For Clee McCracken, clocks are a lifestyle.
As you scroll through Clee McCracken’s TikTok account, the @clockluvr username is immediately accurate. Timepieces cover the walls.…Read More
Time to visit @Clockluvr’s tick tock TikTokMegan Kirbyon April 19, 2021 at 6:25 pm Read More »
CRDT’s Wilfredo Rivera finds the past year has “magnified, amplified, and vindicated the work and the focus I’ve had for the past six seasons.”
Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre launches a hybrid 2021 season on April 22, with an in-person and livestream performance to inaugurate a new partnership with Epiphany Center for the Arts; new works by co-founder and artistic director Wilfredo Rivera and choreographers Stephanie Martinez, Monique Haley, and Shannon Alvis; and a fall concert series three weekends in October. Despite the challenges of 2020, CRDT rapidly made changes to continue creating and presenting new works.…Read More
After another bloody Chicago weekend that saw a 7-year-old gunned down in the drive-thru of a Homan Square McDonald’s, the mayor said CPD Supt. David Brown is doing the best he can under “impossible” circumstances.
Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown is doing the best he can in an “impossible situation,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Monday, demanding federal gun-control laws, a resumption of criminal trials and an end to electronic monitoring that allows “violent criminals” to “terrorize” Chicago.
Lightfoot was on the hot seat — again — after another violent weekend in Chicago that left five people dead, including 7-year-old Jaslyn Adams, gunned down in broad daylight while driving through a Homan Square McDonald’s to get a meal with her father.
Another 22 people were shot and wounded over the weekend.
At an unrelated news conference at Walter Payton College Prep, Lightfoot was asked whether she is satisfied with the job Brown is doing to stop the bloodbath on Chicago streets.
“The short version is, yes I am. But, ask me if I’m satisfied with the job that everyone who has a responsibility for guns flowing into our city is doing. And the answer is, no,” Lightfoot said.
The mayor then launched into her oft-repeated tirade about the need for Congress to ban assault weapons, order “common sense background checks” and order “inter-jurisdictional cooperation” to prevent a never-ending pipeline of illegal guns to keep flowing onto Chicago streets.
“So, yes, I’m very satisfied with what our police superintendent and the police department are doing in an impossible environment where we’ve got to have help. And it starts with background checks, not allowing people who can’t fly on planes to actually get guns and banning assault weapons for starters,” she said.
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Lightfoot saved her harshest criticism for, what she called the missing pieces in the Cook County criminal justice system.
“We’ve got to actually hold people accountable who are wreaking havoc in our streets. The fact that we have gone now 13 months and we don’t have criminal trials in Cook County” is shameful, the mayor said.
“We just charged somebody yesterday. Two brothers who murdered a person … 11 bullets into them, in front of witnesses. And at least one of them was out on another gun charge, on electronic monitoring. This isn’t working. We need to have trials and we need to put dangerous people behind bars so that the community is actually safe.”
Lightfoot said she has been “having that conversation” about the need to rein in electronic monitoring for “over a year.”
“I don’t control electronic monitoring, `cause I’ll tell you if I did, that problem would be solved,” the mayor said.
Lightfoot said it’s time to put pressure on the county courts system. That means Chief Judge Tim Evans, the presiding judge of criminal court and Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, who, the mayor said, has been a “great partner” to the city.
“This is madness that we are allowing really violent people back out on the street with ankle bracelets or some other form of pre-trial release and they’re terrorizing our communities over and over again,” she said.
Jaslyn Adams’ father, Jontae Adams, was shot and seriously wounded in the shooting. The shooting occurred around 4:20 p.m. while Adams was driving his silver Infiniti through the McDonald’s at 3200 W. Roosevelt Rd.
Police said the shooting was believed to be gang-related. Less than three hours later, two people were shot in their car at a Popeyes in Humboldt Park; investigators believe that shooting is connected to the McDonald’s shooting.
In the Humboldt Park incident, a 33-year-old man and a 19-year-old woman were in a blue Chevrolet Malibu, having just ordered food, at the Popeyes drive-thru window at Chicago and Kedzie avenues when a gunman pulled up in a car at 7:12 p.m and opened fire.
The man was shot in the left leg; the woman in the abdomen. Both were taken to Stroger Hospital, with the man in serious condition, the woman in critical.
Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson said she feels “like a broken record talking about how my hear aches” every time another CPS student is gunned down on Chicago streets.
“The Jaslyn situation was particularly heartbreaking for me because, when I heard she was going to McDonald’s with her father, I just thought of what that felt like to me as a kid. That was like, always a big deal. You get to go to McDonald’s and I get to do it with my dad,” Jackson said.
“I can only imagine the heartbreak. I’m sick of our kids not feeling safe in this city — even doing something normal and regular.”
Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears said authorities did not seek such a hearing because they did not have enough time under the law’s restrictions to definitively demonstrate Brandon Scott Hole’s propensity for suicidal thoughts, something they would need to have done to convince a judge that Hole should not be allowed to possess a gun.
INDIANAPOLIS — A former employee who shot and killed eight people at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis never appeared before a judge for a hearing under Indiana’s “red flag” law, even after his mother called police last year to say her son might commit “suicide by cop,” a prosecutor said Monday.
Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears said authorities did not seek such a hearing because they did not have enough time under the law’s restrictions to definitively demonstrate Brandon Scott Hole’s propensity for suicidal thoughts, something they would need to have done to convince a judge that Hole should not be allowed to possess a gun.
The “red flag” legislation, passed in Indiana in 2005 and also in effect in other states, allows police or courts to seize guns from people who show warning signs of violence. Police seized a pump-action shotgun from Hole, then 18, in March 2020 after they received the call from his mother.
But prosecutors were limited in their ability to prepare a “red flag” case due to a 2019 change in the law that requires courts to make a “good-faith effort” to hold a hearing within 14 days. An additional amendment required them to file an affidavit with the court within 48 hours.
“This individual was taken and treated by medical professionals and he was cut loose,” and was not even prescribed any medication, Mears said. “The risk is, if we move forward with that (red flag) process and lose, we have to give that firearm back to that person. That’s not something we were willing to do.”
Indianapolis police have previously said that they never did return the shotgun to Hole. Authorities say he used two “assault-style” rifles to gun down eight people at the FedEx facility last Thursday before he killed himself. Police said Hole, who was 19 at the time of the shooting, purchased those rifles in July and September 2020, just months after police had seized the pump-action shotgun.
Other amendments to the law in 2019 made it a misdemeanor for a person deemed dangerous to buy or possess a gun and a felony offense for anyone to give or sell a gun to a dangerous person.
Republican state Sen. Erin Houchin, a sponsor of those tougher provisions, said in the Hole case the law “could have worked just as it should, but the prosecutor never pursued it.”
But Mears said there are still problems that need to be addressed.
“There are a number of loopholes in the practical application of this law. … It does not necessarily give everyone the tools they need to make the most well-informed decisions,” he said.
Mears said he had already spoken to legislators in the past about lengthening the two-week timeline for holding a red flag hearing and he reiterated that call on Monday. Extending the time frame would give prosecutors more time to investigate a person’s background and mental health history before going in front of a judge, he said. He added that he would also like to see the statute prohibit a person under investigation from buying a gun until the hearing is held and the judge makes a final ruling.
Mears said the red flag law is “a good start, but it’s far from perfect.”
“I think people hear ‘red flag’ and they think it’s the panacea to all these issues. It’s not,” he said.
Mears said the prosecutor’s office has filed eight red flag petitions this year. All are still awaiting rulings from a judge.
Democratic state Rep. Ed DeLaney, a gun control advocate, said he hoped Republicans would be receptive to reviewing the law in the future. He said there isn’t time to force an immediate debate because the 2021 legislative session is slated to end later this week.
“What we’re trying to do is write a very complicated law to deal with a small percentage of those people who have those weapons who surface,” he said. “This is a very tight path we’ve set out to deal with those people, and obviously it’s not adequate.”
Paul Helmke, an Indiana University civics professor and former president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said Indiana’s law could be strengthened with mandated court hearings or language prohibiting a person from acquiring additional firearms until a judge issues an order about that person’s competency.
In Hole’s case, that would have meant that his family’s agreement to not ask for the seized gun back would not have been enough to avoid a court hearing, and could have prevented him from purchasing additional weapons, said Helmke, a former Republican mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana.
“Indiana should be doing more to address these loopholes,” Helmke said. “This shooter, basically, he played the system. There was never a court finding that he was a danger to himself or others, and that meant he was free to buy as many guns as he wanted afterward.”
Indiana was one of the first states to enact a red flag law, after an Indianapolis police officer was killed in 2004 by a man whose weapons were returned to him despite his hospitalization months earlier for an emergency mental health evaluation.
___
Associated Press reporters Tom Davies and Rick Callahan contributed to this report. Casey Smith is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
The jury of six white members and six Black or multiracial ones was sent off to begin deliberating after nearly a full day of closing arguments in which prosecutors argued that Derek Chauvin squeezed the life out Floyd last May in a way that even a child knew was wrong.
MINNEAPOLIS — The murder case against former Officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd went to the jury Monday in a city on edge against round of unrest like the one that erupted last year over the video of the Black man pinned to the pavement with Chauvin’s knee on his neck.
The jury of six white members and six Black or multiracial ones was sent off to begin deliberating after nearly a full day of closing arguments in which prosecutors argued that Chauvin squeezed the life out Floyd last May in a way that even a child knew was wrong.
The defense contended that the now-fired white officer acted reasonably and that the 46-year-old Black man died of an underlying heart condition and illegal drug use.
“Use your common sense. Believe your eyes. What you saw, you saw,” prosecutor Steve Schleicher said, referring to the excruciating bystander video of Floyd pinned down with Chauvin’s knee on or close to his neck for up to 9 minutes, 29 seconds, as bystanders yelled at the white officer to get off.
Chauvin attorney Eric Nelson countered by arguing that Chauvin did what any “reasonable” police officer would have done after finding himself in a “dynamic” and “fluid” situation involving a large man struggling with three officers.
As Nelson began speaking, the now-fired Chauvin removed his COVID-19 mask in front of the jury for one of the very few times during the trial.
The dueling arguments got underway with some stores boarded up with plywood in Minneapolis, the courthouse ringed with concrete barriers and razor wire, and National Guard members on patrol. Floyd’s death last spring set off protests in the city and across the U.S. that at times turned violent.
The city has also been on edge in recent days over the the police killing of a 20-year-old Black man in a nearby suburb on April 11.
Prosecutor Jerry Blackwell had the final word, offering the state’s rebuttal argument. The prosecutor, who is Black, said that the questions about the use of force and cause of death are “so simple that a child can understand it.”
“In fact, a child did understand it, when the 9-year-old girl said, ‘Get off of him,’” Blackwell said, referring to a young witness who objected to what she saw. “That’s how simple it was. `Get off of him.’ Common sense.”
Under the law, police are given certain latitude to use force, and their actions are supposed to be judged according to what a “reasonable officer” in the same situation would have done — a point the defense stressed repeatedly.
Nelson noted that officers who first went to the corner store where Floyd allegedly tried to pass a counterfeit $20 bill already were struggling with Floyd when Chauvin arrived as backup. The attorney also noted that the first two officers on the scene were rookies and that police had been told that Floyd might be on drugs.
“A reasonable police officer understands the intensity of the struggle,” Nelson said, saying that Chauvin’s body-worn camera and his police badge were knocked off his chest.
During the prosecution’s argument, Schleicher replayed portions of the bystander video and other footage as he dismissed certain defense theories about Floyd’s death as “nonsense,” saying Chauvin killed Floyd by constricting his breathing.
Schleicher rejected the drug overdose argument, as well as the contention that police were distracted by hostile onlookers, that Floyd had “superhuman” strength from a state of agitation known as excited delirium, and that he suffered possible carbon monoxide poisoning from auto exhaust.
The prosecutor sarcastically referred to the idea that it was heart disease that killed Floyd as an “amazing coincidence.”
“Is that common sense or is that nonsense?” Schleicher asked the racially diverse jury.
But Nelson said the prosecution brought in experts to testify that Floyd died because of asphyxia, or lack of oxygen, while the person who actually performed the autopsy, the county medical examiner, reached a different finding.
Hennepin County Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker, who ruled Floyd’s death a homicide, said Floyd’s heart gave out because of the way police held him down. He listed Floyd’s drug use and underlying health problems as contributing factors.
Nelson also showed the jury pictures of pills found in Floyd’s SUV and pill remnants discovered in the squad car. Fentanyl and methamphetamine were found in Floyd’s system.
The defense attorney said the failure of the prosecution to acknowledge that medical problems or drugs played a role “defies medical science and it defies common sense and reason.”
But Blackwell said prosecutors only have to prove that Chauvin’s actions were a substantial causal factor in his death, not the sole cause.
He also ridiculed the idea that Floyd, who didn’t have a pulse, would come “back to life” and go on a “rampage.”
“That’s the sort of thing you see in Halloween movies., ladies and gentlemen, not in real life. Not in real life,” Blackwell said.
And he rejected the theory that Floyd died because of an enlarged heart: “The truth of the matter is that the reason George Floyd is dead is because Mr. Chauvin’s heart was too small.”
Earlier, fellow prosecutor Schleicher described how Chauvin ignored Floyd’s cries and continued to kneel on him well after he stopped breathing and had no pulse.
Chauvin was “on top of him for 9 minutes and 29 seconds and he had to know,” Schleicher said. “He had to know.”
He said Chauvin “heard him, but he just didn’t listen.”
The prosecutor further argued that Floyd was “not a threat to anyone” and wasn’t trying to escape when he struggled with officers. Instead, Schleicher said, he was terrified of being put into the tiny backseat of the squad car.
He said a reasonable officer with Chauvin’s training and experience — he was a 19-year Minneapolis police veteran — should have sized up the situation accurately.
Chauvin, wearing a light gray suit with a blue shirt and blue tie, showed little expression as he watched himself and the other officers pinning Floyd to the ground on bodycam video played by his attorney. He cocked his head to the side and occasionally leaned forward to write on a notepad.
An unidentified woman occupied the single seat set aside in the pandemic-spaced courtroom for a Chauvin supporter.
Floyd’s brother Philonise represented the family in court, as he often has during the trial.
Schleicher also noted that Chauvin was required to use his training to provide medical care to Floyd but ignored bystanders, rebuffed help from an off-duty paramedic and rejected a suggestion from another officer to roll Floyd onto his side.
“He could have listened to the bystanders. He could have listened to fellow officers. He could have listened to his own training. He knew better. He just didn’t do better,” Schleicher said.
“Conscious indifference. Indifference. Do you want to know what indifference is and sounds like?” Schleicher asked before playing a video of Chauvin replying, “Uh-huh” several times as Floyd cried out.
Nelson, in a closing argument that took about 2 hours and 45 minutes, played portions of bystander video that showed the increasingly agitated onlookers shouting at Chauvin to get off Floyd’s neck. He said officers may have determined it wasn’t safe to render medical aid to Floyd in that environment.
Nelson described what he called a “critical moment”: Floyd took his last breath, Chauvin reacted to the crowd by taking out his Mace and threatening a use of force, and the off-duty paramedic walked up behind Chauvin, startling him.
“And that changed Officer Chauvin’s perception of what was happening,” Nelson said. He added: “I cannot, in my opinion, understate the importance of this moment.”
Chauvin, 45, is charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. All three charges require the jury to conclude that Chauvin’s actions were a “substantial causal factor” in Floyd’s death and that his use of force was unreasonable.
Second-degree intentional murder carries up to 40 years in prison, third-degree murder 25 years, and second-degree manslaughter 10 years. Sentencing guidelines call for far less time, including 12 1/2 years on either murder count.
___
Webber reported from Fenton, Michigan. Associated Press video journalist Angie Wang in Atlanta and writer Mohamed Ibrahim contributed.
Good afternoon. Here’s the latest news you need to know in Chicago. It’s about a 5-minute read that will brief you on today’s biggest stories.
This afternoon will be cloudy with a 50% chance of rain and a high around 46 degrees. Tonight’s low will be around 37 degrees. Tomorrow will be “winter’s last hurrah” with snow expected — don’t worry, it’s not supposed to be more than a half-inch — and a high around 38 degrees.
A child wounded in a road rage shooting incident on Lake Shore Drive earlier this month continues to improve and has been moved out of the pediatric intensive care unit at Lurie Children’s Hospital.
Reporters were told today that 22-month-old Kayden Swann is now breathing on his own and is moving all of his extremities. It’s “very good news” and “remarkable progress,” a Lurie doctor said.
Though Kayden’s initial prognosis seemed grim, his health has gradually improved since the shooting. Doctors removed Kayden from a medically-induced coma about a week ago.
Swann was shot about 11 a.m. April 6 on Lake Shore Drive near Grant Park after a road-rage dispute turned violent, police said.
Prosecutors have said the altercation started when an SUV tried to merge onto Lake Shore Drive near Soldier Field and nearly struck the car Swann was riding in.
Read Manny Ramos’ full story here.
Chicago rap duo Mother Nature believes in timing — and one of their latest singles, “Momentz,” aims to be the vehicle to get their brand of hip-hop recognized by audiences who want more than the average content heard via mainstream radio.
“‘Momentz’ is a reintroduction for Mother Nature in Chicago,” said TRUTH, one-half of the successful duo. “We wanted this project to be something that allowed us to shine as MCs, as well as disrupt the monotony that we see going on right now; a lot of things being regurgitated through the airwaves.”
Mother Nature, which consists of longtime friends — University of Illinois classmates Klevah and TRUTH — plans to strike while the iron is hot via “Boom-bap,” a hip-hop sub-genre popularized by 1980s and ’90s East Coast rappers.
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Buffalo, New York, rap trio Griselda — Westside Gunn, Conway the Machine, Benny the Butcher — are proving that the subgenre continues to resonate with audiences.
“Mother Nature is everything that you didn’t expect — that you didn’t know that you needed,” says TRUTH. “It’s a mix between giving you the medicine and turning up the party at the same time. Definitely something that is a mix between allowing you to feel, as well as pushing you on your journey.”
Read Evan F. Moore’s full interview with the hip-hop duo here.
Antron Pippen, the oldest son of basketball legend Scottie Pippen, died Sunday at age 33. The former Bulls star announced the news this morning but did not provide a cause of death.
The Bears are bringing back veteran safety Tashaun Gipson on a one-year contract. Gipson, 30, picked off two passes and started all 16 games alongside Eddie Jackson in the Bears’ secondary last year.
And while ESPN projects the Bears to take Texas A&M offensive lineman Teven Jenkins with their first-round pick in Mel Kiper’s latest mock draft, our Patrick Finley breaks down the possibility of the Bears taking a swing on one of the class’ talented-yet-inexperienced QBs – even if it didn’t work last time they tried that.
What’s the best way to tell that winter in Chicago is finally over?
Email us (please include your first name and where you live) and we might include your answer in the next Afternoon Edition.
On Friday, we asked you: What’s something you hope to accomplish this summer? Here’s what some of you said…
“We previously created a nature path in the backyard and will continue this summer adding flowers and shrubs. I love being surrounded by nature. Especially after the pandemic!” — Jo Ann Fields
“To do something fun … would like to go to a concert and see Phish. It has been boring not going to hear live music and hang out.” — Erin Eileen
“Visit a National Park, go camping in either Michigan or Tennessee and swim a lot – last summer was great!” — Erika Hoffmann
“Celebrating my 40th birthday in June properly in Las Vegas with my brother, brother in law and father in law.” — Drew Hedderman
“Go places other than the grocery store.” — Maureen Vanderbilt
“Go somewhere, anywhere.” — Carol Wortel
Thanks for reading the Chicago Afternoon Edition. Got a story you think we missed? Email us here.
Sign up here to get the Afternoon Edition in your inbox every day.
Afternoon Edition: April 19, 2021on April 19, 2021 at 8:00 pm Read More »
Tammy Duckworth is running for reelection to the U.S. Senate next year. So far, she has two Republican opponents. Neither has held office, so you probably haven’t heard of them. Allison Salinas, from Pekin, organized an “open graduation” at the Illinois State Capitol for students whose commencements were canceled due to COVID-19. Peggy Hubbard, from Belleville, describes herself as a “pro-God, pro-life, pro-Trump, pro-veteran, pro–first responder conservative.” Governor J.B. Pritzker’s leading challenger, Darren Bailey, is a bit better known. Last May, the state senator from Xenia was ordered to leave the Capitol for refusing to wear a mask, then led an anti-lockdown protest at Buckingham Fountain.
Illinois Republicans have been drawing most of their candidates for the state’s two most important offices from the right-wing periphery of Trumpers, COVID deniers, Second Amendment absolutists, and All Lives Matter sloganeers. (Also in the governor’s race is paving and roofing contractor Gary Rabine, who refuses to definitively say Trump lost the election.) In the Land of Lincoln, the once-dominant party of Lincoln — 25 years ago, Republicans controlled the full legislature and every constitutional office — has been reduced to a fringe outfit. Consider these facts:
■ Illinois is one of only six states where Democrats hold supermajorities in both houses of the legislature, all the statewide offices, and both Senate seats.
■ This century, Republicans have taken just five of the 38 statewide elections — a winning percentage of 13.2.
■ The last Republican Senate candidate to win more than 50 percent of the vote was Peter Fitzgerald — in 1998.
■ Going into the 2020 election, Illinois Republicans had $3.6 million, compared with $26.9 million for the Democrats. “We’re as poor as a church mouse,” says the party’s new chair, Don Tracy.
■ Republicans hold five of Illinois’s 18 U.S. congressional seats, their lowest total since the Civil War.
Republicans have become a permanent minority party here and have no chance of running the state anytime soon. Here’s why.
In the 1990s, Illinois voted for moderates of both parties. Bill Clinton won our electoral votes in 1992. Two years later, Republican governor Jim Edgar was reelected in a 101-county landslide. In the red-versus-blue era of the 21st century, though, political polarization has turned most states monolithically Democratic or Republican. Ticket splitting is at an all-time low. Cities and states that are winning in the modern economy vote Democratic, while those left behind vote Republican. With a major city that attracts the college-educated, Illinois votes more like a coastal state.
Look at a map of Clinton’s 1992 victory. He swept southern Illinois and lost suburban Chicago. Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by winning big in the suburbs despite losing big downstate. Suburbia once saw itself as a counterweight to Chicago’s Democratic machine; now its voters align with the city on social issues. The trend of urban areas voting Democratic and rural areas Republican has been a bad deal for the Illinois GOP: DuPage County, once the premier Republican county in the state, has 180 times more voters than Gallatin County, formerly the most Democratic.
In 2020, Republicans’ biggest wins were defeating the so-called Fair Tax and the retention of Democratic Supreme Court justice Thomas Kilbride. In both elections, the party ran against the former House speaker, seen as the embodiment of Democratic corruption. “I chaired the campaign that ousted Kilbride, but our real opponent was Mike Madigan,” says Jim Nowlan, a former Republican state representative, newspaper columnist, and coauthor of Fixing Illinois, who lives in Princeton. “We saw Kilbride as a Madigan toady, and it worked, because most voters knew and detested Madigan. The Republicans will try to keep that alive.”
The ex-governor donated $36.8 million to the Illinois Republican Party between 2014 and 2018. Then he lost the governorship, left the state, and stopped writing checks. Ken Griffin, the conservative movement’s new sugar daddy, realized that funding Republican candidates here is futile and spent his money to defeat the Fair Tax, rather than to build the party.
U.S. representative Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Channahon, voted to impeach the former president for inciting the storming of the U.S. Capitol, then started the Country First PAC to “reject the politics of fear and all who practice it.” That’s a popular stance in Kinzinger’s exurban district, but the farther south you travel, the more popular Trump remains. Both southern Illinois representatives, Mary Miller and Mike Bost, voted against certifying Joe Biden’s Electoral College win. Bailey, the ultraconservative candidate for governor, called Kinzinger a Democrat and suggested he resign. Says John Jackson of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University: “Kinzinger has statewide ambitions, but strikes me as a much stronger general election candidate than a candidate in the Republican primary” — which is dominated by pro-Trump voters. That’s a conundrum for the entire party. “The kinds of Republicans that always won in Illinois — Jim Edgar, George Ryan, Mark Kirk — were not Trump people,” Jackson says.
Republican national committeeman Richard Porter sees a glimmer for the party in the rejection of Pritzker’s Fair Tax. Republicans, he believes, can bond again with suburban voters on economic issues. “The game is won in the suburbs,” he says. “They slipped away from us in ’18 and ’20. Can they swing back in ’22? We need to connect with suburban voters where they are. They tend not to be cultural conservatives, but they believe in providing government at a reasonable price.” It’ll help too, he says, if Democrats “overplay their hand by promoting ultraliberal policies.”
In recent decades, Republicans have won statewide elections only when running against weak or unpopular Democrats: Peter Fitzgerald vs. scandal-plagued Carol Moseley Braun; Mark Kirk vs. Alexi Giannoulias, whose campaign was tainted by allegations against his family’s bank; and Bruce Rauner vs. Pat Quinn, who raised corporate and individual taxes during his single full term as governor. Now they have to hope Pritzker shoots himself in the foot so badly that not even his billions can bail him out. (In March, he preemptively dropped $35 million in his campaign coffers without even committing to a reelection bid.) That’s what it has come to for Illinois’s second party: Republicans don’t win elections here anymore; Democrats lose them.
Rebuilding the Illinois Republicanson April 19, 2021 at 8:03 pm Read More »
Antron Pippen, the oldest son of Bulls Hall of Famer Scottie Pippen, died Sunday at age 33.
His father announced the news Monday on Twitter but did not give a cause of death.
“I’m heartbroken to share that yesterday, I said goodbye to my firstborn son Antron,” Pippen said online. “The two of us shared a love for basketball and we had countless conversations about the game.”
Antron Pippen was born Dec. 29, 1987. He was the only child from Scottie’s first marriage to Karen McCollum. The couple divorced in 1990. He is the oldest of Scottie’s seven children.
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The younger Pippen grew up in the Atlanta suburb of Lawrenceville and was a 2006 graduate of Collins Hill High School in the Suwanee, Georgia.
“He’s a late bloomer like me,” Scottie Pippen said to the Atlanta Journal-Consitution in 2006. “He’s probably better than I was as a high school player.”
Antron went on to play college basketball at South Georgia Tech and later at Texas A&M International. After college, he played semi-professional basketball in the now-defunct World Basketball Association.
During his senior year of high school, Antron described to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution the pressures of living up to his father’s basketball legacy.
“I’m used to the expectations,” he said. “When I was younger, it bothered me. I was trying to prove to people I could play. I’m very proud of my father. But I can only be myself.”
The elder Pippen said his son suffered from chronic asthma.
“If he hadn’t had it, I truly believe he would’ve made it to the NBA. He never let that get him down, though — Antron stayed positive and worked hard, and I am so proud of the man that he became.”
Antron Pippen, oldest son of Scottie Pippen, dies at 33on April 19, 2021 at 6:06 pm Read More »
BOSTON — Six runs in the first.
On seven hits and a walk, including a leadoff home run.
On 49 pitches, to 11 batters.
Lucas Giolito, White Sox ace, pitching.
Huh?
But wait, there was more. After Giolito finally got out of his nightmare of a start on Patriots Day at Fenway Park, still before noon after an 11:10 a.m. first pitch, he went back out for the second inning and gave up a leadoff homer to J.D. Martinez and a walk to Rafael Devers.
At with that, mercifully, manager Tony La Russa — hoping to save his bullpen but Giolito having none of it on a strangely awful day — brought in Zack Burdi.
The White Sox lost 11-4.
Giolito had entered with a 2.55 ERA. When he left, with a pitching line of one-plus inning, eight runs (seven earned) on two walks and no strikeouts, it was 5.79. He did not have his usual good stuff, and the Red Sox were sitting on his bread and butter pitch, the changeup.
Tim Anderson was 3-for-4, raising his average to .364, and Adam Eaton had two hits and drove in three runs for the White Sox (8-8), who swept a doubleheader Sunday.
La Russa, saving his bullpen, used designated hitter Yermin Mercedes to pitch the eighth inning and infielder Danny Mendick in the eighth.
Mercedes allowed a run on three hits and two walks. Mendick was better than Mercedes, allowing one hit and striking out Franchy Cordero.
Burdi pitched three innings, allowing two runs, and Jose Ruiz pitched two scoreless innings with four strikeouts.
