As President Donald Trump’s term winds down, Republican U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger says he’s “concerned” about “people being driven to violence” as the commander in chief and his allies continue making baseless claims that election fraud cost him reelection.
Trump has called on supporters to “never give up” and to assemble next week in Washington, D.C., when a joint session of Congress holds what has been a ceremonial count of Electoral College votes to cement the election results — in this case Joe Biden’s victory.
During an appearance on CNN yesterday, Kinzinger said any suggestion that the election outcome could be reversed during the Jan. 6 congressional session is a “scam.”
This afternoon, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she was “hoping” that details could be settled for a meeting this week with Anjanette Young, the social worker whose Chicago home was the subject of a mistaken police raid before she took office. A short time later, the Tribune’s Gregory Pratt nailed it down: The meeting’s been called off after the two sides couldn’t agree on a separate public forum, according to emails exchanged between the city’s top lawyer and Young’s attorney.
The mayor remains under scrutiny over her administration’s attempt to stop CBS-Ch. 2 from airing police body camera footage that captured a distraught, naked and handcuffed Young telling officers 40-plus times that they were in the wrong home.
My colleague William Lee wrote about the protest over the raid yesterday at Chicago Police Headquarters including some of the city’s and state’s most prominent Black women in politics such as Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, who talked about how the case was another indignity heaped upon Black women.
But the city’s most prominent African American elected leader — Mayor Lightfoot — wasn’t there. She said that she’s heeding social distancing rules amid the pandemic and that she has spoken to protest organizers in recent days who are calling for the top brass — including police Superintendent David Brown, who reports directly to Lightfoot — about the changes they want to see at the Police Department. She said she believes they’re on the same page.
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Trump repeatedly has taken to Twitter to tell supporters as recently as this weekend to “never give up” and to attend a “big protest” in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 when Congress cements the presidential election — that is, Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. Last week, Trump tweeted about the protest, “Be there, will be wild!”
During an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday morning, Kinzinger told journalist Dana Bash he’s become exasperated by the conspiracy theories and expressed some of the same concerns others have about whether Trump supporters could cause chaos in the streets when Biden is formally certified.
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“I’m concerned to an extent about January 6, because, if you convince people that Congress can change a legitimate election, and everything was stolen, and there’s a deep state … QAnon theory driving this, which is that it’s satanist pedophiles that run the government, you could see people being driven to violence. So, I’m concerned about that.”
The Channahon Republican, whose district stretches east to the Indiana border and north toward the Wisconsin border, has by his own description had a hot and cold relationship with the president. But at this point, it’s safe to say it’s the temperature of Lake Michigan in February.
Long a darling of the cable news networks, Kinzinger has been making the rounds with greater frequency of late, prompting some to question whether he’s eyeing a bigger office. Watch the full interview here or read the transcript of the interview here.
About that Jan. 6 joint session of the U.S. House, Senate: The act of congress counting the Electoral College votes is generally a routine, ceremonious affair, but Trump’s repeated, baseless efforts to challenge Biden’s presidential victory will bring more attention than usual to the session, The Associated Press reminds. It’s the final step in reaffirming Biden’s presidential win and is required by the U.S. Constitution. More here.
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COVID-19 — A last-ditch and likely futile effort to increase stimulus checks in Congress
The president signed the joint omnibus and COVID-19 relief bill on Sunday, but the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives was expected to vote tonight in favor of upping direct relief payments from the current $600 to $2,000 — something Trump wanted and threatened to veto the entire package over.
Don’t get too excited. Senate Republicans don’t seem to be in favor of increasing the price tag of the package. NBC News has more details here.
Latest numbers locally: The statewide COVID-19 death toll surpassed 16,000 on Monday, 10 days after Illinois exceeded 15,000, the Tribune’s Gregory Pratt and Jamie Munks report. Today alone, the state Department of Public Health reported another 105 deaths, in addition to 4,453 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19, out of a batch of 51,046 tests conducted.
The seven-day statewide positivity rate for cases as a share of tests conducted was 7.2% for the period ending Sunday, down from 7.5% a week earlier, Pratt and Munks note.
Vaccine tally: The city of Chicago has provided more than 20,000 vaccinations; statewide, 112,987 first doses of the vaccine have been administered as of last week, according to the latest numbers available. More here.
Chicago officials today began distributing vaccines to long-term medical care facilities and outpatient clinics, marking another milestone in the city’s fight against COVID-19, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said. Mid-month, there was a record number of Illinois nursing home residents with COVID-19 who died over about a week’s period, the Tribune’s Robert McCoppin and Joe Mahr reported.
Unbalanced rollout: Few South, West side residents get COVID vaccines thus far, the Chicago Sun-Times’ Brett Chase and Elvia Malagon write.
From the Tribune’s Katherine Rosenberg-Douglas and Jeremy Gorner: “Former Ald. Proco “Joe” Moreno was charged with DUI and reckless driving after his Audi rammed and sideswiped at least eight cars along four blocks of a street in the Gold Coast before smashing into a tree Sunday night.”
The incident happened not too far from Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s home. Read more about it here.
A reminder that Moreno is fighting charges of insurance fraud and obstruction of justice stemming from a 2019 incident when prosecutors say the ex-alderman, who lost reelection that year, falsely claimed his 2016 Audi A6 had been stolen from his garage. As my colleagues note, “Moreno allegedly had turned the car and its keys over willingly only hours earlier to a woman he had dated.”
Pot legalization was to bring expungements to many with records in Illinois. Numbers so far are low.
The Tribune’s Robert McCoppin writes: “Marijuana legalization in Illinois came with grand plans for wiping clean many criminal records involving cannabis. That aspect of the law was so important that on the eve of legalization on Jan. 1, 2020, Gov. J.B. Pritzker pardoned more than 11,000 people of low-level marijuana convictions.”
McCoppin notes that more than 700,000 cases could qualify for expungement, a process in which police and court records of arrests and convictions are cleared. But nearly a year after recreational weed became legal, few of those cases have been cleared. Read more, including vows to get expungements on track, here.
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OK, so there was a lot of hope that groundbreaking in Jackson Park for the Obama Presidential Center would happen in 2021. A date is not on the calendar yet.
But that hasn’t stopped the Rev. Byron Brazier from envisioning how the proposed center would add to the existing glory of the South Side, my Tribune colleague Alice Yin writes.
Nor has it stopped Herb Caplan, president and founder of the Protect Our Parks nonprofit, from pushing back. He’s sued to try to block the center and plans to file a petition in the coming months for his lawsuit to be considered by the U.S. Supreme Court. Read the full story here on the status of the center’s plans here.
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