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TY Johnson, a DePaul Prep star and Loyola recruit, and TaKiya “TK” Howard, a De La Salle Institute student who’s expected to play at Murray State University in Kentucky next season, were injured in the South Side shooting.

Two high school seniors, both bound for Division I college basketball, were wounded in a drive-by shooting Monday night in Englewood.

TY Johnson, a DePaul Prep star and Loyola University recruit, and TaKiya “TK” Howard, a De La Salle Institute student expected to play at Murray State University in Kentucky next season, were shot outside Johnson’s South Side home, according to school officials and family.

Howard, 18, and a friend had been heading to get ice cream when they stopped at Johnson’s place in the 7000 block of South Throop Street, Howard’s mother Kimberly Howard said.

Johnson, 17, was talking to the women through the window of their car as they sat outside his apartment when shots were fired from a passing car, the mother and Chicago police said.

Officers responded to a ShotSpotter alert just before midnight and found the two, police said. They were unable to provide a description of the vehicle. A source said at least 19 rounds were fired.

Johnson was grazed in the back of his head and brought by ambulance to the University of Chicago Medical Center in good condition, police said. Johnson is now resting at home and is said to be OK, according to a source.

Howard was struck once in the ear and taken to St. Bernard Hospital by her friend, said her mother, who met them there a short time later.

“I was able to see her and I was able to kiss her,” Kimberly Howard said. “She looked up to me, she was responsive, she was coherent, and that’s a good thing.”

Howard said the bullet is lodged in her daughter’s neck near her carotid artery. TK Howard was later transported to Stroger Hospital, where she was undergoing a procedure Tuesday afternoon, her mother said.

“TK, she’s fighting. She’s young, she’s fighting. And she was trying to assure me, ‘Everything’s OK, I’m OK.’ It’s draining, it’s just draining, that’s all,” Kimberly Howard said.

Howard was expecting an update on her daughter later in the day. “Right now, I’m just waiting,” she said. “I’m gonna stay here until I take my baby home.”

Area 1 detectives were investigating the shooting, and no one was reported in custody.

Both Johnson and Howard were standout players at their respective schools and preparing to take the next jump in their careers.

Johnson, a 6-foot-3 guard, has signed with Loyola and is expected to play for the Ramblers next season.

“Our primary concern is that Ty has a full and quick recovery,” the university said in a statement.

Johnson, whom former Loyola coach Porter Moser praised for his “great length and ability to change speeds” shortly after he committed to the program, is a two-time Sun-Times All-Area player and was this past season’s breakout star. He led the Rams to the Chipotle Clash of Champions tournament title and the No. 1 ranking in the area while averaging 20.2 points.

Howard is a 5-foot-10 guard who was selected to the All-Girls Catholic Athletic Conference White Division team in all four years at the De La Salle Institute. She committed to playing at Murray State University for the 2021-2022 season, the school announced in November.

“TaKiya will bring athleticism, a scorer’s mentality and toughness to our team. We are excited to add her to our Racer family,” Coach Rechelle Turner said at the time.

Murray State Women’s Basketball officials declined or did not respond to several requests for comment Tuesday.

In March, Howard claimed the record for the all-time scoring leader in De La Salle girls basketball history, according to the Beverly Review, with 1,198 points.

Barry Bradford, founder of Example Sports who coached Howard and her friend, Bradford said he learned of the shooting around 4 a.m. Tuesday.

“Obviously, everybody’s been traumatized by the incident because you just continue to think about worst case scenarios,” he said.

Bradford said both girls are phenomenal players, honor-roll students and National Honor Society members.

“Hate that those kids at that age have to make those types of decisions,” Bradford said. “… It was probably just inches away from [being] a deadly story, you know, of not only three athletes, three high-academic, high-character kids, who [are trying to] hang out and talk a little bit before they head off to college, trying to have some sense of normalcy during what’s been a crazy last year and a half or so. It’s just unnerving. Just really, really sad to think about.”

Contributing: Sun-Times Wire

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A new analysis says police officers who respond to ShotSpotter calls come back empty — no crime detected — 86% of the time.

In a city where the sound of gunfire is virtually commonplace, ShotSpotter — with its ability to “hear” gunshots with 97% accuracy and immediately summon the cops — would seem to be a godsend.

But a new analysis questions that claim of near-perfect performance. Police officers responding to calls from ShotSpotter, according to the study, report no evidence of a crime 86% of the time.

Our concern is threefold. First, we believe a gunfire detection system that costs taxpayers $33 million ought to have better results.

Second, sending cops out on what amounts to thousands of false alarms is a huge waste of their time.

And, above all, we don’t like the notion that officers are being sent into neighborhoods thinking there is a dangerous emergency when, in reality, the call might have been triggered by noises misheard as gunfire by ShotSpotter. That can, in itself, create a tense situation.

“It sends police racing into communities searching, often in vain, for gunfire,” said Jessey Neves, a spokeswoman for Northwestern University School of Law’s MacArthur Justice Center, which conducted the analysis, told Sun-Times reporter Tom Schuba. “Any resident in the area will be a target of police suspicion or worse. These volatile deployments can go wrong in an instant,” she said.

Given what’s at stake, City Hall should start asking serious questions — and demanding answers — about ShotSpotter’s effectiveness.

Police defend ShotSpotter

MacArthur Justice Center researchers say 40,000 ShotSpotter alerts between July 2019 and mid-April wound up with no report being filed by responding officers. Only 10% of the alerts likely involved guns.

The system covers 117 square miles of the city, approximately half of Chicago’s landmass.

Despite questions raised by the MacArthur analysis, the Chicago Police Department praises the system’s effectiveness.

“ShotSpotter has detected hundreds of shootings that would have otherwise gone unreported,” police spokesman Thomas Ahern said, adding that the system “is helping us reduce crime and make our neighborhoods safer.”

And, to be sure, ShotSpotter has helped the police locate gunmen and shooting victims since going citywide in 2018.

Last month, for instance, a ShotSpotter detector directed officers to 82nd Street and Coles Avenue, where they found and rushed to the hospital Swaysee Rankin, a 15-year-old boy who had come to the aid of his 10-year-old friend when she was shot a block from the same location just six months earlier.

But questions about ShotSpotter’s accuracy have plagued the technology for years.

In a 2017 attempted murder case in San Francisco, a ShotSpotter forensic analyst testified that his company’s accuracy computations did not come from engineers, but from the sales and marketing department.

“We need to give them [customers] a number,” the analyst, Paul Greene, said. “We have to tell them something. … It’s not perfect. The dot on the map is simply a starting point.”

Detroit is in its first month of a four-year contract that has put ShotSpotter monitors on the city’s north and northeast sides. But one Detroit police commissioner, Willie Burton, voted against the contract precisely for reasons that should give Chicago pause, too.

“The sensors will detect gunfire in a 100-yard radius, and then the police will look at any person in that radius as a potential suspect,” Burton said. “I just think it could lead to police profiling Black men just because they live in areas with heavy gunfire.”

Variables affect accuracy

While the system is sold to police departments as a near infallible law enforcement partner, Paul Greene, the ShotSpotter expert, testified in San Francisco that a host of factors effect its reliability, including topography, temperature, humidity, wind speed, how often the equipment is calibrated, and the skill of the humans interpreting the sounds picked up.

Chicago’s ShotSpotter contract expires in August. CPD hasn’t decided whether to renew its agreement with the company, but before the department does so it had better ask a lot of questions — and make all the answers public.

What City Hall and CPD should not do is downplay questions about the gunfire detection system, which Mayor Lori Lightfoot effectively did this week when she questioned whether the MacArthur Justice Center research is “actually accurate.”

Lightfoot should put that question to ShotSpotter, not to the MacArthur Justice Center.

What’s Chicago really getting for its $33 million?

Send letters to [email protected]

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Still looking for speed at wide receiver, the Bears signed Damiere Byrd, who caught 47 passes for 604 yards for the Patriots last season, to a one-year deal Tuesday.

Byrd has played for three teams in as many years, including the Panthers in 2018 — where he caught one pass in eight games — and the Cardinals in 2019. In Arizona, he caught 32 passes for 359 yards.

Byrd has returned punts and kicks intermittently in his career, which started in 2015 when the Panthers signed him as an undrafted free agent out of South Carolina.

The 5-9, 175-pounder was used by the Patriots more last year than at any point in his career. He played 901 offensive snaps, up from a career-best 455 in his lone season with the Cardinals.

Byrd ran track — he has top-10 finishes in school history at the 40-meter and 60-meter dash — and played football for the Gamecocks. He ran a blistering 4.28-second 40-yard dash at his pro day.

His speed will help him compete for a roster spot in a receiver room whose only veteran addition this offseason has been Marquise Goodwin. The Bears drafted receiver Dazz Newsome from North Carolina in Round 6 on Saturday.

The veteran free agent market was goosed Monday, the first time teams could sign players without them counting against the 2022 compensatory draft formula.

NOTE: The Bears agreed to sign cornerback Rojesterman Farris II, his agent Tweeted. The Hawaii alum signed with the Falcons after the 2020 draft.

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A former financial advisor from Chicago was sentenced to 13 years in prison for swindling investors out of $5.1 million to fund club memberships and a Los Angeles mansion.

Darayl Davis, 48, used the money to pay rent for the eight-bedroom mansion and also spent his ill-gotten gains on theater tickets, plane tickets, rental cars and luxury hotels, the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Northern District of Illinois said.

He carried out his scheme from 2003 to 2018, the attorney’s office said. Davis pleaded guilty earlier this year to one count of mail fraud, and the sentence was handed down Monday.

Prosecutors said Davis told investors they would be protected from any losses and would receive fixed interest payments if they invested with his firms, Washington, D.C.-based Financial Assurance Corp. and Los Angeles-based Affluent Advisory Group LLC.

In reality, Davis didn’t invest the funds as he promised and spent the money on himself, prosecutors said. He tried to hide the scam by using funds from some investors to pay others in a Ponzi-like scheme.

Davis targeted fellow church members, friends and former clients, prosecutors said. In all, more than 25 people were defrauded out of more than $5.1 million. Many of the victims were retirees who gave Davis all of their savings.

“Davis knew these people trusted him and deliberately exploited that trust,” Assistant U.S. Attorneys Christopher Catizone and Philip N. Fluhr argued in the government’s sentencing memorandum.

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WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Tuesday set a new vaccination goal to deliver at least one shot to 70% of adult Americans by July Fourth as he tackles the vexing problem of winning over the “doubters” and those unmotivated to get inoculated.

Demand for vaccines has dropped off markedly nationwide, with some states leaving more than half their available doses unordered. Aiming to make it easier to get shots, Biden called for states to make vaccines available on a walk-in basis and he will direct many pharmacies to do likewise.

His administration for the first time also is moving to shift doses from states with weaker demand to areas with stronger interest in the shots.

“You do need to get vaccinated,” Biden said from the White House. “Even if your chance of getting seriously ill is low, why take the risk? It could save your life or the lives of somebody you love.”

Biden’s goal equates to delivering at least the first shot to 181 million adults and fully vaccinating 160 million. It’s a tacit acknowledgment of the declining interest in shots.

Already more than 56% of American adults have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and nearly 105 million are fully vaccinated. The U.S. is currently administering first doses at a rate of about 965,000 per day — half the rate of three weeks ago, but almost twice as fast as needed to meet Biden’s target.

“I’d like to get it 100%, but I think realistically we can get to that place between now and July Fourth,” Biden said of his new goal.

He said the administration would focus on three areas as it tries to ramp up the pace of vaccinations:

–Adults who need more convincing to take the vaccine.

–Those who have struggled or are in no hurry to obtain a shot.

–Adolescents aged 12-15, once federal authorities approve vaccination for that age group.

Acknowledging that “the pace of vaccination is slowing,” Biden predicted the inoculation effort is “going to be harder” when it comes to convincing “doubters” of the need to get their shots.

He said the most effective argument to those people would be to protect those they love. “This is your choice: It’s life and death.”

Biden’s push comes as his administration has shifted away from setting a target for the U.S. to reach “herd immunity,” instead focusing on delivering as many shots into arms as possible. Officials said Biden’s vaccination target would result in a significant reduction in COVID-19 cases heading into the summer.

To that end, the Biden administration is shifting the government’s focus toward expanding smaller and mobile vaccination clinics to deliver doses to harder-to-reach communities. It is also spending hundreds of millions of dollars to try to boost interest in vaccines through education campaigns and greater access to shots through community organizations that can help bring people to clinics.

Biden touted creative efforts to make it “easier and more fun” to get vaccinated, such as grocery stores offering discounts to shoppers who come to get shots and sports leagues that hold promotions to gets shots for their fans.

Ahead of the Food and Drug Administration’s expected authorization of the Pfizer vaccine for kids aged 12-15, the White House is developing plans to speed vaccinations for that age group. Biden urged states to administer at least one dose to adolescents by July Fourth and work to deliver doses to pediatricians’ offices and other trusted locations, with the aim of getting many of them fully vaccinated by the start of the next school year.

While younger people are at dramatically lower risk of serious complications from COVID-19, they have made up a larger share of new virus cases as a majority of U.S. adults have been at least partially vaccinated and as higher-risk activities like indoor dining and contact sports have resumed in most of the country.

Officials hope that extending vaccinations to teens — who could get the first dose in one location and the second elsewhere, if necessary — will further accelerate the nation’s reduced virus caseload and allow schools to reopen with minimal disruptions this fall.

The urgency to expand the pool of those getting the shots is rooted in hopes of stamping out the development of new variants that could emerge from unchecked outbreaks and helping the country further reopen by the symbolic moment of Independence Day, exactly two months away. Though White House officials privately acknowledge the steep challenge, Biden sounded an optimistic note.

“The light at the end of the tunnel is actually growing brighter and brighter,” Biden said.

Biden’s speech comes as the White House announced a shift away from a strict allocation of vaccines by state population. The administration says that when states decline to take all the vaccine they have been allocated, that surplus will shift to states still awaiting doses to meet demand.

Governors were informed of the change by the White House on Tuesday morning.

This week, Iowa turned down nearly three quarters of the vaccine doses available to the state for next week from the federal government because demand for the shots remains weak. Louisiana, meanwhile, hasn’t drawn down its full vaccine allocation from the federal government for the last few weeks.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows Louisiana’s coronavirus vaccination rate is well behind most states. About 27% of state residents are fully vaccinated while 32% have received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the state health department.

The White House previously resisted efforts to distribute vaccine by metrics other than population. Biden rebuffed Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer last month when she requested more doses as her state was experiencing a surge in virus cases. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at the time nearly all states were ordering at or near their population allocations, which is no longer the case.

Individual states have made similar shifts internally to account for changing demand. Last week, Washington state changed the way it allocates coronavirus vaccine to its counties. Previously the state doled out supplies to counties proportionate to their populations. But now amounts will be based on requests from health care providers.

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AP Writer Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge, Louisiana contributed to this report.

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Since the day after the deadly Jan. 6 riots on the U.S. Capitol, former President Donald Trump’s social media accounts have been silent — muzzled for inciting violence using the platforms as online megaphones.

On Wednesday, his fate on Facebook, the biggest social platform around, will be decided. The company’s quasi-independent Oversight Board will announce its ruling around 9 a.m. ET. If it rules in Trump’s favor, Facebook has seven days to reinstate the account. If the board upholds Facebook’s decision, Trump will remain “indefinitely” suspended.

Politicians, free speech experts and activists around the world are watching the decision closely. It has implications not only for Trump but for tech companies, world leaders and people across the political spectrum — many of whom have wildly conflicting views of the proper role for technology companies when it comes to regulating online speech and protecting people from abuse and misinformation.

After years of handling Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric with a light touch, Facebook and Instagram took the drastic step of silencing his accounts in January. In announcing the unprecedented move, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the risk of allowing Trump to continue using the platform was too great.

“The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden,” Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page on Jan. 7.

Facebook created the oversight panel to rule on thorny content on its platforms following widespread criticism of its difficulty responding swiftly and effectively to misinformation, hate speech and nefarious influence campaigns. Its decisions so far — all nine of them — have tended to favor free expression over the restriction of content.

In its first rulings, the panel overturned four out of five decisions by the social network to take down questionable material. It ordered Facebook to restore posts by users that the company said broke standards on adult nudity, hate speech, or dangerous individuals.

Critics of Facebook, however, worry that the Oversight Board is a mere distraction from the company’s deeper problems — ones that can’t be addressed in a handful of high-profile cases by a semi-independent body of experts.

“Facebook set the rules, are judge, jury and executioner and control their own appeals court and their own Supreme Court. The decisions they make have an impact on our democracies, national security and biosecurity and cannot be left to their own in house theatre of the absurd,” said Imran Ahmed, CEO Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit critical of Facebook. “Whatever the judgement tomorrow, this whole fiasco shows why we need democratic regulation of Big Tech.”

Gautam Hans, a technology law and free speech expert and professor at Vanderbilt University, said he finds the Oversight Board structure to be “frustrating and a bit of a sideshow from the larger policy and social questions that we have about these companies.”

“To some degree, Facebook is trying to create an accountability mechanism that I think undermines efforts to have government regulation and legislation,” Hans said. “If any other company decided, well, we’re just going to outsource our decision-making to some quasi-independent body, that would be thought of as ridiculous.”

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MEXICO CITY — The death toll from the collapse of an overpass on the Mexico City metro rose to 24 Tuesday as crews untangled train carriages from the steel and concrete wreckage that fell onto a roadway.

Monday night’s accident was one of the deadliest in the history of the subway, and questions quickly arose about the structural integrity of the mass transit system, among the world’s busiest.

Another 27 people remained hospitalized of the more than 70 injured when the support beams collapsed about 10:30 p.m. as a train passed along the elevated section, Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said.

On Tuesday, a crane carefully lowered a train car containing four bodies to the ground.

Of the 24 killed, 21 died at the scene, while the others died at hospitals. Only five have been identified so far. Children were among the fatalities, Sheinbaum said.

On Tuesday afternoon, Carlos Miramar waited under a tent on metal chairs with two other relatives to receive the body of his uncle. The 25-year-old student had been awake since beginning an “exasperating” odyssey the previous night that took them to seven hospitals and multiple prosecutor’s offices in search of his uncle.

Now they had found 38-year-old Carlos Pineda, a man he described as a soccer fan and buoyant personality. Pineda is survived by his wife, two children ages 7 and 13, and his mother.

“I’m tired and unable to sleep,” Miramar said. “He didn’t deserve this end. He was a good father, good husband and good son.”

Initial analysis pointed to a “presumed structural failure,” Sheinbaum said, promising a thorough and independent inquiry. She added that a Norwegian firm had been hired to investigate.

“I did not have any report nor alert of any problem that could have led us to this situation,” she said.

The overpass was about 16 feet above the road in the borough of Tlahuac, but the train ran above a concrete median strip, which apparently lessened the casualties among motorists.

Abelardo Sanchez, a 38-year-old cook, was just closing up his sandwich shop beside the metro line when he said the ground shook, a tremendous noise echoed, lights flickered and the air filled with dust and the smell of burning wires.

Stunned, Sanchez didn’t initially react. “Then a guy in a white shirt with blood on his arms, his hands and chest came out and another guy came to help him here on the sidewalk, and he was there trembling,” he said.

The Mexico City Metro — which is among the world’s cheapest with tickets costing about 25 cents — has had at least three serious accidents since its inauguration half a century ago. In March 2020, a collision between two trains at the Tacubaya station left one passenger dead and injured 41. In 2015, a train that did not stop on time crashed into another at the Oceania station, injuring 12. In October 1975, at least 26 people were killed in another accident.

A magnitude 7.1 earthquake in 2017 exposed dangerous construction defects in the elevated line near where Monday’s accident occurred. Authorities at the time had done patchwork repairs on the columns and horizontal beams.

Julio Yanez, a 67-year-old lawyer whose apartment overlooks the collapsed metro line, was working at his computer when he heard a loud noise and felt his building shake. He saw a cloud of dust and falling debris followed by an eerie silence until emergency vehicles began arriving. Helicopters landed at a nearby Walmart to ferry the injured to hospitals.

The scene shook him because he had exited the metro at that same station earlier in the day.

“That part there was already declared bad … in the earthquake, and the authorities didn’t pay attention,” Yanez said, noting similar problems were reported at another nearby station, but nothing was done. “They are time bombs.”

The collapse occurred on Line 12, the subway’s newest, that stretches to the city’s south side. Like many of the dozen subway lines, it runs underground through more central areas of the city of 9 million but is on elevated concrete structures on the outskirts.

A report issued by the subway system including photos in 2017 showed that the base of one vertical column supporting the tracks had cracked and shed layers of concrete because not enough steel rebar stirrups had been used when it was built around 2010. In 2017, authorities patched and widened the column by injecting resins, swathing it in carbon fiber, building a jacket of additional rebar around the base and pouring concrete around the collar.

Authorities also found that one of the horizontal beams had come loose from its support at the top of a vertical column and was sagging — the kind of failure that could have contributed to Monday’s collapse. Authorities at the time welded steel diagonal braces to the bottom of the beam, chipped out and repoured fractured concrete elements.

Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard called the collapse “the most terrible accident we have ever had in mass transportation.” Ebrard was Mexico City’s mayor from 2006 to 2012, when the affected line was built.

Allegations of poor design and construction on the subway line emerged soon after the Ebrard left office as mayor. The line had to be partly closed in 2014 so tracks could be repaired.

Ebrard, who leads Mexico’s efforts to obtain coronavirus vaccines, has been considered a potential presidential candidate in 2024.

“Of course, the causes should be investigated and those responsible should be identified,” he wrote. “I repeat that I am entirely at the disposition of authorities to contribute in whatever way is necessary.”

The line was closed Tuesday and hundreds of buses were called in. Thousands in surrounding neighborhoods lined up before dawn to catch the buses for work.

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Associated Press writers E. Eduardo Castillo, Mark Stevenson and Maria Verza contributed.

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California’s recall election now features “the beast” and a “compassionate disruptor.”

That’s how John Cox and Caitlyn Jenner, Republicans running for California governor, pitched themselves to voters Tuesday in new campaign ads, taking different tones in their bids to oust Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Cox, a 65-year-old businessman who lost in a landslide to Newsom in 2018, released a video calling himself “the beast” to the photogenic Newsom’s “beauty.” He also resorted to name-calling reminiscent of former President Donald Trump, repeatedly labeling Newsom a “pretty boy” who lacks governing chops.

Launching a bus tour in Sacramento with a live Kodiak bear named Tag ambling behind him in the hot sun, Cox promised to bring “beastly” changes to state government. He spent $5 million to begin airing a 30-second version on television statewide, his campaign said, a major amount this early in the campaign and indicative of the need to raise his profile in a crowded field.

The stunt was aimed at drawing eyes to his campaign, but he promised to discuss “serious issues” — like bringing down the cost of housing, boosting the state’s water resources and preventing special interests from influencing government.

“You have to get this message out and that’s what we’re going to do here,” he said.

Jenner, meanwhile, released a video with a more inspirational and patriotic tone. She calls herself a “compassionate disruptor” in the ad that features clips from her Summer Olympics appearance in 1976, when she won the gold medal in the men’s decathlon.

Jenner, now a 71-year-old transgender woman, has held no campaign events since announcing her candidacy nearly two weeks ago. A televised town hall in her hometown of Malibu is planned for Wednesday. The ad offers her most expansive commentary as a candidate.

“I’m running to be governor for all Californians, to reclaim our true identity, to bring back the gold to the Golden State,” Jenner says in the ad.

The ad shows a photo of Newsom only once and never says his name, though she is clearly blasting his pandemic policies by highlighting closed businesses and kids out of school. Jenner’s campaign didn’t immediately answer whether the campaign was running corresponding ads on television or whether the pitch was digital only.

The release of the ads marked a new phase in the campaign. Later Tuesday, two firefighters unions endorsed Newsom at the governor’s first campaign-style event of the recall.

“This is a big day as we really kick off our efforts to defeat this recall,” the governor said, flanked by more than a dozen firefighters.

He declined to comment on Jenner’s or Cox’s ads. Instead, he pivoted to the state’s efforts on vaccinations, wildfire prevention and job creation. Standing in jeans and a zip up with the California bear logo on it, Newsom turned to his own familiar bear-related metaphor to say the state is “roaring back” from the pandemic.

He turned to well-worn talking points painting the recall as a partisan power grab led by extremists, But when pushed by a reporter, he acknowledged some Democrats and independents are frustrated, too.

“This was a challenging year for the world, not just this country and our state. And in that process, I understand why people express themselves the way they did. So my job is to earn that trust back,” he said.

Newsom wasn’t expected to face an election until 2022 but critics of his coronavirus response and liberal policies succeeded in collecting more than the 1.5 million signatures needed for a recall election.

There are still several steps remaining before the election is officially certified, but the signatures collection and verification were the biggest hurdles. The election will likely be scheduled for the fall.

Other Republicans in the race include former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and former Congressman Doug Ose.

Cox won less than 40% of the vote against Newsom in 2018 and has never won elected office despite many attempts. He said that run gives him a statewide base to grow this time around. Faulconer has not run a statewide campaign and Ose briefly ran for governor in 2018 before dropping out.

Cox pitched himself Tuesday as a man who knows struggle. He grew up with a single mom, paid his way through college, and launched a succesful business career, mostly in real estate. He’s already spent $10 million of his own money on the race and said he is willing to spend more.

“Millions of people voted for something named John Cox but he was never a very, I don’t think, a very clearly defined John Cox, and so we’re going to define him a lot better,” said Fred Davis, an ad-maker now working for Cox who is known for creating quirky, attention-grabbing political spots, including the “demon sheep” ad in Carly Fiorina’s unsuccessful 2010 bid against California U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer.

Cox twice declined to answer whether he’d welcome former President Donald Trump to campaign for him. Trump endorsed Cox in 2018 but is unpopular in the state.

“The pretty boy politician is going to make it all about the former president and the partisan battles of the past. This is about the California of the here and now,” Cox said.

Jenner is working with several former aides to Trump.

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Can the Bulls make a late playoff push as they now sitting four games out of the final playoff spot in the East. See Red Fred sits down with the Chicago Sun-Times’ Joe Cowley to discuss how the winding road has brought the Bulls into their predicament, what’s next, and much more!

The post The Big Red Bus: A Chicago Bulls Podcast; Episode 65 – The Joe Cowley Interview first appeared on CHI CITY SPORTS l Chicago Sports Blog – News – Forum – Fans – Rumors.Read More