The vaccination site at the American Airlines Conference Center at Gallagher Way next to Wrigley Field opened at 8 a.m. Thursday. | Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
“It’s like a light at the end of the tunnel,” said one 12-year-old boy as he waited in line Thursday morning with his mom at a vaccination site next to Wrigley Field, which opened at 8 a.m.
Hallelujah!
“It’s like a light at the end of the tunnel,” said Liam Samet, 12, as he walked into a vaccination site near Wrigley Field early Thursday — the first day kids in the 12-to-15-year-old age group were eligible for inoculation.
“COVID has been going on for a long while now, so it’s really exciting to get my vaccine. I’m looking forward to hanging out with my friends because I’ve talked to my them a lot online so it will be just really nice to be able to see them in person again,” said Liam, who lives downtown and attends Skinner North Elementary School.
Pat Nabong/Sun-TimesLiam Samet, 12, waits outside Wrigley Field on Thursday morning before getting his COVID-19 vaccination.
Zara Smejkal, also 12, said she was looking forward to more normalcy in playing hockey and baseball, eating out, hanging with pals and traveling.
“It’s kind of nice because I won’t have to worry about COVID as much any more once I get the vaccine,” said Zara, who also attends Skinner North.
Both kids arrived with their moms shortly after the vaccination site in the American Airlines Conference Center at Gallagher Way, run by Advocate Aurora Health, opened Thursday morning. The building is next to Wrigley Field.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization of the Pfizer vaccine for kids 12 to 15 on Tuesday and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention signed off on the plan Wednesday.
The vaccine is available through pharmacies, private providers and at vaccination sites run by the city.
The F.D.A. declared the Pfizer vaccine safe, saying it offers strong protection for younger adolescents based on testing of more than 2,000 U.S. volunteers, ages 12 to 15.
The study found no cases of COVID-19 among fully vaccinated adolescents compared to 18 among kids given dummy shots. More intriguing, researchers found the kids developed higher levels of virus-fighting antibodies than earlier studies measured in young adults.
The younger teens received the same vaccine dosage as adults and had the same side effects, mostly sore arms and flu-like fever, chills or aches that signal a revved-up immune system, especially after the second dose.
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Removing congresswoman Liz Cheney from House GOP leadership was a relatively easy task for pro-Trump Republicans compared to their growing effort to boot her from office. | Ed Glazar/Gillette News Record via AP
Over a year remains before Wyoming’s deadline to file for the August 2022 Republican primary, but already at least six Republicans plan to run against her.
The rush to punish Cheney for her criticism of former President Donald Trump and his loyalists is drawing a cast of Wyoming primary challengers so big it could ultimately help her win again next year. Another boost for Cheney is a pile of campaign money and a family legacy that has helped her before.
Still, there’s no doubt that her campaign to call out Trump’s lies about fraud in the 2020 election is firing up opposition — in the process revitalizing old complaints about a politician some see as more in touch with Washington insiders than Wyomingites.
Over a year remains before Wyoming’s deadline to file for the August 2022 Republican primary, but already at least six Republicans plan to run against her.
The growing scrum, ranging from a retired Army colonel to a rural kombucha brewer, is on the minds of Cheney allies and opponents alike.
“There’s going to be an awful lot of them. It’s probably going to split the vote,” observed Mark Falk, a Cheyenne resident planning to vote against Cheney.
Trump has promised to endorse a Cheney challenger, but the window of opportunity for Cheney’s opponents to do much else to narrow the field may have closed. A bill, backed by Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. to institute primary runoffs, failed in the Wyoming Legislature in March amid concerns about costs and making big changes to the election system on short notice.
Cheney, meanwhile, has proved she can rebound from ignominy to prevail in a crowded field of Republicans — it’s how she first got elected. After ditching an ill-received run for Senate in 2014, she came back to run for the House in 2016, winning almost twice as many votes as the runner-up in a nine-way primary.
She’s since knocked off little-known Republican and Democratic opponents alike with ease, all while building up a formidable fundraising operation. From January through March, she brought in $1.5 million — her best quarter yet.
Her national profile as a daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney doesn’t hurt. And she could even get a boost from her status as Democrats’ new favorite Republican. Wyoming allows voters to register at the polls, and its Democrats often switch affiliation to vote in a hotly contested Republican primary.
To be sure, discontent with Cheney in Wyoming has grown wider and deeper since she voted to impeach Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Even after she survived her House Republican colleagues’ first attempt to oust her from leadership on Feb. 3, she was censured in an overwhelming vote by the state GOP central committee.
“I’ve never been a Cheney fan,” said one primary opponent, Marissa Joy Selvig, a former mayor of Pavillion, population 200. “She has been working more for herself and for the Republican Party than she has the citizens of Wyoming. That’s what I see.”
A farmer’s market kombucha brewer who accompanies student and church musicians on harp, piano, flute and other instruments, Selvig said she planned to run for Congress even before Cheney’s recent troubles.
Selvig pledged to serve in Congress with a “sense of peacefulness” and willingness to “work together for the good of the nation.”
Others running include state Sen. Anthony Bouchard, a gun rights activist and co-owner of a Cheyenne-area septic system business; state Rep. Chuck Gray, a conservative radio commentator whose father owns Casper-area radio stations; and retired Army Col. Denton Knapp of Trabuco Canyon, California, who graduated from high school in Wyoming in 1983 and plans to move back.
Trump and his allies have yet to hint at whom, if anybody, among Cheney’s opponents they prefer, even though doing so could discourage yet more candidates from entering the fray.
Cheney’s predicament with Trump has meanwhile breathed new life into old gripes, including that she spent little time in Wyoming before moving to wealthy Jackson Hole in 2012.
Labeled a “carpetbagger,” Cheney struggled through a six-month run against popular Sen. Mike Enzi, a fellow Republican, before dropping out in early 2014.
She regrouped, traveling the state and building an organization that helped her dominate a nine-way Republican primary for an open U.S. House seat in 2016. She beat a little-known Democrat with 62% of the vote and has won reelection by even wider margins since.
Yet to this day, Cheney has never quite proved herself for some Wyomingites who wonder why she voted to impeach when she and Trump both won the state in 2020 with almost 70% of the vote.
“I think she’s gotten way too far away from Wyoming, is just more of a Washington insider than anything,” Falk said. “I always kind of never thought she was a real Wyoming representative.”
Trump wasn’t popular in Wyoming at first, either. But that has changed.
In 2016, caucusing Republicans gave Texas Sen. Ted Cruz 23 delegates and just one each to Trump and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. That October, with Cheney closing in on winning the House seat Republican Rep. Cynthia Lummis was vacating, Lummis said she would vote for Trump while “holding my nose.”
Lately though, Lummis, elected last year to the Senate to replace the retiring Enzi, has been conspicuously quiet about Cheney. Just as Cheney was being voted out of House leadership, Lummis tweeted about transportation infrastructure and has kept silent about her close colleague’s fate.
“Nobody is standing with Liz,” lamented Republican state Rep. Landon Brown of Cheyenne, one of the very few Wyoming elected officials to take to social media in Cheney’s defense. “They’re all afraid to take on the Republican Party and stand up for what’s right.”
Another Cheyenne resident, though, said that while he understood Cheney’s interest in upholding the Constitution, impeaching Trump over the riot wasn’t a straightforward proposition.
“Let’s be honest, the attack on Congress was terrible. Whether or not you hold him responsible for that, I don’t know that that’s completely fair to say that he was personally responsible, although he didn’t do much to relieve it,” said George Geyer, a retired teacher and coach.
Cheney hasn’t done a terrible job, Geyer added, but he will probably consider voting for somebody else.
___
Follow Mead Gruver at https://twitter.com/meadgruver
A Palestinian man looks at the destruction of a building hit by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City, Thursday, May 13, 2021. | AP Photo/Khalil Hamra
Weary Palestinians somberly marked the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on Thursday, as Hamas and Israel traded more rockets and airstrikes and Jewish-Arab violence raged across Israel.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Weary Palestinians somberly marked the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on Thursday, as Hamas and Israel traded more rockets and airstrikes and Jewish-Arab violence raged across Israel.
The violence has reached deeper into Israel than at any time since the 2000 Palestinian intifada, or uprising. Arab and Jewish mobs have rampaged through the streets, savagely beating people and torching cars, and flights have been canceled or diverted away from the country’s main airport.
The escalating fighting between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers has echoed — and perhaps even exceeded — their devastating 2014 war. That conflict and two previous ones were largely confined to the impoverished and blockaded Palestinian territory and Israeli communities on the frontier. But this round — which, like the intifada, began in Jerusalem — seems to be rippling far and wide, tearing apart the country at its seams.
Meanwhile, in Gaza residents are bracing for more devastation as militants fire one barrage of rockets after another and Israel carries out waves of bone-rattling airstrikes, sending plumes of smoke rising into the air. Since the rockets began Monday, Israel has toppled three high-rise buildings that it said housed Hamas facilities after warning civilians to evacuate.
In the first sign of possible progress in efforts for a cease-fire, an Egyptian security delegation was in Tel Aviv on Thursday for talks with Israeli officials after meeting Hamas officials in Gaza, two Egyptian intelligence officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk the press. Even as word came of their presence, a volley of some 100 rockets from Gaza was fired toward southern and central Israel. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said the death toll has climbed to 83 Palestinians, including 17 children and seven women, with more than 480 people wounded. Islamic Jihad confirmed the deaths of seven militants, while Hamas, the Islamic militant group that seized power in Gaza from rival Palestinian forces in 2007, acknowledged that a top commander and several other members were killed. Israel says the number of militants killed is much higher than Hamas has acknowledged.
Seven people have been killed in Israel. Among them were a soldier killed by an anti-tank missile and a 6-year-old child hit in a rocket attack.
The fighting comes as Muslims mark Eid al-Fitr, the end of a month of daily fasting that is usually a festive time when families shop for new clothes and gather for large feasts.
Instead, Hamas urged the faithful to mark communal Eid prayers inside their homes or the nearest mosques instead of out in the open, as is traditional.
Hassan Abu Shaaban tried to lighten the mood by passing out candy to passers-by after prayers, but acknowledged “there is no atmosphere for Eid at all.”
“It is all airstrikes, destruction and devastation,” he said. “May God help everyone.”
In Gaza’s southern town of Khan Younis, dozens of mourners marched through the streets carrying the bodies of an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old killed when an Israeli airstrike hit near their home Wednesday.
The owner of a five-story building in Gaza City, meanwhile, said he got a call from the Israeli military on Thursday asking him to evacuate it before an airstrike brought it down.
“The building is residential, what is in to hit?” said the man, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.
The Israeli military later said the building housed intelligence offices used by Hamas.
Gaza militants continued to bombard Israel with nonstop rocket fire into Thursday. The attacks brought life to a standstill in southern communities near Gaza, but also reached as far north as the Tel Aviv area, about 70 kilometers (45 miles) away, for a second straight day.
Israel has diverted some incoming flights from Ben Gurion International Airport, near Tel Aviv, to the Ramon airfield in the country’s far south, the Transportation Ministry said. Several flights have also been canceled.
The Israeli military says more than 1,600 rockets have been fired since Monday, with 400 falling short and landing inside Gaza. Israel’s missile defenses have intercepted 90% of the rockets. Israeli airstrikes have struck around 600 targets inside Gaza, the military said.
The Israeli army shared footage showing a rocket impact between apartment towers in the Tel Aviv suburb of Petah Tikva early Thursday, apparently sparking a large fire. It said the strike wounded people and caused significant damage.
“We’re coping, sitting at home, hoping it will be OK,” said Motti Haim, a resident of the central town of Beer Yaakov and father of two children. “It’s not simple running to the shelter. It’s not easy with the kids.”
Despite cease-fire efforts, both sides were vowing to push ahead.
Israeli television’s Channel 12 reported late Wednesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet authorized a widening of the offensive. “It will take more time, but with great firmness … we will achieve our goal — to restore peace to the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said during a visit to batteries of the anti-missile defenses.
Not long after, air raid sirens rang out in Tel Aviv and around southern and central Israel as the warning system showed dozens of incoming rockets from Gaza.
A spokesman for Hamas’ military wing declared in a video speech that the “decision to bomb Tel Aviv, Dimona and Jerusalem is easier for us than drinking water.” Dimona is the site of Israel’s nuclear reactor. “Our conflict will reach you whenever you turn any aggression against our people.”
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the “indiscriminate launching of rockets” from civilian areas in Gaza toward Israeli population centers, but he also urged Israel to show “maximum restraint.” U.S. President Joe Biden called Netanyahu to support Israel’s right to defend itself, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he was sending a senior diplomat to the region to try to calm tensions.
The rally was one of two organized this week by the Chicago Coalition for Justice in Palestine, an umbrella organization for a number of Chicago-chapter Palestinian activist and community groups — including American Muslims for Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine and the U.S. Palestinian Community Network.
The group called on Chicagoans to sign petitions for the families facing evictions, contact their local congressional representatives and advocate to end U.S. funding to Israel.
The current eruption of violence began a month ago in Jerusalem, where heavy-handed Israeli police tactics during Ramadan and the threatened eviction of dozens of Palestinian families by Jewish settlers ignited protests and clashes with police. A focal point of clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police was Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, built on a hilltop compound that is revered by Jews and Muslims.
Jerusalem is at the heart of the conflict between the bitter enemies: Israel regards the entire city as its capital, while the Palestinians want east Jerusalem to be the capital of their future state.
Hamas, claiming to be defending the city, launched a barrage of rockets at the city late Monday, in a dramatic escalation. Hamas banners could be seen outside Al-Aqsa on Thursday as thousands gathered there for Eid prayers.
The recent fighting has also set off violent clashes between Arabs and Jews in Israel, in scenes unseen in more than two decades. Netanyahu warned that he was prepared to use an “iron fist if necessary” to calm the violence.
But ugly confrontations erupted across the country late Wednesday. Jewish and Arab mobs battled in the central city of Lod, the epicenter of the troubles, despite a state of emergency and nighttime curfew. In nearby Bat Yam, Jewish nationalists attacked an Arab motorist, dragged him from his car and beat him until he was motionless.
Israeli police said two people were shot and wounded in Lod and an Israeli Jew was stabbed. An Arab citizen was stabbed and seriously wounded in Jerusalem’s central Mahane Yehuda market, where many Arabs work in restaurants and as food vendors. Dozens of people were arrested in towns across Israel where clashes and rioting broke out.
In the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military said it intervened in a Palestinian shooting attack that wounded two people. The Palestinian Health Ministry said the suspected gunman was killed. No details were immediately available.
Still unclear is how the fighting in Gaza will affect Netanyahu’s political future. He failed to form a government coalition after inconclusive parliamentary elections in March, and now his political rivals have three weeks to try to form one.
They have courted a small Islamist Arab party, but the fighting could hamper those efforts.
___
Krauss reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Samy Magdy in Cairo, Isabel DeBre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Karin Laub in the West Bank contributed.
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