‘Live from the Trump Kimmel Center …’ With tomorrow’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner going comedian-less for the first time in years, Jimmy Kimmel last night delivered an eight-minute speech including “jokes a comedian might do if our president wasn’t … scared of comedy.”
■ The Freedom of the Press Foundation has your bingo card for the president’s dinner speech right here.
■ A petition calling on the association to confront directly Trump’s attacks on freedom of speech was closing in on 500 signatories (including this newsletter’s publisher) …■ … even as Politico says D.C.’s in “full celebration mode.”
■ Kimmel’s won his first Peabody Award for a season in which his show was yanked off the air under pressure from FCC boss and Trump acolyte Brendan Carr.
Obama + Colbert. Stephen Colbert says that, on May 5, as his show approaches its finale, he’ll broadcast the first interview with Barack Obama from Chicago’s Obama Presidential Center.
■ The Daily Beast: “Obama Sticks It to Trump With Huge Favor to Colbert.”
■ In a fresh round of social media diarrhea overnight, the president called for Obama’s arrest …
■ … as he sticks with his idiotic approach to mathematics.
You bet. LateNighter: Prediction markets—a.k.a. gambling companies—are increasingly hosting wagers centered on late-night programming and hosts.
■ A U.S. special forces soldier involved with the capture of Venezuela’s president faces charges of using classified information to win a bet about the operation.
Naval gazing. The Daily Show’s Michael Kosta scans the resume of Trump’s acting navy secretary, Hung Cao—who’s expressed fear that Virginia would be overtaken by witches.
■ The New York Times (gift link): Cao’s predecessor was asked to resign because he failed to deliver on Trump’s wish for a new class of battleships.
■ Dan Rather: FBI chief Kash Patel may be next.
■ Patel’s new nickname: “J. Edgar Boozer.”
‘Day 1 impeachment.’ Axios reports that Illinois U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez is at the forefront of a Democratic movement to begin now building a fresh case against Trump so they can get right down to it if they retake the House in November.
■ The American Prospect: “Congress has become almost totally irrelevant.”
■ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (gift link) on the call for a general U.S. strike a week from today to protest Trump’s reign: “Look at this action as the beginning of something. Where it ends is up to us, the people.”
■ Law professor Joyce Vance calls the Justice Department’s indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center “a critical moment in the administration’s war on democracy.”
Don’t trust Dr. AI. The Conversation: A new study concludes that half of artificial intelligence’s answers to health questions are wrong—even though they seem authoritative.
■ The Times (gift link): A lawyer launched a newsletter to warn about AI’s dangers. If only his dad had listened.
■ Columnist and former U.S. Rep. Marie Newman on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to end the military’s flu-shot mandate: “Even George Washington knew he needed to vaccinate his troops.”
Weekly Dingus. Lyz Lenz’s pick: “The Ivan the Terrible of streaming. The Damien of YouTube. His government name is James Stephen Donaldson. But you know him … as MrBeast” …
■ … whose company’s being sued on grounds of sexual harassment.
Who knew you were such tough quizzers? With The Conversation’s quizmaster, past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel, taking the week off, readers devised this week’s eight questions …
■ … only five of which your Chicago Public Square columnist got right.■ It was 3/5 here on City Cast’s Chicago-centric news quiz.
■ In honor of International Jazz Day, which will reunite Chicago’s jazz radio icons Sunday, Axios’ Justin Kaufmann’s assembled a Chicago jazz quiz …
■ … on which the guy to the left scored a middling 8/10 correct.
Independent together. More than 80 Chicago-area retailers tomorrow mark Independent Bookstore Day with a Chicagoland Bookstore Crawl.
■ The decaying Ford City Mall’s losing its last anchor store, JCPenney …
■ … but the mall itself has been granted at least a three-week reprieve.
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