Resign or be fired. That’s the call to Chicago Transit Authority President Dorval Carter from at least 10 City Council members who point indirectly to reporting from Block Club Chicago.
■ A former Milwaukee mayor now championing the expressway removal movement says it’s time to demolish the Ohio Street feeder ramp connecting the Kennedy Expressway and River North.
Cops behaving badly. The Sun-Times reports that Illinois State Police have filed complaints against and launched a criminal investigation into two officers suspected of defrauding the federal pandemic-era Paycheck Protection Program.
■ A Chicago officer convicted of joining the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol has been fired.
■ You may know him from the social media photo the Justice Department shared in its complaint against him:
Star witness. Live updates: Donald Trump’s ex-lawyer and personal fixer, Michael Cohen, had taken the witness stand in the criminal case against Trump.
■ A former legal adviser to Cohen says Cohen knows his temper can be a problem on the stand.
■ Law professor Joyce Vance counsels observers to check their “gleefulness at the prosecution,” particularly as the proceedings reach “the complicated part … where it’s not just about the personal history witnesses like Stormy Daniels are sharing.”
‘You’re saying we should drop nuclear weapons on an ultra-dense area full of starving people who have already been bombed relentlessly for seven months? What is wrong with you?’ The Nation senior editor Jack Mirkinson is incredulous at what a Republican senator said, virtually unchallenged by feckless host Kristen Welker, on NBC’s Meet the Press yesterday.
■ More than 300,000 Palestinians fled Rafah over the weekend ahead of Israel’s new push into the city.
■ As comedian Jerry Seinfeld—who’s publicly supported Israel’s invasion—took to the podium at Duke University’s commencement, dozens of students walked out in protest.
■ Block Club: Citing an “impasse,” DePaul students are standing by their antiwar encampment.
■ A couple of Gonzaga University professors tackle a hard one for kids: “Why do people hate people?”
The moon frontier. NOTUS: “Billions of dollars and sprawling geopolitical interests are at stake” as governments and lobbyists race for regulatory control over this planet’s only natural satellite.
■ Meanwhile, on Earth, The American Prospect reports that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission “could carve out the path for fully renewable energy in America.”
■ Citing “low ice coverage on the Great Lakes over the past winter … the lowest in 50 years,” a Sun-Times editorial mourns, “this is not a good time for people to be losing interest in the future of the planet.”
Drug wars. The Lever finds Illinois at the heart of independent pharmacies’ struggle for survival.
■ A Chicago man who sells weighted blankets and sleep masks on Amazon is among those complaining that new fees on sellers are “like a kick in the gut.”
Any day now. This year’s cicada emergence has begun in southern states and Chicago’s extremely expectant.
■ Columnist Neil Steinberg has eaten ’em: “Not at all unpleasant.”
‘The real cancel culture.’ Deconstructing the attack on NPR’s editorial policies, Popular Information maestro Judd Legum finds New York Times alumnus Bari Weiss’s Free Press at the forefront of “a relentless right-wing operation seeking to inflict pain on their ideological adversaries.”
■ Press critic Mark Jacob lists 12 things to beware in political journalism.
■ Trump wants former Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan fired from the board of Fox Corp. because Ryan says he won’t vote for Trump.
■ Columnist and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich says America’s second civil war is imminent: “As blue and red states separate, what will happen to the poor in red states, disproportionately people of color?”
‘Holy shit, this letter to the Tribune.’ Columnist Eric Zorn marvels at former Mayor Lightfoot’s former top lawyer, calling her who calls Lightfoot “the kind of candidate who should not be elected to occupy the mayor’s office ever again.”
■ Chicago Public Square reader Matthew Tarpey writes of Mayor Johnson: “He’s really giving proof to the sentiment that progressives make fine activists, decent legislators … but terrible executives. … I’m really starting to worry that the convention will be a disaster because he’s so disinterested in the hard work of governance.”
■ But Johnson tells Politico: “Keeping people safe and protected is something that is a top priority for me. … I’m working with local law enforcement, including our police department, the Secret Service to ensure that the convention is peaceful.”
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