criminal trial.
Oily tactics. The Washington Post reports that Trump has promised petroleum industry executives he’ll reverse Biden administration environmental rules if they raise $1 billion for his campaign.
■ Reviewing Tuesday’s Indiana primary outcome, columnist S.E. Cupp notes that 20% of the Republican voters there voted against Trump and for a candidate who had officially dropped out of the race.
‘The inside of his head is basically the movie Dune.’ That’s Jimmy Kimmel, joining a chorus of late-night hosts reacting to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s assertion that a worm got into his brain, ate part of it and died.
■ Stephen Colbert: Kennedy “does not know the meaning of the word quit—’cause that information was in the part of the brain that the worm ate.”
Bye, Kristi. South Dakota Gov.—and vice presidential wannabe—Noem’s apparently called off what Mediaite calls a “disastrous” book tour.
■ Amazon yanked reviews of her dark—and error-tainted—memoir.
■ Recounting Albini’s work with Nirvana, The Pixies and many others, AV Club calls him an architect of American independent music.
■ Axios: He was “a crusader for fairness and equity in the music industry.”
■ The Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg passed on the chance to write his Northwestern University contemporary’s obit: “The highest tribute I could pay … was not to try to explain him, not to look through my keyhole perception, colored with nostalgia and affection, and pretend I had any special insight into his essence.” (2021 photo: Steinberg.)
■ Newcity publisher Brian Hieggelke recalls the one piece Albini wrote for Newcity, back in 1994: “Never Mind the Bullshit: An Outsider’s Reminiscence (About Kurt Cobain).”
On track. Mayor Johnson’s nomination to the Regional Transportation Authority board of the Rev. Ira Acree—who really said “As a man, I don’t have to use CTA”—nevertheless has passed a Chicago City Council committee.
■ Ex-Mayor Lightfoot’s hiring to investigate the shady practices of Dolton’s mayor has been vetoed … by Dolton’s mayor.
Oh, you FLiRT, you. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says a new set of COVID-19 variants—named for the technical names of their gene mutations, F for L at position 456, and R for T at position 346—is on the move across the country.
■ Your Local Epidemiologist updates concerns about bird flu: “We are flying blind.”
Apple’s ‘dark turn.’ An ad for the new iPad—portraying the crushing of instruments and artwork—is drawing widespread criticism.
■ Actor Hugh Grant calls it “The destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley.”
The Office—at a newspaper. Peacock’s announced a spinoff of NBC’s classic series—set in the same universe—at “a dying historic Midwestern newspaper” …
■ … a venue that the official news release calls “a fresh setting ripe for comedic storytelling.”
■ No one seems to be laughing at just how bad the Chicago Tribune’s website and how onerous its billing practices have become.
■ Yeah, but The New York Times is freeing old Wordle puzzles from the archives.
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