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City opening mass vaccination sites at Wrigley conference center, Chicago State

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

Chicago will open two new mass vaccination sites on Monday — one at Chicago State University, the other at a conference center adjacent to Wrigley Field.

The decision to open two more mass vaccination sites in addition to the one already operating in a United Center parking lot comes just one day after the city expanded vaccine eligibility to include all essential workers and adults with underlying medical conditions, excluding smokers.

The Wrigley Field site will be at the American Airlines Conference Center at Gallagher Way, the open-air plaza adjacent to the stadium. The Cubs play their home opener on Thursday.

It will be operated by Advocate Aurora Health and have the capacity to administer roughly 2,000 daily doses of the coronavirus vaccine, by appointment only. Appointments will be posted on zocdoc.com/vaccine later this week with additional appointments added each day.

Chicagoans also will be able to book appointments by phone; details on that process will be announced in the coming days. There will be no on-site registration.

Read the full story from Fran Spielman here.

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News

11:53 a.m. 26 Chicago restaurants chosen for DoorDash accelerator program

Geri Hernandez’s restaurant, Savory Crust Gourmet Empanadas, switched to solely takeout and delivery in October 2020 as the pandemic put a major strain on the costs of its branches in Morton Grove and Carol Stream.

As a small business “you’re hanging on a thread anyway,” said Hernandez, the CEO and co-founder. “When the pandemic hit, I thought we were done, that we were going to close. It was a scary time, scary for the whole year. Even now, you don’t know what’s going to happen, there’s a lot of uncertainty.”

Savory Crust is one of 26 Chicago-area restaurants picked to participate in DoorDash’s inaugural Main Street Strong Accelerator Program.

In all, 100 restaurants nationwide will receive a $20,000 grant, access to training support through an eight-week hands-on restaurant operator course that involves small business advising and mentorship, one-on-one financial, legal, and technological expert advice as well as free marketing and merchandising from DoorDash.

More than three-quarters of the Chicago-based restaurants picked for the program are owned by women, 92% by people of color and nearly 40% by immigrants.

Ms. B’s Kitchen & Catering owner and manager Tawanda Stange said she applied to the program for the financial assistance and the additional support services that come with the training, as well as access to the communities and networks of other restaurant owners participating.

“I was super excited. I’m still really excited. I really need this,” Stange said. “Just being involved in something like this will give me the extra push I need to take my business to another level, with confidence.”

Read the full story here.

9:50 a.m. Reopening retreat: State’s move into less restrictive ‘bridge phase’ pushed back as cases rise, hospital beds fill

Reopening plans are being pushed back in Illinois as COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations rise yet again statewide, public health officials announced Tuesday.

With 70% of seniors vaccinated with at least one dose, the state had been on pace to see some business restrictions lifted this week under Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s “bridge phase” before a full reopening by May.

Not so anymore, as coronavirus cases mount and more people head to hospitals with the deadly respiratory disease. The governor’s intermediate reopening plan also required hospitalizations to “hold steady or decline over a 28-day monitoring period.”

That count has risen almost daily since hitting a one-year low of 1,082 beds occupied by COVID-19 patients March 12. A total of 1,396 beds were taken up Monday night — the most since late February.

“As long as new hospital admissions continue to increase, the state will not advance to the Bridge Phase and on to Phase 5 of the Restore Illinois Plan,” officials from the Illinois Department of Public Health said in a statement. “The number of cases of COVID-19 has seen an increasing trend as well. Health officials continue to urge all residents to continue to mask up, socially distance, and avoid crowds to reduce transmission and bring the metrics back in line to transition to the Bridge Phase.”

Read the full story from Mitchell Armentrout here.

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New Cases & Vaccination Numbers

• The state reported 2,404 new cases were diagnosed among 51,579 tests, raising the state’s average testing positivity rate over the past week to 3.4%.
• About 473 residents are testing positive each day, up 34% compared to a week ago, according to the city’s Department of Public Health.
• The state reported 17 more deaths, including that of a McHenry County man in his 30s.
• The state also reported 86,812 vaccine doses were administered Monday. About 105,040 shots are going into arms every day.

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Analysis & Commentary

9:52 a.m. I didn’t expect ‘doom’ to be so exhausting

“Impending doom.”

I read the words aloud to my wife.

“Now there’s a phrase that you just don’t see very much,” I continued. “I wonder if other things ‘impend.’ Or is it just doom?”

She started to read something on her phone. The winds buffeted the old house, which groaned like a clipper ship rounding the Horn Monday night, as we fished the internet for news which, despite an upswing in positive developments — vaccines rolling out more and more, weather improving, that ship stuck in the Suez Canal finally freed — suddenly seems grim.

“The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned of ‘impending doom’ from a potential fourth surge of the pandemic,” I read. “CDC director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, appeared to fight back tears as she pleaded with Americans to ‘hold on a little while longer’ and continue following public health advice, like wearing masks and social distancing, to curb the virus’s spread.”

When government officials start to cry, that’s usually bad, right? Despite everything that’s gone on for the past … ah … year plus, the people in charge do not generally weep.

Read the full column from Neil Steinberg here.

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There was never any doubt the NFL’s owners would vote in favor of a 17-game scheduled beginning next season. In fact, it was such a foregone conclusion that it was expected to be unanimous.

Not so. Bears chairman George McCaskey voted against the extra game, ESPN reported Wednesday, and is the only owner known to have done so.

The league announced the expanded schedule Tuesday, and the expected move factored significantly into new television contract negotiations. The NFL is scrapping a preseason game and move the Super Bowl back a week to make room for the extra game.

The scheduling model will remain the same except the additional matchup will be a cross-conference game that rotates among divisions based on teams’ finish the previous season. The home-road split will alternate by conference, with the entire NFC playing on the road this season and the AFC doing so in 2022.

The Bears will visit the Raiders next season after both teams finished second in their division.

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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed ready to give college athletes a win in a dispute with the NCAA over rules limiting their education-related compensation.

With the March Madness basketball tournaments in their final stages, the high court heard arguments in a case about how colleges can reward athletes who play Division I basketball and football. Under current NCAA rules, students cannot be paid, and the scholarship money colleges can offer is capped at the cost of attending the school. The NCAA defends its rules as necessary to preserve the amateur nature of college sports.

But the former athletes who brought the case, including former West Virginia football player Shawne Alston, say the NCAA’s rules are unfair and violate federal antitrust law designed to promote competition.

The outcome will help determine how college athletes are compensated and whether schools can offer tens of thousands of dollars in education benefits for things such as postgraduate scholarships, tutoring, study abroad opportunities and vocational school payments.

During an hour and a half of arguments conducted by phone because of the coronavirus pandemic, both liberal and conservative justices sounded sympathetic to students.

Justice Elena Kagan suggested that what was going on sounded a lot like price fixing. “Schools that are naturally competitors … have all gotten together in an organization,” she said, and used their power to “fix athletic salaries at extremely low levels.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed. He told a lawyer for the NCAA that “it does seem … schools are conspiring with competitors … to pay no salaries for the workers who are making the schools billions of dollars on the theory that consumers want the schools to pay their workers nothing.” Kavanaugh said that was “somewhat disturbing.”

A ruling for the former players would not necessarily mean an immediate infusion of cash to current college athletes. It would mean that the NCAA could not bar schools from sweetening their offers to Division I basketball and football athletes with additional education-related benefits. Individual athletic conferences could still set limits.

Still, if the athletes were to win, there would be pressure on schools to offer additional benefits, and that could create bidding wars for the best players. The NCAA says that could turn off fans and erase the distinction between professional and college sports.

Whatever happens at the high court, changes seem on the way for how college athletes are compensated.

The NCAA is in the process of trying to amend its rules to allow athletes to profit from their names, images and likenesses. That would allow athletes to earn money for things like sponsorship deals, online endorsement and personal appearances. For some athletes, those amounts could dwarf any education-related benefits.

The former college athletes have some big-time supporters. The players associations of the NFL, NBA and WNBA all urged the justices to side with the ex-athletes, as did the Biden administration. So far, the former players have won every round of the case.

A decision in the case is expected before the end of June, when the high court traditionally breaks for summer.

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MINNEAPOLIS — The convenience store cashier who was handed a counterfeit $20 bill by George Floyd — setting in motion the Black man’s ill-fated encounter with police — testified Wednesday that he watched Floyd’s arrest outside with “disbelief — and guilt.”

“If I would’ve just not tooken the bill, this could’ve been avoided,” 19-year-old Christopher Martin lamented at Officer Derek Chauvin’s murder trial, joining the burgeoning list of onlookers who expressed a sense of helplessness and lingering guilt over Floyd’s death last May.

Prosecutors used Martin to help lay out the sequence of events leading to the arrest, and also played store security footage showing Floyd in Cup Foods for about 10 minutes, adding to the mountain of video documenting what happened.

Martin said he immediately believed the $20 that Floyd gave him in exchange for a pack of cigarettes was fake, but accepted it even though store policy was that the amount would be taken out of his paycheck.

Martin said he initially planned to just put the bill on his “tab” but then second-guessed himself and told a manager, who sent Martin outside to ask Floyd to return to the store.

He said a manager asked another employee to call police after Floyd and a passenger in Floyd’s vehicle twice refused to go back into the store to resolve the issue.

Floyd was later arrested outside, where Chauvin pinned his knee on the man’s neck for what prosecutors said was 9 minutes, 29 seconds, as a handcuffed Floyd lay face-down on the pavement. Floyd, 46, was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

Martin said that inside the store, he asked Floyd if he played baseball, and Floyd said he played football, but it took Floyd some time to respond, so “it would appear that he was high.” But he described Floyd as friendly and talkative.

The defense has argued that the now-fired white officer did what his training told him to do and that Floyd’s death was not caused by Chauvin’s knee on his neck, as prosecutors contend, but by a combination of illegal drug use, heart disease, high blood pressure and the adrenaline flowing through his body.

Martin went outside as people were gathering on the curb and yelling at officers, then called his mother, who lived in an apartment upstairs, and told her to stay inside before he took out his phone and began recording.

He said he saw Officer Tou Thao push one of his co-workers, and Martin said he also held back another man who was trying to defend himself after being pushed by Thao.

Martin later deleted his recording, explaining that the ambulance didn’t take the fastest route to the hospital so he thought Floyd died.

“I just didn’t want to have to show it (the video) to anyone,” he said.

Chauvin, 45, is charged with murder and manslaughter. The most serious charge against him carries up to 40 years in prison.

Floyd’s death, along with the harrowing bystander video of him, triggered sometimes violent protests around the world and a reckoning over racism and police brutality across the U.S.

On Tuesday, a parade of witnesses testified that they and other bystanders became upset as they repeatedly begged Chauvin to take his knee off Floyd’s neck, but Chauvin refused to ease up, and Thao forced back those on the sidewalk who tried to intervene.

One of those who happened upon the scene, Minneapolis firefighter Genevieve Hansen, wept as she recalled being prevented from using her EMT training to help Floyd.

“There was a man being killed,” said Hansen, who testified in her dress uniform and detailed her emergency training. “I would have been able to provide medical attention to the best of my abilities. And this human was denied that right.”

Chauvin appeared unmoved by their pleas, according to the bystanders, including the teenager who shot the video that set off nationwide protests, 18-year-old Darnella Frazier. She said Chauvin gave the bystanders a “cold” and “heartless” look.

The testimony from the prosecution witnesses was apparently aimed at showing that Chauvin had multiple opportunities to think about what he was doing and change course.

But Chauvin attorney Eric Nelson also repeatedly sought to bring out evidence that the onlookers were becoming agitated, in an apparent attempt to show that the police were distracted by what they perceived as a growing and increasingly hostile crowd.

Witnesses testified that no bystanders interfered with police.

Wednesday morning’s testimony was briefly interrupted when a juror stood and raised her hand and gestured toward the door. She later told the judge that she had been feeling stress and having trouble sleeping, but told the judge she was OK to proceed.

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BILLINGS, Mont. — Grizzly bears are slowly expanding the turf where they roam in parts of the northern Rocky Mountains but need continued protections, according to government scientists who concluded that no other areas of the country would be suitable for reintroducing the fearsome predators.

The Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday released its first assessment in almost a decade about the status of grizzly bears in the contiguous U.S. The bruins are shielded from hunting as a threatened species except in Alaska.

Grizzly populations grew over the past ten years in two areas — the Yellowstone region of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, with more than 700 bears; and around Glacier National Park in Montana, which is home to more than 1,000 of the animals.

Grizzly numbers remain low in other parts of the Northern Rockies, and scientists said their focus is on bolstering those populations rather than reintroducing them elsewhere in the country.

The bears now occupy about 6% of their historical range, up from 2% of that range in 1975.

Conservationists and some university scientists have pushed to return bears to areas including Colorado’s San Juan Mountains and California’s Sierra Nevada.

The 368-page assessment makes no recommendation on the topic, but scientists looked at the possibility of bears in more areas as part of an examination of their remaining habitat.

That analysis showed grizzlies would be unable to sustain themselves in the San Juans, the Sierra Nevada or two other areas that officials examined — Utah’s Uinta Mountains and New Mexico’s Mongollon Mountains.

“They were looking for areas that could sustain grizzly bears as opposed to areas that would continuously need for humans to drop bears in there,” said Hilary Cooley, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s grizzly bear recovery coordinator.

In each case, officials said, bears would face the same challenge: not enough protected public lands, high densities of humans and little chance of connecting with other bears populations to maintain healthy populations.

Tens of thousands of grizzlies once populated western North America before hunting, trapping and habitat loss wiped out most by the early 1900s. The bears were last seen in California in the 1920s and the last known grizzly in Colorado was killed by an elk hunter in 1979.

Grizzly bears have been protected as a threatened species in the contiguous U.S. since 1975, allowing a slow recovery in a handful of areas. An estimated 1,900 live in the Northern Rockies of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Washington state.

The Center for Biological Diversity sued the Fish and Wildlife Service in 2019 in a bid to force officials to consider restoring grizzlies to parts of California, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and Oregon. A U.S. District judge ruled last year that the government was not compelled to draft recovery plans for the bears in new areas.

Protections for bears in the Yellowstone region were lifted under President Donald Trump but later restored under a court order just as Idaho and Wyoming prepared to hold public hunts for grizzlies for the first time in decades.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service, co-sponsored legislation to increase protections for bears while she was a member of Congress. She declined to say how she would approach the issue when questioned during her February confirmation hearings.

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MINNEAPOLIS — The convenience store cashier who sold cigarettes to George Floyd and was handed a counterfeit $20 bill in return took the stand Wednesday at Officer Derek Chauvin’s murder trial as prosecutors laid out the sequence of events that led to Floyd’s ill-fated arrest outside.

Prosecutors also played store security video showing Floyd in Cup Foods for about 10 minutes last May.

Christopher Martin, 19, said he immediately believed the $20 that Floyd gave him was fake, but took it even though store policy was that the amount would be taken out of his paycheck.

Martin said he initially planned to just put the bill on his “tab” but then second-guessed himself and told a manager, who sent Martin outside to ask Floyd to return to the store.

The Black man was later arrested outside, where Chauvin pinned his knee on Floyd’s neck for what prosecutors said was 9 minutes, 29 seconds, as a handcuffed Floyd lay face-down on the pavement. Floyd, 46, was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

Martin said that inside the store, he asked Floyd if he played baseball, and Floyd said he played football, but it took Floyd some time to respond, so “it would appear that he was high.”

The defense has argued that Chauvin did what his training told him to do and that Floyd’s death was not caused by the officer’s knee on his neck, as prosecutors contend, but by a combination of illegal drug use, heart disease, high blood pressure and the adrenaline flowing through his body.

Earlier, a Minneapolis firefighter who wept Tuesday as she recalled being prevented from using her EMT training to help Floyd returned to the stand briefly Wednesday.

Genevieve Hansen, one of several bystanders seen and heard shouting at Chauvin as he pinned Floyd down, described her desperation Tuesday as she recounted how she was unable to come to Floyd’s aid or tell police what to do, such as administering chest compressions.

“There was a man being killed,” said Hansen, who testified in her dress uniform and detailed her emergency medical technician training. “I would have been able to provide medical attention to the best of my abilities. And this human was denied that right.”

Chauvin, 45, is charged with murder and manslaughter. The most serious charge against him carries up to 40 years in prison.

Floyd’s death, along with the harrowing bystander video of him pleading that he couldn’t breathe as onlookers yelled at Chauvin to get off, triggered sometimes violent protests around the world and a reckoning over racism and police brutality across the U.S.

Several onlookers testified Tuesday about their increasing frustration, anger and despair as they begged Chauvin to take his knee off Floyd’s neck. Witnesses and video depicted police keeping back some of those on the sidewalk who tried to intervene.

Chauvin appeared unmoved by their pleas, according to the bystanders, including the teenager who shot the video that set off nationwide protests.

“He didn’t care. It seemed as if he didn’t care what we were saying,” said 18-year-old Darnella Frazier, one of several witnesses who testified through tears. She said he gave the bystanders a “cold” and “heartless” look.

Chauvin continued to kneel on Floyd while fellow Officer Tou Thao held back about 15 onlookers, even when Hansen identified herself as a firefighter and pleaded repeatedly to check Floyd’s pulse, according to witnesses and bystander video.

“They definitely put their hands on the Mace, and we all pulled back,” Frazier told the jury.

The testimony from the prosecution witnesses was apparently aimed at showing that Chauvin had multiple opportunities to think about what he was doing and change course.

But Chauvin attorney Eric Nelson also sought to bring out evidence that the onlookers were agitated, in an apparent attempt to show that the police were distracted by what they perceived as a growing and increasingly hostile crowd.

Witnesses testified that no bystanders interfered with police.

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It’s hardly a surprise that Michael Jordan turned down an interview request from the filmmakers behind “Moment of Truth,” a stunningly revelatory five-part IMDb TV documentary series about the murder of Michael’s father James Jordan and the subsequent investigation and trial. We would imagine the last thing MJ would want to do is revisit such a dark and tragic period from his life. So, we see Michael only in archival footage, most notably an interview with Oprah Winfrey in which he’s asked if he’d ever want to ask his father’s killers, “Why?,” and Michael replies, “No, because I don’t want to know. Because it would probably hurt me even more to know their reasons, because it’s going to be totally meaningless. It’s better that I don’t know.”

We get that. We respect that. Still, there are a myriad of unanswered questions about the tragedy as well as the trial and conviction of Daniel Green, who in 1996 was convicted of first-degree murder, first-degree armed robbery and conspiracy to commit armed robbery and was sentenced to life in prison in what appeared to be a slam-dunk case at the time but is at the very least worth re-examining.

The celebrity hook for “Moment of Truth” is of course the fact that James Jordan was the father of arguably the most beloved sports figure in the world at the time. But director Matthew Perniciaro devotes the vast majority of this exhaustively researched, well-documented and provocative film providing invaluable context and digging deep into the deeply flawed case against Green, from the questionable testimony of his criminal partner Larry Demery to the racially charged history of the county where the defendants lived to the borderline incompetent performances of not only Green’s first defense team but the prosecutor who went after him. “Moment of Truth” is filled with moment after moment of the truth being manipulated, bent and broken to serve various agendas.

IMDb TV

The shorthand narrative of this story follows a distinct series of events. On July 22, 1993, James Jordan was driving to Charlotte, N.C., in a red Lexus when he pulled over to the side of the highway, apparently to get some rest. Sometime that night, Daniel Green, 18, and Larry Demery, 19 — two troubled teenagers with histories of criminal activities — approached the vehicle and robbed and murdered Mr. Jordan, whose body was found a week and a half later in a South Carolina swamp. (These small-time punks reportedly didn’t realize who their victim was until after the crime.)

Green infamously appeared in an amateur video, dancing and posing and preening while wearing an NBA championship watch and a 1986 All-Star ring Michael had given to his father. It was a sickening spectacle and further solidified the case against him and his partner Demery.

“Moment of Truth” doesn’t try to paint Green as innocent; he’s clearly guilty of accessory to murder after the fact at the very least. But it raises serious and quite reasonable doubts about whether Green was the triggerman, as Demery testified — or was even present when the murder occurred. Before getting into great detail about the numerous holes in the prosecution’s case against Green, the filmmakers provide a thorough history of long and often corrupt political and law enforcement communities of Robeson County, and explore the racially charged tensions between the Black, white and Native American populations. Even before the James Jordan tragedy, there’s enough corruption and crime and even murder to fill a docuseries.

Prosecutor Luther Johnson Britt, who came precariously close to causing a mistrial in his closing arguments, appears in a present-day interview, vigorously defending his actions and brushing aside any questions about Green’s guilt as jailhouse poppycock. Much more convincing are the interviews with Christine Mumma, an Erin Brockovich-like figure who has made it her life’s mission to vindicate wrongly convicted prisoners and is Green’s current lawyer; TV journalist Amanda Lamb, who has covered the case from the beginning and is in constant contact with him, and Chicago Tribune reporter Daniel John Wiederer, who wrote a comprehensive and well-researched piece in 2018 that raised many of the questions brought up in this series.

AP File

Green was convicted largely on the strength of Demery’s testimony, which has changed drastically time and again. Eyewitnesses claim Green never left a house party on the night Mr. Jordan was murdered. There was a noticeable lack of blood evidence in the car, one of several indications the murder took place elsewhere. Legitimate concerns are brought up regarding possible tampering with James Jordan’s shirt, a phone call placed from the car phone in the Lexus to the county sheriff’s drug-dealing biological son; and even the trajectory of the bullet that killed Jordan.

Daniel Green remains in prison and continues to maintain his innocence. Efforts to re-open his case and grant him a new trial or freedom have been denied. Last year, North Carolina officials announced Larry Demery will be released from prison in 2023. “Moment of Truth” has us wondering if the man who pulled the trigger that night in 1993 is the one who will remain behind bars — or the guy who will be free in a little more than two years.

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A man previously accused of setting a Chicago police SUV on fire downtown amid the rioting last May has been charged in federal court.

Jacob Fagundo, 23, of Chicago is accused in a one-page charging document of obstructing law enforcement amid civil disorder May 30. The bare-bones document, filed Tuesday, offers no additional detail.

The document used to charge Fagundo is known as an information, which is typically a sign a defendant intends to plead guilty. An attorney for Fagundo could not immediately be reached.

Cook County prosecutors last year accused Fagundo of setting the police SUV on fire May 30 on Lower Michigan Avenue. They said he turned himself in after police released surveillance images from the incident and Fagundo was recognized.

Fagundo’s lawyer said at the time that Fagundo had gone downtown to protest the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd and to stand in solidarity with others protesting police brutality.

“I’m convinced that even if [Fagundo] did do these offenses … he set out on that day with a pure heart and the most honorable of intentions,” attorney Robert Kerr said then.

Video surveillance cameras recorded several people breaking windows of the police SUV while it was parked about 7 p.m., prosecutors said at the time.

A man alleged to be Fagundo — wearing paint-splattered clothes and a dark hooded sweatshirt — could be seen taking an item out of his backpack and throwing it into the battered SUV, setting it aflame, prosecutors said. They added that several police officers had personal items inside the vehicle.

Surveillance cameras tracked the person as he walked away from the scene and removed his hood. The cameras also captured his unique arm tattoos, prosecutors said.

Another man, 31-year-old Timothy O’Donnell of Pilsen, has also been charged in federal court with torching a CPD SUV the same day while wearing a Joker mask.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported last week that, while some federal cases stemming from last year’s riots are already leading to guilty pleas and sentencings, investigations into the rioting continue.

Federal prosecutors in early March also leveled a rarely filed charge against James Massey of Chicago, accusing him of using a facility of interstate commerce to incite a riot during a second round of unrest in August. And in February, they charged three people with setting fire to a CTA van May 30.

Contributing: Matthew Hendrickson

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Latest

City opening mass vaccination sites at Wrigley conference center, Chicago State

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

Chicago will open two new mass vaccination sites on Monday — one at Chicago State University, the other at a conference center adjacent to Wrigley Field.

The decision to open two more mass vaccination sites in addition to the one already operating in a United Center parking lot comes just one day after the city expanded vaccine eligibility to include all essential workers and adults with underlying medical conditions, excluding smokers.

The Wrigley Field site will be at the American Airlines Conference Center at Gallagher Way, the open-air plaza adjacent to the stadium. The Cubs play their home opener on Thursday.

It will be operated by Advocate Aurora Health and have the capacity to administer roughly 2,000 daily doses of the coronavirus vaccine, by appointment only. Appointments will be posted on zocdoc.com/vaccine later this week with additional appointments added each day.

Chicagoans also will be able to book appointments by phone; details on that process will be announced in the coming days. There will be no on-site registration.

Read the full story from Fran Spielman here.

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News

9:50 a.m. Reopening retreat: State’s move into less restrictive ‘bridge phase’ pushed back as cases rise, hospital beds fill

Reopening plans are being pushed back in Illinois as COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations rise yet again statewide, public health officials announced Tuesday.

With 70% of seniors vaccinated with at least one dose, the state had been on pace to see some business restrictions lifted this week under Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s “bridge phase” before a full reopening by May.

Not so anymore, as coronavirus cases mount and more people head to hospitals with the deadly respiratory disease. The governor’s intermediate reopening plan also required hospitalizations to “hold steady or decline over a 28-day monitoring period.”

That count has risen almost daily since hitting a one-year low of 1,082 beds occupied by COVID-19 patients March 12. A total of 1,396 beds were taken up Monday night — the most since late February.

“As long as new hospital admissions continue to increase, the state will not advance to the Bridge Phase and on to Phase 5 of the Restore Illinois Plan,” officials from the Illinois Department of Public Health said in a statement. “The number of cases of COVID-19 has seen an increasing trend as well. Health officials continue to urge all residents to continue to mask up, socially distance, and avoid crowds to reduce transmission and bring the metrics back in line to transition to the Bridge Phase.”

Read the full story from Mitchell Armentrout here.

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New Cases & Vaccination Numbers

• The state reported 2,404 new cases were diagnosed among 51,579 tests, raising the state’s average testing positivity rate over the past week to 3.4%.
• About 473 residents are testing positive each day, up 34% compared to a week ago, according to the city’s Department of Public Health.
• The state reported 17 more deaths, including that of a McHenry County man in his 30s.
• The state also reported 86,812 vaccine doses were administered Monday. About 105,040 shots are going into arms every day.

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Analysis & Commentary

9:52 a.m. I didn’t expect ‘doom’ to be so exhausting

“Impending doom.”

I read the words aloud to my wife.

“Now there’s a phrase that you just don’t see very much,” I continued. “I wonder if other things ‘impend.’ Or is it just doom?”

She started to read something on her phone. The winds buffeted the old house, which groaned like a clipper ship rounding the Horn Monday night, as we fished the internet for news which, despite an upswing in positive developments — vaccines rolling out more and more, weather improving, that ship stuck in the Suez Canal finally freed — suddenly seems grim.

“The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned of ‘impending doom’ from a potential fourth surge of the pandemic,” I read. “CDC director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, appeared to fight back tears as she pleaded with Americans to ‘hold on a little while longer’ and continue following public health advice, like wearing masks and social distancing, to curb the virus’s spread.”

When government officials start to cry, that’s usually bad, right? Despite everything that’s gone on for the past … ah … year plus, the people in charge do not generally weep.

Read the full column from Neil Steinberg here.

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MADISON, Wis. — The Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ statewide mask mandate Wednesday, stripping the governor of one of his last remaining tools to curb large-scale spread of COVID-19 as the state stands on the precipice of another surge in infections.

The conservative-leaning court ruled 4-3 that Evers violated state law by unilaterally issuing multiple emergency orders to extend the mandate for months. The court found Evers needed legislative approval to issue more orders after the initial 60-day mandate he issued in August expired.

“The question in this case is not whether the governor acted wisely; it is whether he acted lawfully. We conclude he did not,” Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote for the majority.

The decision marks another legal defeat for Evers. The Supreme Court in May struck down his stay-at-home order, finding that his health secretary lacked the authority to issue such an order. A state appeals court blocked Evers’ attempts to limit capacity in bars, restaurants and other indoor places in October.

Wednesday’s decision comes as COVID-19 cases have been rising in the state. The seven-day average has jumped from fewer than 400 cases in mid-March to 501 on Tuesday. State Department of Health Services Secretary Julie Willems Van Dijk said the state is seeing “warning signs” that another surge in infections is about to begin.

Local mask mandates remain in place. Milwaukee and Dane County, home to the state capital of Madison, both have issued such mandates. But invalidating the statewide order leaves Evers with few options to control spread on a broad scale.

Evers spokeswoman Britt Cudaback didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, a member of the court’s three-justice minority, lamented in a dissent that the ruling hampers the ability of governors in Wisconsin to protect lives.

“This is no run-of-the-mill case,” she wrote. “We are in the midst of a worldwide pandemic that so far has claimed the lives of over a half million people in this country. And with the stakes so high, the majority not only arrives at erroneous conclusions, but it also obscures the consequence of its decision. Unfortunately, the ultimate consequence of the majority’s decision is that it places yet another roadblock to an effective governmental response to COVID-19.”

Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul, who defended the mask order, issued a statement urging people to continue to wear masks.

Republican lawmakers applauded the ruling. Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu said in a statement that Evers abused his power and the court’s decision affirms the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches.

“The governor’s repeated abuse of emergency powers and pervasive violation of state statute created a state of chaos and had to be stopped,” LeMahieu said.

Evers had argued that he can issue multiple health emergencies because of the changing nature of the pandemic. The mask order first took effect in August and Evers extended it four times since then, most recently on Feb. 4 immediately after Republican legislators repealed it.

Nearly 60 organizations opposed repeal of the mask mandate, including groups representing hospitals, doctors, nurses, EMTs, school administrators, businesses, children, unions, Milwaukee schools, American Indian tribes, pharmacists, firefighters, local health departments, senior citizens, churches and dentists.

Hagedorn joined with the liberal justices in supporting Evers stay-at-home order in May, when conservatives held a 5-2 majority. His stance then gave Democrats hope that he would cast the deciding vote to uphold the mask mandate. But during oral arguments in the mask case on Nov. 16, Hagedorn questioned Evers’ authority to renew health emergencies beyond the 60-day limit. He said it was an “extraordinary grant of short-term power to the governor” and that “it seems like the Legislature wanted to allow for only a very short period of time.”

The case challenging the mask mandate was brought by Jere Fabick, a major Republican donor in Wisconsin who has given more than $350,000 to Republican or conservative candidates in Wisconsin between 1994 and the middle of 2020, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

In 2016, Fabick gave $20,000 to conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley. Fabick is a board member and policy advisor for The Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank, and also the president of a multi-state Caterpillar equipment and engine dealer.

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Associated Press writer Scott Bauer contributed to this report.

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