The autopsy of former NFL player Phillip Adams, who killed five people before taking his own life, will look for evidence of CTE. | Paul Sakuma/AP
Phillip Adams killed five people before fatally shooting himself.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — The brain of Phillip Adams — the former NFL player who killed a South Carolina physician, three family members and a repairman before fatally shooting himself — will be tested for a degenerative disease that has affected a number of pro athletes and has been shown to cause violent mood swings and other cognitive disorders, according to a news report.
York County Coroner Sabrina Gast told McClatchy Newspapers on Friday that she had gotten approval from Adams’ family for the procedure to be included as part of his autopsy, which will be performed at the Medical University of South Carolina. The hospital will be working with Boston University, whose chronic traumatic encephalopathy center conducts research on the long-term effects of repetitive brain trauma in athletes and military personnel, according to its website.
Gast did not immediately return phone calls and emails from The Associated Press or respond to a message left in person at her office.
According to police, Adams went to the home of Robert and Barbara Lesslie on Wednesday and shot and killed them, two of their grandchildren, 9-year-old Adah Lesslie and 5-year-old Noah Lesslie, and James Lewis, a 38-year-old air conditioning technician from Gaston who was doing work there. He also shot Lewis’ colleague, 38-year-old Robert Shook, of Cherryville, North Carolina, who was flown to a Charlotte hospital, where he was in critical condition “fighting hard for his life,” said a cousin, Heather Smith Thompson.
York County Sheriff Kevin Tolson said investigators hadn’t figured out why Adams carried out the attack.
Tolson said evidence left at the shooting scene led investigators to Adams as a suspect. He said they went to Adams’ parents’ home, evacuated them and then tried to persuade Adams to come out. Eventually, they found him dead of a single gunshot wound to the head in a bedroom, he said.
A person briefed on the investigation who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly said Robert Lesslie had treated Adams, who lived with his parents not far from the Lesslies’ home.
Tolson would not confirm that Adams had been the doctor’s patient.
It will be months before results are available from the tests for chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, which can only be diagnosed in an autopsy. The disorder has been found in former members of the military, football players and boxers and others who have been subjected to repeated head trauma. A recent study found signs of the disease in 110 of 111 NFL players whose brains were inspected.
Several years ago, the league agreed to pay $1 billion to retired players who claimed it misled them about the dangers of playing football.
Adams, 32, played in 78 NFL games over six seasons for six teams. He joined the 49ers in 2010 as a seventh-round draft pick out of South Carolina State, and though he rarely started, he went on to play for New England, Seattle, Oakland and the New York Jets before finishing his career with the Atlanta Falcons in 2015.
As a rookie late in the 2010 season, Adams suffered a severe ankle injury, resulting in surgery that included several screws being inserted into his leg. He never played for the 49ers again, released just before the 2011 season began. Later, with the Raiders, he had two concussions over three games in 2012.
Whether he suffered long-lasting concussion-related injuries wasn’t immediately clear. Adams wouldn’t have been eligible for testing as part of a broad settlement between the league and its former players over such injuries, because he hadn’t retired by 2014.
Adams’ father told a Charlotte television station that he blamed football for problems his son had, and which might have led him to commit Wednesday’s violence.
“I can say he’s a good kid — he was a good kid, and I think the football messed him up,” Alonzo Adams told WCNC-TV. “He didn’t talk much and he didn’t bother nobody.”
Adams’ sister told USA Today that her brother’s “mental health degraded fast and terribly bad” in recent years and that the family noticed “extremely concerning” signs of mental illness, including an escalating temper and personal hygiene neglect.
Gerald Dixon, a former NFL linebacker who retired in 2001, said that, when he coached Adams in high school, the young player was a team leader, yet also mild-mannered and humble.
Dixon added that he had spoken to Adams a few months ago, and had noticed no signs of depression or other mental health issues. “Anytime I talked to him, he was always happy and just reminiscing about old things,” he said.
Dixon acknowledged that the repeated hits to the head sustained in the game could have affected Adams, as they have negatively affected many of the other NFL players Dixon has known who were later diagnosed with CTE.
“You never know what’s going on in a person’s mind after they’ve went through these concussions,” Dixon said.
Agent Scott Casterline told the AP that Adams did not participate in the physical and mental health programs that are easily accessible for ex-players.
“We encouraged him to explore all of his disability options and he wouldn’t do it,” Casterline said, noting that Adams’ career was undercut by the 2010 ankle injury. “I knew he was hurting and missing football but he wouldn’t take health tips offered to him. He said he would, but he wouldn’t.”
Shane Wiskus, representing the University of Minnesota, competes during the Winter Cup gymnastics event Friday, Feb. 26, 2021, in Indianapolis. The University of Minnesota and the University of Iowa will stop offering men’s gymnastics as a scholarship sport at the end of the month. Wiskus wants to be part of the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team. It’s one of the reasons he left Minnesota last fall for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. | Darron Cummings/AP
The cutback in NCAA athletic programs because of the pandemic is being felt acutely in men’s gymnastics.
The death of a 117-year-old program, one that captured championships and produced Olympians, ended with a gasp. And then a vote.
The fact the former did not alter the outcome of the latter offered a stark glimpse into the steadily eroding support for men’s gymnastics at the NCAA level, one that will eventually have a ripple effect up and down the food chain for a sport struggling for relevance inside the U.S. Olympic movement.
That gasp. John Roethlisberger could hear it during a University of Minnesota Board of Regents meeting last fall. At one point someone asked how much money the school’s athletic department would save by approving the proposal to cut men’s gymnastics, men’s tennis and men’s indoor track and field, a move athletic director Mark Coyle called necessary to help offset a $45 million to $65 million deficit due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The answer? $1.6 million. Or just more than 1% of the athletic department’s $123 million budget.
“Everyone was appalled,” said Roethlisberger, a three-time Olympian and a three-time NCAA champion for the Golden Gophers. “It didn’t make a lot of sense. … (We hoped) maybe we can reconcile and at least save our sport and they were like, ‘Nope, let’s vote.’”
And they did. Seven in favor of cutting men’s gymnastics, men’s tennis and men’s indoor track at the end of the 2020-21 academic year. Five against.
Minnesota’s decision came two months after Iowa announced it was dropping men’s gymnastics, men’s tennis and men’s and women’s swimming and diving. Again, administrators pointed to the long-term financial impact of the pandemic.
The losses will leave just five men’s gymnastics programs in the Big Ten and just 11 at the Division I level overall, not including the three service academies. And it leaves the USA Gymnastics men’s program in the precarious position of trying to reclaim a spot among the world’s elite while dealing with a diminishing talent base.
There are 11,000 boys or men enrolled in USA Gymnastics, down from over 13,000 in 2007. With only 6.3 scholarships available per school at Division I, opportunities to compete and have at least a portion of their college education paid for are becoming more and more scarce.
Unlike women’s gymnastics in the United States, where athletes typically peak in their late teens before moving on or being pushed aside by the next wave, most male gymnasts don’t hit their prime until their mid-20s, making the NCAA level the perfect feeder system.
For decades USA Gymnastics has stuffed its Olympic team with NCAA veterans. Gymnasts that competed in college or trained alongside collegians have accounted for nearly 75% (26 of 36) of the U.S. Olympic spots (alternates included) this millennium.
It will almost certainly be the case again when the 2021 team is announced this summer, a group likely led by NCAA champion and U.S. national champions Sam Mikulak and Yul Moldauer.
It’s a group Shane Wiskus plans to be a part of, one of the reasons he left Minnesota last fall for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It was a move he felt necessary to give him the best chance at making it to Tokyo. It was also a matter of survival. The USOPTC will be around in a year. The Minnesota program will not, at least not at the Division I level.
“(Support at the NCAA level) is definitely dwindling and I fear that if this isn’t a wake-up call and if this doesn’t get some real change to happen within NCAA then I fear that more programs could be cut and NCAA gymnastics could go extinct,” said Wiskus, a senior who studied remotely this semester and tied for the Big Ten all-around title last week.
Wiskus is lucky in that he had options. Things are far murkier for teammate Mike Moran. A junior from Morristown, New Jersey, Moran admits there were people within his inner circle who discouraged him from competing collegiately because they viewed his chosen sport as a “dying entity.”
Which makes the pain of its end all the more acute. Moran is a longshot at best to make the 2021 Olympic team, but his passion and dedication are an important part of the recipe it takes for Olympic programs to thrive.
“Less than 1% of college athletes go to the Olympics but they get pushed by the masses,” said Brett McClure, a 2004 Olympian and former college head coach at Cal who now serves as the high-performance director for the USA Gymnastics men’s program.
And the masses are shrinking.
“USA Gymnastics looks at the NCAA like the NFL looks at college football,” Roethlisberger said. “Each team is like a mini-Olympic training center. When all that goes away, you have two coaches at USOTC that can carry 15 guys. Look at what that is going to do to your feeder pool. You’re going to see a stream of guys falling out because they have to worry about their future.”
A decision that — like the one Moran faces — could come in their early 20s. It could also come far earlier.
McClure and everyone else involved in the sport understands the metrics. Football and men’s basketball pay a massive chunk of the bills. Athletic directors are increasingly concerned about what the shifting economics mean to Olympic sports. Nearly 80% of the 558 U.S. athletes at the Rio Games in 2016 came out of an American college program.
Most of the 85 programs cut by Division I universities since the coronavirus pandemic hit last year have involved Olympic sports. Next on the horizon are proposals being debated by the NCAA and in Congress that would allow players to cut sponsorship deals and make money off their names, likeness and images (NIL). A more far-reaching bill proposes revenue sharing between the sports programs and athletes.
That likely means even more money funneled into revenue-generating sports, an idea that clashes with what the ideal of the college athletic experience is supposed to be. Or, at least what it used to be.
“College athletics as we know it for a long time is no longer going to be the way it’s been,” Minnesota coach Mike Burns said. “Downsizing and streamlining is probably the direction they’re all thinking.”
Mark Williams, the longtime Oklahoma coach who also led the 2016 U.S. Olympic team and has guided the Sooners to nine national championships, is fearful of what lies ahead if the NCAA model no longer becomes sustainable.
“Our budgets are not going to be easily replicated by the USOTC if we go away,” he said.
It’s an “if” that will become a reality at Minnesota and Iowa later this month. Ironically, the Golden Gophers will host the 2021 NCAA National Collegiate Men’s Gymnastics Championships on April 16-17.
Wiskus will be out there. Moran and the rest of his Minnesota teammates, too. At some point, Moran will look out across the arena and ponder his future, and maybe his sport.
“It’s kind of a morbid way to approach it, it’s the same for everything else in life, how do you approach life when you know there’s death at the end?” he said. “It makes the year more special, that reality is approaching. I don’t have any fear towards it. I’m 21 and I’m not sitting here afraid to die. I have that growing appreciation for whatever the moment ends up being.”
Illinois public health officials on Friday reported a second straight record-setting day for COVID-19 vaccinations — but the state also hit a worrying milestone by logging more than 4,000 new cases of the disease for the first time in 10 weeks as the latest coronavirus surge builds momentum.
With 164,462 doses administered Thursday, Illinois is vaccinating more people than ever, at an average clip of 118,336 shots per day over the last week, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.
That still hasn’t been enough to tamp down a sharp rise in infections over the past month, as most key metrics have almost doubled.
With another 4,004 residents testing positive for the virus — the most in a day since Jan. 29 — about 3,122 Illinoisans have contracted COVID-19 each day over the past week. That rate is up 91% compared to the first week of March, when the state was reporting an average of 1,663 daily cases.
3:55 p.m. Olympic sports struggling to survive at many colleges because of coronavirus
The death of a 117-year-old program, one that captured championships and produced Olympians, ended with a gasp. And then a vote.
The fact the former did not alter the outcome of the latter offered a stark glimpse into the steadily eroding support for men’s gymnastics at the NCAA level, one that will eventually have a ripple effect up and down the food chain for a sport struggling for relevance inside the U.S. Olympic movement.
That gasp. John Roethlisberger could hear it during a University of Minnesota Board of Regents meeting last fall. At one point someone asked how much money the school’s athletic department would save by approving the proposal to cut men’s gymnastics, men’s tennis and men’s indoor track and field, a move athletic director Mark Coyle called necessary to help offset a $45 million to $65 million deficit due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The answer? $1.6 million. Or just more than 1% of the athletic department’s $123 million budget.
2:45 p.m. Biden to rush vaccine support to Michigan as governor urges limits
WASHINGTON — Washington will rush federal resources to support vaccinations, testing and therapeutics, but not vaccines, to Michigan in an effort to control the state’s worst-in-the-nation COVID-19 transmission rate, the White House said Friday.
The announcement came as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer strongly recommended, but did not order, a two-week pause on face-to-face high school instruction, indoor restaurant dining and youth sports. She cited more contagious coronavirus variants and pandemic fatigue as factors in the surge, which has led some hospitals to postpone non-emergency procedures.
Statewide hospitalizations have quadrupled in a month and are nearing peak levels from last spring and fall.
“Policy alone won’t change the tide. We need everyone to step up and to take personal responsibility,” she said Friday, while not ruling out future restrictions. Michigan’s seven-day case rate was 492 per 100,000 people, well above second-worst New Jersey, with 328 per 100,000 residents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
1:30 p.m. No region in the world spared as coronavirus cases, deaths surge
WARSAW, Poland — Hospitals in Turkey and Poland are filling up. Pakistan is restricting domestic travel. The U.S. government will send more help to the state with the country’s worst infection increase.
The worldwide surge in coronavirus cases and deaths includes even Thailand, which has weathered the pandemic far better than many nations but now struggles to contain COVID-19.
The only exceptions to the deteriorating situation are countries that have advanced vaccination programs, mostly notably Israel and Britain. The U.S., which is a vaccination leader globally, is also seeing a small uptick in new cases, and the White House announced Friday that it would send federal assistance to Michigan to control the state’s worst-in-the-nation transmission rate.
The World Health Organization said infection rates are climbing in every global region, driven by new virus variants and too many countries coming out of lockdown too soon.
12:20 p.m. Riverwalk vendors begin phased reopening Friday
Vendors on the Chicago Riverwalk began a phased-in reopening Friday that will have all vendors open by the end of May.
Island Party Hut, Beat Kitchen on the River and City Winery opened Friday. A new vendor addition this year is Pier 31, which plans to open in May.
“The Riverwalk is not only an important part of our city’s economic engine, but it also adds to the liveliness of our iconic summers,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in a news release.
“This reopening serves as yet another indicator of our city’s resilience in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, and we look forward to making this Chicago staple available to residents and visitors this spring and summer.”
11:05 a.m. Aldermen move to prevent parade permit infighting
With 500 permits issued every year, it’s safe to say that Chicago loves a parade.
On Thursday, the City Council’s Committee on Cultural Affairs and Special Events proved that love by providing a bit of post-pandemic protection.
At Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s behest, aldermen endorsed an ordinance that preserves permit priority for “traditional parades” scheduled at around the same time along the same route “in connection with a specific holiday or consistent theme for at least the prior five years.”
That priority status would remain even though those “traditional parades” were canceled last year because of the coronavirus — and even though none have been held so far this year, either.
Deputy Transportation Commissioner Mike Simon said the goal of the mayor’s ordinance is to prevent the temporary hiatus from opening the door to post-pandemic feuds between parade organizers vying for permits on the same day.
10:30 a.m. ‘Trauma upon trauma’: Asian Americans say mental health has suffered amid COVID-19, anti-Asian violence
The coronavirus pandemic sparked a mental health crisis. For Asians and Asian Americans also facing a rise in hate incidents across the country, it’s been “trauma upon trauma,” says Anne Saw, a Chicago psychologist.
“A lot of our communities are experiencing so many pandemic stressors that are then compounded by a lot of anti-Asian discrimination that we’re also experiencing,” says Saw, who teaches at DePaul University and directs the Chicago Asian American Psychology Lab.
“It’s tough to, like, get your head above water and get some room to breathe when every day we’re confronted with new traumas,” she says.
We talked to seven Chicagoans about how anti-Asian violence coupled with the pandemic have affected their mental health and their everyday lives. Among them was Kaylee Cong, 32, of Uptown, who manages a nail spa.
On March 20, four days after the Atlanta shootings, Cong says, her 60-year-old Vietnamese father was punched in the head as he walked alone that night near Broadway and West Ainslee Street. He turned to run, saw a white man holding a baseball bat watching him and called 911.
“We’re really scared,” says Cong, who’d been talking with her father about the Georgia shootings the day before he was attacked. “What if the person come back and do revenge? My entire life living here, it was so peaceful. There was no violence like this.”
She says her father hasn’t wanted to leave the house since that happened.
Older Asian Americans “just want to keep quiet and don’t want to make waves,” Cong says. “I have really different mentality. We deserve to, you know, feel safe. And we shouldn’t be afraid to stand up for ourselves.”
9:56 a.m. CPS high school reopening agreement remains elusive
A final high school reopening agreement remains elusive between Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union just days before high school teachers are due to return to classrooms — and the union president said Thursday the next few days of negotiations will determine whether workers show up on Monday.
Though the range of issues is smaller and disagreement over those items is not as severe as the hostile K-8 negotiations in February, there are still a few unresolved concerns the union is expressing as COVID-19 infections once again rise in the city.
CPS officials have directed 5,350 high school teachers to return to buildings Monday with or without a CTU agreement, and about 26,000 students in grades 9-12 are expected back the following week.
Whether or not that timeline sticks is dependent on “how outrageous the board’s positions are as we go ahead,” CTU President Jesse Sharkey told a few hundred members at a virtual meeting Thursday that was closed to the public.
“I’ve heard people say, ‘Sharkey, I want a really definitive answer, am I going in on Monday?’” he said. “And my really definitive answer is, it depends on where we’re at.”
8:08 a.m. Spike in COVID-19 cases causes University of Chicago to announce stay-at-home period for students
University of Chicago announced a stay-at-home period for students Wednesday evening following the largest COVID-19 outbreak at the university since the start of the academic year.
After more than 50 cases of the coronavirus were detected among undergraduates in recent days, the university announced that students living on-campus must observe a week-long stay-at-home period immediately.
“We expect this number to increase,” university officials said in an email sent to members of the university community Thursday.
All undergraduate classes will be fully remote for at least a week starting Thursday and students can only leave their residence halls for food, medical appointments and short walks for exercise.
Illinois’ infection rate is still less than a third of what it was during the worst days of the pandemic last fall — but it’s doubled in the last four weeks.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker, left, speaks during a bill signing in 2019; Mayor Lori Lightfoot, right, meets with the Sun-Times Editorial Board in 2019. | Amr Alfiky/AP file; Rich Hein/Sun-Times file
“The legislation is credit negative for the city of Chicago,” said the advisory from Moody’s Investors Service, “because it will cause the city’s reported unfunded pension liabilities, and thus its annual contribution requirements, to rise.”
A Wall Street rating agency that alone gave Chicago a junk bond rating on Friday branded as “credit negative” a bill Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed over Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s objections this week boosting pensions for thousands of Chicago firefighters.
“The legislation is credit negative for the city of Chicago,” said the advisory from Moody’s Investors Service, “because it will cause the city’s reported unfunded pension liabilities, and thus its annual contribution requirements, to rise.”
With pension contributions consuming 17% of the city’s operating revenue and total liabilities pegged at $46.6 billion in 2019, pensions are the “largest credit challenge facing Chicago,” Moody’s said.
Pritzker signed the bill on Monday, arguing that the new law “creates a system that gives all firefighters certainty and fair treatment.” But Lightfoot, who had urged the fellow Democrat not to sign it, blasted it as a “fiscally irresponsible” law typical of Springfield’s “back room deals.”
Moody’s on Friday gave Lightfoot more ammunition.
The Firefighters Annuity and Benefit Fund has “asset/benefit coverage of just three years,” Moody’s wrote. That’s a “point-in-time estimate of the numbers of years of benefit payments pension assets can cover, assuming no further contributions or investment income and no further growth in benefits.”
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times fileChicago Fire Department firefighters carry a house while trying to put out an extra-alarm fire in the Bridgeport neighborhood in February.
“The city must continue to increase its contributions substantially to prevent the insolvency of its deeply underfunded retirement systems and eventually accumulate a more substantial base of pension assets,” Moody’s wrote.
But, the rating agency also wrote, “While significant, the roughly $800 million liability increase stemming from House Bill 2451 that the city has forecast is not outsized relative to the scale of the city’s already extremely high liabilities.”
The bill, introduced by state Sen. Robert Martwick, D-Chicago, a Lightfoot political nemesis, passed in the waning hours of the lame duck session.
It removes the “birth date restriction” that prohibits roughly 2,200 active and retired firefighters born after Jan. 1, 1966 from receiving a 3% annual cost of living increase. Instead, they get half that amount, 1.5% and it is not compounded.
Martwick has argued the “birth date restriction” already has been moved five times as a way of masking the true cost to the pension fund.
Lightfoot strongly disagreed. She has argued that the bill amounts to ill-timed and unaffordable pension sweetener that would saddle Chicago taxpayers with up $823 million in added costs by 2055 and trigger “another property tax hike for Chicagoans, which would regrettably add to the overwhelming economic duress that so many or our neighbors are facing.”
The mayor’s $12.8 billion budget already includes a $94 million property tax increase, followed by annual increases tied to the consumer price index.
When he signed the bill on Monday, Pritzker argued that “hardworking men and women who have earned their pension shouldn’t pay the price for local or state budget challenges.”
“To make sure that the city can meet its obligations, my administration is working to sell the James R. Thompson Center, which will return to the city’s property tax rolls and is projected to generate $45 million annually for the city and its sister agencies,” the governor wrote in a statement.
Two women, ages 70 and 63, were among those injured in the crash.
Five people were injured Friday morning in a serious crash that sent a car careening into Calumet Heights flower shop on the South Side.
A Nissan Maxima occupied by three people in their 20s ran a stop sign and struck a Toyota Corolla about 7:30 a.m. at Stony Island Avenue and 87th Street, according to Chicago police.
After hitting the Corolla, the Toyota crashed into a flower shop and caught fire, police said.
Two women in the Corolla, ages 70 and 63, were injured in the crash and taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center. Police initially described their injuries as being grave, and later said they were not considered life-threatening.
The driver of the Nissan, a 27-year-old man, was pulled from the car and taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center in good condition, according to police. Two other people in the car were also taken to a hospital, where they were in serious condition, according to Chicago fire spokesman Larry Merritt.
U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Illinois | Sun-Times Media
Kelly, a Democrat from Chicago’s South Side, recently introduced the Prevent Gun Trafficking Act, a law that would prohibit the straw purchase of firearms.
U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, a Democrat, must be frustrated.
On the steam of her passion for gun control, Kelly was elected in 2013 to serve Illinois’ 2nd Congressional District, which stretches from Chicago’s South Side to Kankakee.
Yet the poisonous threads of gun violence continue to be embedded in the fabric of American life.
She is “devastated, she said, about each and every family that has lost a gun violence.
“I am devastated” by “each and every family” that has lost someone to gun violence, Kelly said gamely on Thursday, speaking at a virtual meeting of the City Club of Chicago, “and I am committed to advocating for policies and legislation that will help save lives and end this terrible epidemic.”
The epidemic is raging. Chicago is reeling from two horrific incidents involving guns. On March 29, police shot Adam Toledo, 13, in Little Village. He allegedly had a gun. Then on Tuesday, 21-month-old Kayden Swann was shot in the head in an apparent road rage incident on Lake Shore Drive. He is on life support at a Chicago hospital.
Every weekend, multiple murders and dozens of shootings torment our city.
As Kelly spoke on Thursday afternoon, President Joe Biden was appearing in the White House Rose Garden to announce plans for executive actions to restrict gun access.
One executive order would modify federal rules to curb homemade “ghost guns.” A second order would limit access to tools that can modify pistols to make them more lethal. Biden also intends to undergird “red flag” laws that can block dangerous individuals from getting guns.
Kelly applauded Biden for the steps “that he can take without legislation. Since we have such a hard time in getting things passed.”
Kelly recently introduced the Prevent Gun Trafficking Act, a federal law that would prohibit the straw purchase of firearms. Such legislation might attract bipartisan support in the House, but it faces dimmer prospects in the Senate.
Meanwhile, violence is reaching into the highest levels of our democracy. On Jan. 6, Kelly was in the House gallery as legislators were voting to certify the results of the November presidential election. As a mob of insurrectionists surged into the Capitol, Kelly and her colleagues were told to put on gas masks.
“I was,” she recalled, “on my hands and knees on the floor behind the wall that protects us from falling onto the House floor.”
The Capitol Police eventually led Kelly and others out to a secure location where, Kelly said, “we waited for many hours. It was terrifying and agonizing to walk through the hallways where one insurrectionist had just been killed, where we would later learn Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick had been murdered.”
Kelly, who was recently elected the new chair of the Illinois Democratic Party, said she works hard to reach out to Republicans to build support for gun control and other legislative measures. Yet Jan. 6 epitomizes why bipartisanship is so imperiled by our toxic politics.
“I’m not going to lie,” Kelly said, speaking about her fellow Democrats. “January 6 did something to many of us.”
“We know that some of our (Republican House) colleagues were involved in that. They were giving speeches to the people that later, you know, came into the Capitol carrying the Confederate flag,” Kelly continued. “We saw who did not vote for President Biden’s, you know, election to be certified. It’s very difficult to work with people like that that. That are just being negative to be negative.”
Hear from U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly and U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Illinois, when they join Laura Washington and Chicago Sun-Times Washington Bureau Chief Lynn Sweet for a live conversation At The Virtual Table this Thursday, April 15 at 6:30 p.m.
Matthew Namoff, 25, pleaded guilty to conspiring to conduct an illegal gambling business. Meanwhile, Casey Urlacher ran for reelection as a write-in candidate in Tuesday’s suburban elections.
Yet another defendant in the multimillion-dollar sports gambling case that led earlier this year to a pardon of Mettawa Mayor Casey Urlacher by then-President Donald Trump has pleaded guilty in federal court.
Matthew Namoff, 25, pleaded guilty to conspiring to conduct an illegal gambling business. In doing so, he became the sixth of 10 original defendants in the case to plead guilty and the fifth since Trump pardoned Urlacher, the brother of ChicagoBears great Brian Urlacher.
Namoff faces a likely sentence of six months to a year in prison at his sentencing, scheduled for Aug. 23.
Chicago Police Officer Nicholas Stella pleaded guilty in the case earlier this week. A police spokesperson said at the time that Stella’s status with the department was “inactive.”
Meanwhile, Casey Urlacher ran for reelection as a write-in candidate in Tuesday’s suburban elections. Online results showed Urlacher leading in that race Friday, but authorities had not declared a winner.
The February 2020 indictment filed in the case alleged that Vincent “Uncle Mick” DelGiudice recruited Namoff, Urlacher, Stella and others to work as agentsin his multimillion-dollar gambling ring. DelGiudice pleaded guilty in February, admitting he ran the ring around Chicago from 2016 until 2019.
The indictment alleged that Namoff called DelGiudice on Dec. 17, 2018, to discuss problems with DelGiudice’s gambling website. It also alleged that, on Jan. 19, 2019, Namoff and DelGiudice discussed collecting money from a gambler. DelGiudice told Namoff to say that he was “with Mr. DelGiudice,” it said.
Namoff also called DelGiudice on Jan. 28, 2019, to discuss a new gambler who wanted to place large bets with Namoff, according to the indictment.
WASHINGTON — Washington will rush federal resources to support vaccinations, testing and therapeutics, but not vaccines, to Michigan in an effort to control the state’s worst-in-the-nation COVID-19 transmission rate, the White House said Friday.
The announcement came as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer strongly recommended, but did not order, a two-week pause on face-to-face high school instruction, indoor restaurant dining and youth sports. She cited more contagious coronavirus variants and pandemic fatigue as factors in the surge, which has led some hospitals to postpone non-emergency procedures.
Statewide hospitalizations have quadrupled in a month and are nearing peak levels from last spring and fall.
“Policy alone won’t change the tide. We need everyone to step up and to take personal responsibility,” she said Friday, while not ruling out future restrictions. Michigan’s seven-day case rate was 492 per 100,000 people, well above second-worst New Jersey, with 328 per 100,000 residents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
President Joe Biden outlined the moves late Thursday in a call with Whitmer to discuss the situation in the state, according to senior administration officials. It will not include a “surge” of vaccine doses, a move Whitmer has advocated and which is backed by Michigan legislators and members of Congress.
Instead, Biden talked about how the federal government was planning to help Michigan better administer the doses already allocated to the state, as well as to increase testing capacity and drugs for virus treatment.
Whitmer, a Democrat, confirmed that she asked Biden on the call to send more vaccine doses to Michigan, particularly the single-dose Johnson & Johnson shot.
“I made the case for a surge strategy,” she said. “At this point, that’s not being deployed, but I am not giving up. … Today it’s Michigan and the Midwest. Tomorrow, it could be another section of our country. I really believe that the most important thing we can do is put our efforts into squelching where the hot spots are.”
Doses are allocated to states proportionally by population, but Whitmer has called for extra doses to be shifted to states, like hers, that are experiencing a sharp rise in cases.
“We’re going to stick with the allocation system of allocating by state adult population,” said White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients, calling it “the fair and equitable way” to distribute the vaccines. He said the administration was looking to help Michigan administer more of its vaccines efficiently.
Officials noted that providing more doses would not be nearly as effective in curbing the spike in cases as increasing testing and restoring mitigation measures like mask wearing and restrictions on high-risk activities like social gatherings, indoor dining and youth sports. That is because the vaccines take at least two weeks to begin providing immunity.
Biden told Whitmer that his administration stands ready to send an additional 160 Federal Emergency Management Agency and CDC personnel to Michigan to assist in vaccinations, on top of the 230 federal personnel already deployed to the state to support pandemic response operations.
Biden added that he was directing his administration to prioritize the distribution of doses through federal channels, like the retail pharmacy program and community health centers, to areas of the state Whitmer identifies.
“We are at war with this virus, which requires leaders from across the country to work together,” said White House spokesperson Chris Meagher. “We’re in close contact with Gov. Whitmer, who is working hard to keep Michigan safe, and working in close coordination through a range of options that can help stop the spread of the virus.”
About 40% of Michigan residents ages 16 and older have gotten at least one vaccine dose. Michigan ranked 35th among states in its vaccination rate as of Thursday.
The governor’s recommended high school closure drew mixed reaction in education circles. Her administration closed high schools for a month during the state’s second surge late last fall.
“Research has shown schools can be safe places for in-person learning, so long as community spread is under control — but with higher risk in our communities comes higher risk in classrooms,” said Michigan Education Association President Paula Herbart, whose union urged a similar two-week suspension of in-person learning at elementary and middle schools and colleges.
Restaurants, meanwhile, questioned Whitmer’s recommendation to not eat inside but welcomed the call for more vaccines.
“We trust our operators to continue to provide a safe environment indoors or out in the coming weeks and we trust Michiganders to do their part to act responsibly and respectfully to help us all achieve that outcome,” said Justin Winslow, president and CEO of the Michigan Restaurant & Lodging Association.
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This afternoon will be mostly cloudy with a high near 62 degrees. Tonight’s low will be around 49 degrees. Tomorrow brings rain, including some possible thunderstorms, with a high near 60 degrees. And more rain is in the forecast for Sunday, along with a high near 58 degrees.
Jim Zwit never forgot the hot, sticky smell of Vietnam. And he never forgot the eight Army buddies he lost there in an ambush in 1971.
He made it his life’s mission to track down each of their families, spread across the United States. And that was in an age before finding people was made easier by the likes of Google, email and social media.
It took him 40 years, but he finally found the last of them.
“He let the families know their sons did not die alone and they’d never be forgotten,” said Pat Condran, a fellow vet who plans to visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., to mark the 50th anniversary of the April 15, 1971, firefight that forever changed the lives of those who survived.
Mr. Zwit, 70, a former Chicago cop who later ran his own investigations agency, died last month at his home in La Grange Park of bladder cancer, though his doctors think his wartime exposure to the chemical Agent Orange contributed to his health problems, according to his wife Grace.
Young Jim grew up on the Southwest Side and went to St. Bede the Venerable grade school and Bogan High School.
He was a student at what was then called the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle when he decided to enlist in the Army. He served in the 501st Battalion of the 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division.
A mosaic at the Bernard Horwich Jewish Community Center on the Far North Side tells the story of Jewish immigration to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Titled “Fabric of Our Lives” and created in 1980, its images and words portray challenges they faced, coming to Chicago and elsewhere, typically from Eastern Europe, with little money, no jobs and often no grasp of English.
The 15-feet-tall, 13-feet-wide, glass-tile mosaic had suffered from the onslaught of decades of Chicago winters but restored in October at a cost of about $8,000 by Miriam Socoloff and Cynthia Weiss, the artists who originally had assembled the work in 1980.
The mosaic titled “Fabric of Our Lives” at the Bernard Horwich Jewish Community Center, 3003 W. Touhy Ave.Provided
“In addition to our strong feelings for the themes of the mosaic, it was profoundly meaningful and satisfying to repair something,” says Weiss, 67, amid a year marked by the coronavirus pandemic and loss. “2020 was such a hard year. There was so much devastation.”
The Horwich JCC, at 3003 W. Touhy Ave., is in a neighborhood that’s fairly heavily Jewish.
One of the tenets of Judaism is that people should work to repair the world. That made it even more meaningful to painstakingly restore the mosaic, Weiss says.
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