A woman accused of committing an anti-Palestinian hate crime at a Downers Grove restaurant pleaded not guilty on Monday.
Alexandra Szustakiewicz, 64, of the 1700 block of Boulder Drive in Darien, was arraigned on six felony counts of hate crime, according to court records.
When she was arrested on Nov. 18, Szustakiewicz was charged with two hate crime counts and one count of misdemeanor disorderly conduct.
The felony charges accuse Szustakiewicz of saying “(expletive) Palestine” during her encounter with a man and his wife the morning of Nov. 16 at the Panera Bread at 7361 Lemont Road in Downers Grove. In addition, Szustakiewicz is accused of hitting the man on the head and approaching the woman in a way that made the woman feel threatened.
Szustakiewicz remains free on pretrial release. Her next court date is Feb. 4.
If you start thinking about it, you can quickly get sucked in.
Especially if you’re already vulnerable to thinking about snow removal equipment.
Yes, it’s time again for Chicagoans to start submitting names for the third annual “You Name a Snowplow Contest.”
Like an announcement over the high school public announcement system during homeroom, the city released the details Monday, and it’s time again for the city’s jokesters sitting in the back row (or any of the city’s 50 wards) to give it their best shot.
“Chicago residents are once again encouraged to create innovative snowplow names and submit them to shovels.chicago.gov by January 4, 2025,” the city’s announcement read.
Submissions are limited to one per person and 50 characters in length.
When the submission period closes Jan. 4, or when the city receives 20,000 submissions, whichever comes first, Department of Streets and Sanitation staff will choose 50 finalists.
The next phase of the contest begins Jan. 10 when residents will have an eleven-day window to vote for their six favorite names.
The top six vote-getters will be featured on one snowplow in each of the City’s six snow districts.
Signage for the winning snowplow names will be created and installed on the massive trucks and residents who submitted the winning names (earliest time stamp when there are multiple submissions) will be offered a photo opportunity with the named snowplow along with city swag.
For inspiration (and to avoid repeats), here are the names of previous winners:
WGN meteorologist Tom Skilling attends the 2024 unveiling of six snowplows named by Chicagoans, including one named “Skilling It,” in his honor.
It’s not a comforting show for closing out the year, but Blank Theatre Company’s revival of Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day is an important one as we head into the bleak times ahead. Kushner’s look at the fall of the Weimar Republic through a group of bohemian and leftist friends in Berlin (and the play makes it clear these aren’t synonymous terms), from the first day of January 1932 to mid-November 1933, feels both prescient and immediate in Danny Kapinos’s spare but well-acted production in the Greenhouse Theater studio.
A Bright Room Called Day Through 1/5: Thu–Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Mon 12/30 7:30 PM; Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln, 773-404-7336, blanktheatrecompany.org and greenhousetheater.org, $35 ($20 students/industry)
Kushner wrote this occasionally didactic early play in 1984 and ’85, during the lead-up to the second Reagan administration, and the parallels he obviously intended between the rise of the Third Reich and the sharp rightward shift of the 1980s are embodied in Zillah (Lilah Weisman), a young Jewish grad student. In the original version of Kushner’s play (itself inspired by Bertolt Brecht’s 1938 drama Fear and Misery of the Third Reich), Zillah writes letters to Reagan that she knows no one will read. During the first Trump administration, Kushner revised the play to send Zillah to 1980s Berlin, where she engages in an affair with a young German man, despite their language barrier.
Kushner noted in a 2019 interview with Alisa Solomon of the Nationthat there was a wave of renewed interest in the play after Trump’s first election, while also reflecting on the reviews of the early productions, which tended to pooh-pooh the Reagan/Reich parallels. “The Reagan counterrevolution’s mantra was that government is the problem. And hatred of government leads to hatred of democracy, and if it goes on long enough and isn’t checked by people who believe in democracy and believe in government, it’s going to lead to an attempt to replace it with something else—whether you can call it fascism in the mid-20th-century sense or some other antidemocratic, oligarchic kleptocracy,” Kushner told Solomon.
For those unfamiliar with the history of the collapse of the Weimar era, Kushner’s play (which includes Brechtian timeline projections of events as they unfold with depressing swiftness) is a good primer. It’s perhaps too late to call it a “cautionary tale,” but in Agnes Eggling (Katherine Schwartz), an actor with a middling career and vague desires to be part of the German Communist party, we perhaps see ourselves: a woman desirous of doing good and helping her friends, but fearful to the point of paralysis of the consequences of running afoul of those who can deny us our comforts, if not our very existence.
The internecine battles between Agnes’s Trotsky-loving cinematographer partner, Husz (Raúl Alonso), and Stalinist artist Annabella (Shannon Bachelder) feel depressingly on point as a reminder of the inability of various factions of the left and center-left to unite against fascism. The ghostly presence of Ann James’s mysterious and increasingly malevolent Die Alte (the Old Woman), who shows up in Agnes’s flat from time to time, and Ben Veatch’s sterling one-scene appearance as Gottfried Swetts (but you can call him Old Scratch, if you like) are among the many highlights in this intellectually rich, sometimes confounding, and ultimately wrenching reminder of how easy it is to tear people apart and away from each other—and their values—when we fail to recognize the evil within and around us.
Reader Recommends: THEATER & DANCE
Reader reviews of Chicago theater, dance, comedy, and performance arts.
The Totality of All Things examines the national divide through a high school hate crime.
Lauren Gunderson’s Little Women premieres at Northlight.
Trap Door’s Fraudulent LLC hits almost too close to home.
Blake Montgomery’s comedic solo take on A Christmas Carol returns.
& Juliet is a heartfelt coming-of-age jukebox musical.
Who’s Holiday! again brings the laughs and the grit to Theater Wit.
Kerry Reid (she/her) has been the theater and dance editor at the Chicago Reader since 2019.
Graduating from Columbia College in 1987, she worked with several off-Loop theater companies before beginning her arts journalism career by writing pro bono for Streetwise.
She spent most of the 90s in San Francisco, writing about theater for Backstage West and the East Bay Express, among other publications, and returned to Chicago in 2000.
Reid was a freelance critic for the Chicago Tribune for 17 years, and has also contributed to several other publications, including Windy City Times, Chicago Magazine, Playbill, American Theatre, and the Village Voice.
She taught reviewing and arts journalism at Columbia and is currently adjunct faculty at the Theatre School at DePaul University.
In a past life, Reid also wrote about ten plays or performance pieces. She is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and the recipient of two 2020 Lisagor Awards.
Reid lives in Rogers Park. She speaks English and is reachable at [email protected].
Three people were killed and others were injured during a Monday shooting at a private Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin, officials said.
The suspected shooter was among the three dead, authorities said. Six people were hurt, authorities said, with injuries ranging from minor to life-threatening, during the shooting at Abundant Life Christian School.
Officers responded to the school, located at 4901 East Buckeye Road, around 11 a.m. The shooting was confined to one space at the school, police said, but did not specify whether the shooting happened in a classroom or a hallway.
What do we know about the suspected shooter?
The suspected shooter was among three killed at the school. Officers found the juvenile shooting suspect dead at the scene, Madison Chief of Police Shon F. Barnes said.
“They found the person who they believe was responsible, who was down, deceased,” the chief said.
Authorities said the suspected shooter was dead by the time officers arrived and no police fired their weapons.
The suspected shooter was a teenage student at the school, police said. Barnes said he would not yet be sharing the age, gender or any other identifying information about the suspected shooter. He said the suspected shooter’s motivation is not yet known.
Police have made contact with the suspected shooter’s family, Barnes said. The suspected shooter’s family was cooperating with police.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said it was working on an “urgent trace” of the firearm the shooter used on Monday.
A handgun was recovered after the shooting, Barnes said.
What do we know about the victims of the school shooting?
Other than the suspected shooter, two people were killed and six injured, officials said. Police have not yet publicly identified the victims. Names will not be released until after officers speak with family members who lost loved ones in Monday’s shooting.
The injuries ranged from minor to life-threatening, authorities said.
Barnes initially declined to specify if the victims were students or teachers, but released additional information during a Monday afternoon news conference. The two victims killed in the shooting were identified as a teacher and a teen, Barnes said. All of the injured victims were students. Two of the six wounded were in critical condition on Monday afternoon, with injuries that were considered life-threatening.
“I’m feeling a little dismayed now, so close to Christmas,” said Barnes. “Every child, every person in that building, is a victim and will be a victim forever. These types of trauma don’t just go away.”
SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital – Madison said it had received patients after the shooting. UW Health also said it was receiving patients from the shooting.
What do we know about Abundant Life Christian School?
Abundant Life Christian School is a private school founded in 1978, according to the school site. It’s a K-12 school with about 390 students.
“Prayers Requested! Today, we had an active shooter incident at ALCS,” the school posted on Facebook.
The school describes itself as a “private, nonprofit, nondenominational K-12 institution founded for the purpose of developing disciples of Jesus Christ through an excellent, comprehensive, Biblically-integrated educational program that is thoroughly Christian in content, context, and practice.”
Barnes was asked about metal detectors at the school during a Monday news conference.
“I’m not aware that the school had metal detectors nor should schools have metal detectors. It’s a safe space,” Barnes said.
The shooting took place at Abundant Life Christian School, a private institution that teaches some 400 students from kindergarten through 12th grade, the Madison Police Department said on social media.
Murat Usubaliev/Anadolu via Getty Images
What are the gun laws in Wisconsin?
The Giffords Law Center, which reviews gun laws, gave Wisconsin a C on its annual scorecard.
According to the center, “the state still lacks a number of key policies that would go a long way toward reducing gun violence.”
In Wisconsin, possession of a firearm under the age of 18 is a misdemeanor, while selling, loaning or giving a gun to a person under the age of 18 is a felony. It’s also a state crime to allow a child under the age of 14 to be within reach of a loaded firearm.
Bringing a loaded weapon into a school is also a crime.
How many school shootings have happened in 2024 so far?
Monday’s shooting happened just days after the victims of the Dec. 14, 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting were remembered.
According to Education Week, there have been 38 school shootings this year that resulted in injuries or deaths.
Earlier this month, two kindergarteners were wounded in a Northern California school shooting.
In the last four years, school shootings have killed more than 200 people and injured more than 600, according to a CBS News analysis of the K-12 School Shooting Database.
Andrea Boyd was out grocery shopping when she received a call from her teenage twin sons telling her gunfire was erupting mere feet away from where they lived.
“Mom, they shooting over here real bad,” Boyd, 37, recalls her sons telling her.
About 4:50 p.m. Saturday, six gunmen approached a 20-year-old man in a parking lot in the 1000 block of West 14th Street, demanded his property then fired shots into the air, according to police reports obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.
A 3-year-old boy was inside an apartment nearby lying in bed with his mother and siblings when they heard the gunfire and scrambled for the bedroom door, the police reports stated.
As the boy left the bed, a bullet shattered the window and shot him in the left ear, authorities said. His mother was injured by shattered glass.
“Mommy, I’m shot,” the boy told his mother while pointing to his ear, according to the reports.
Boyd arrived home to several squad cars in the parking lot near her apartment. Her children told her they heard “about 40 shots and someone screaming for help.”
The boy was taken to Stroger Hospital in fair condition.
The Barbara Jean Wright Court apartments in Little Italy.
Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
The robbery victim was visiting a friend at the Barbara Jean Wright Court apartment complex when he was “ambushed” by the gunmen, one of them someone he knew from high school, the police report states.
The gunmen placed their weapons in a black Nissan that fled in an unknown direction, officials said. Two silver SUVs fled eastbound from the parking lot of the complex.
Two days after the shooting, a bullet hole can be seen in the window of the apartment where the boy was shot. At a parking lot across from the complex, three bullet holes were seen on the side and window of a white Ford Expedition. Police say several other vehicles were also struck by gunfire.
Boyd has lived at the complex for a few months, but the constant violence — most recently the shooting of the boy — has her looking to move to the suburbs for the safety of her and her children.
“I feel terrible, terrified for the kids,” said Boyd, who has a 4-year-old son who was also at home at the time of the shooting. “You can’t go to work, you can’t let your kids go to school by themselves. Everyone has to drop [everything] just to make your kids get back and forth.”
A couple of months ago, Boyd’s white Mercedes Benz was struck my gunfire in a separate shooting. In August, she rushed to snatch her young son from a nearby park at the complex when shots were fired again.
“It’s really ridiculous,” Boyd said. “It’s very scary.”
It’s a good thing Mayor Johnson doesn’t have Mayor Daley’s City Council.
From his first election in 1955 until his death in 1976, Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley (Richard I) had a City Council to live for. With virtually no opposition except independent 5th Ward Ald. Leon Despres, Daley ruled over Chicago like a Soviet-style politburo chief. Whatever budget Daley wanted, he got. Fortunately, he was determined to keep property taxes manageable.
Forty-eight years on, Mayor Brandon Johnson doesn’t have a compliant City Council but one determined to protect beleaguered Chicago taxpayers from Johnson, a profligate spender. Instead of making large, sensible cuts to a vastly bloated city payroll, he proposed a huge $300 million tax increase to help close the near billion-dollar initial budget gap. But over half the Council forced Johnson to pair back his proposed increase to $150 billion, then to $68.5 million, and finally to no tax hike at all.
Bravo, City Council, and raspberries for you, Mayor Johnson. On day 1 as mayor, Johnson’s job was to assess a massively overstaffed City Hall weighed down by a large increase in full-time employees since just before COVID hit. Those new hires were financed by the U.S. American Rescue Plan. That dough is gone, but the excess employees are still there, exploding Chicago’s budget deficit.
When Daley could count on nearly every aldermanic vote, being mayor sure was lots of fun. Not so for Mayor Johnson, who can’t even muster 26 of 50 votes to pass his confiscatory budget.
Mayor Johnson means well with his progressive agenda to uplift Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods. All Chicagoans with goodwill support that effort. But Johnson must not forget “Joe Taxpayer,” whose needs must also be considered. Johnson has yet to learn the lesson that governance is the art of the possible — not the impossible.
Walt Zlotow, Glen Ellyn
Council members get it right
I loved the front-page headline on Saturday, “Council Revolt,” as alderpersons decided to do what they were elected to do for the first time in, well, I’m not sure how long. A more fitting headline would be, “Council Does Their Job, Finally.”
Mark Weiher, Lake View
Remember when all businesses accepted cash?
Has it occurred to anyone that one reason for the growing problem of credit card debt is the increasing number of businesses and services that refuse to accept cash? Small everyday expenses — a cup of coffee here, a parking garage or parking meter fee there, a sandwich for lunch or a beer on Saturday night — can add up rapidly.
In recent weeks, I have had to use a credit card for each of the expenses I just mentioned because the venues (or parking meters) had gone “cashless.” All businesses and services should be legally required to accept “real” money. If people don’t want to go in debt, they shouldn’t have to.
David G. Whiteis, Humboldt Park
Servers, bartenders have no appetite to lose tip credits
Just six months after the city of Chicago began eliminating the tip credit, national activist organizations like One Fair Wage are pushing to bring the policy statewide.
Here’s the catch: This isn’t something tipped workers want.
The Legislature tried to bring a bill forward earlier this year to eliminate the tip credit, a system that enables servers and bartenders to earn a base wage that is lower than the state minimum wage, so long as tips earn them at least the regular minimum wage or more.
Servers and bartenders have protested the proposal, claiming it would result in thousands of lost jobs and would cause them to bring home less money per paycheck. The bill subsequently failed in the state House after receiving bipartisan opposition.
A survey of hundreds of local tipped workers further confirmed their opposition. In fact, 87% of tipped workers in Illinois favor preserving the tip credit. The survey reported that 84% of Illinois employees are currently earning at least $20 an hour across the state — with some earning as high as $40 an hour because of their tips. That’s well above the new statewide minimum wage of $15 an hour.
The opposition isn’t unique to Illinois. In November, Massachusetts resoundingly rejected a ballot question to eliminate the tip credit. Additional efforts to eliminate the tip credit have failed from Ohio to Maryland. A national survey of tipped workers also showed that 9 in 10 workers want to keep the system the way it is.
Servers and bartenders work hard to make sure their customers are happy. The Legislature shouldn’t punish them by listening to national activist organizations who think they know better than actual workers.
Any bill to eliminate the tip credit should be dead on arrival.
Rebekah Paxton, research director, Employment Policies Institute
No pardons for state offenses
The average reader or viewer of the news thinks President Biden’s latest round of clemencies (pardons and commutations) affects those convicted of crimes, no matter the jurisdiction of conviction.
However, the president’s constitutional clemency power is limited to “Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States.” Thus, the clemency power does not extend to those convicted of state offenses.
The media, especially print media, needs to make clear in their reporting the above distinction.
Popeye can punch without permission and Tintin can roam freely starting in 2025. The two classic comic characters who first appeared in 1929 are among the intellectual properties becoming public domain in the United States on Jan. 1. That means they can be used and repurposed without permission or payment to copyright holders.
This year’s crop of newly public artistic creations lacks the landmark vibes of last year’s entrance of Mickey Mouse into the public domain. But they include a deep well of canonical works whose 95-year copyright maximums will expire. And the Disney icon’s public domain presence expands.
“It’s a trove! There are a dozen new Mickey cartoons — he speaks for the first time and dons the familiar white gloves,” said Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain. “There are masterpieces from Faulkner and Hemingway, the first sound films from Alfred Hitchcock, Cecil B. DeMille, and John Ford, and amazing music from Fats Waller, Cole Porter, and George Gershwin. Pretty exciting!”
Comics characters loom large
Here’s a closer look at this year’s crop:
Popeye the Sailor, with his bulging forearms, mealy-mouthed speech, and propensity for fistfights, was created by E.C. Segar and made his first appearance in the newspaper strip “Thimble Theater” in 1929, speaking his first words, “’Ja think I’m a cowboy?” when asked if he was a sailor. What was supposed to be a one-off appearance became permanent, and the strip would be renamed ”Popeye.”
But as with Mickey Mouse last year and Winnie the Pooh in 2022, only the earliest version is free for reuse.
The spinach that gave the sailor his super-strength was not there from the start, and is the kind of character element that could spawn legal disputes. And the animated shorts featuring his distinctive mumbly voice didn’t begin until 1933 and remain under copyright. As does director Robert Altman’s 1980 film, starring Robin Williams as Popeye and Shelley Duvall as his oft-fought-over sweetheart Olive Oyl.
A helium-filled Popeye balloon appears in the 33rd Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York on Nov. 26, 1959. The iconic cartoon character will be part of the public domain in 2025.
That movie was tepidly received initially. So was director Steven Spielberg’s “Adventures of Tintin” in 2011. But the comics about the boy reporter that inspired it, the creation of Belgian artist Hergé, were among the most popular in Europe for much of the 20th century.
The simply drawn teen with dots for eyes and bangs like an ocean wave first appeared in a supplement to the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle, and became a weekly feature.
The comic also first appeared in the U.S. in 1929. Its signature bright colors — including Tintin’s red hair — didn’t appear until years later, and could, like Popeye’s spinach, be the subject of legal disputes.
And in much of the world, Tintin won’t become public property until 70 years after the 1983 death of his creator.
Books show American lit at its height
The books becoming public this year read like the syllabus for an American literature seminar.
“The Sound and the Fury,” arguably William Faulkner’s quintessential novel with its modernist stream-of-consciousness style, was a sensation after its publication despite being famously difficult for readers. It uses multiple non-linear narratives to tell the story of a prominent family’s ruin in the author’s native Mississippi, and would help lead to Faulkner’s Nobel Prize.
And Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” joins his earlier “The Sun Also Rises” in the public domain. The partly autobiographical story of an ambulance driver in Italy during the First World War cemented Hemingway’s status in the American literary canon. It has been frequently adapted for film, TV and radio, which can now be done without permission.
John Steinbeck’s first novel, “A Cup of Gold,” from 1929, will also enter the public domain.
The British novelist Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own,” an extended essay that would become a landmark in feminism from the modernist literary luminary, is also on the list. Her novel “Mrs. Dalloway” is already in the U.S. public domain.
Music rings out the ’20s
Songs from the last year of the Roaring Twenties are also about to become public property.
Cole Porter’s compositions “What Is This Thing Called Love?” and “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” are among the highlights, as is the jazz classic “Ain’t Misbehavin’, written by Fats Waller and Harry Brooks.
“Singin’ in the Rain,” which would later forever be associated with the 1952 Gene Kelly film, made its debut in the 1929 movie “The Hollywood Revue” and will now be public domain.
Different laws regulate sound recordings, and those newly in the public domain date to 1924. They include a recording of “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” from future star and civil rights icon Marian Anderson, and “Rhapsody in Blue” performed by its composer George Gershwin.
Movie legends in the making
While a host of truly major movies will become public in the coming decade, for now early works by major figures from the not-always-stellar early sound era will have to suffice.
A decade before he would move to Hollywood and make films like “Psycho,” and “Vertigo,” Alfred Hitchcock made “Blackmail” in Britain. The film was begun as a silent but shifted to sound during production, resulting in two different versions, one of them the UK’s — and Hitchcock’s — first sound film.
John Ford, whose later Westerns would put him among film’s most vaunted directors, also made his first foray into sound with 1929’s “The Black Watch,” an adventure epic that includes Ford’s future chief collaborator John Wayne as a young extra.
Cecil B. DeMille, already a Hollywood bigwig through silents, made his first talkie with the melodrama “Dynamite.”
Groucho, Harpo and the other Marx Brothers had their first starring movie roles in 1929’s “The Cocoanuts,” a forerunner to future classics like “Animal Crackers” and “Duck Soup.”
“The Broadway Melody,” the first sound film and the second film ever to win the Oscar for best picture — known as “outstanding production” at the time — will also become public, though it’s often ranked among the worst of best picture winners.
And after “Steamboat Willie” made the earliest Mickey Mouse public, a dozen more of his animations will get the same status, including “The Karnival Kid,” where he spoke for the first time.
The Bears will try to reestablish everything after the offense cratered in Thomas Brown’s first game on the sideline with head-coaching responsibilities last week against the 49ers — just four net yards on 17 plays in falling behind 24-0 at halftime.
“I have to do a better job of trying to find some sequence to put us in to stay on the grass and be effective,” Brown said. “I don’t tell our guys to start the game slow. If I had the answer to that, the problem would already have been fixed. We’ll be aggressive towards that to find a solution.”
That could be problematic if the Bears can’t establish the run, with an offensive line that has withered in the second half. Since rushing for 196 yards (5.8 average) against the Commanders, the Bears have averaged 90.8 rushing yards in their last six games — 28th in the NFL in that span. And their two best running backs are injured — D’Andre Swift (groin) is questionable and Roschon Johnson (concussion) is out. That would leave Travis Homer (three carries, 16 yards) and newly re-signed Darrynton Evans (3-3) to carry the load.
The Bears hope to avoid leaning on rookie quarterback Caleb Williams, but that actually was productive against the Vikings at Soldier Field. With Swift held to 30 yards on 13 carries, Williams went 32-for-47 for 340 yards and two touchdowns for a 103.1 passer rating in the overtime loss.
When the Vikings have the ball
The Bears will try to re-establish everything after the defense cratered in coordinator Eric Washington’s first game as play-caller after Matt Eberflus was fired — the Bears allowed 319 total yards, including 254 passing in falling behind 24-0 at halftime.
It won’t be easy in the hostile environs of U.S. Bank Stadium against a Vikings offense that ranks ninth in the NFL in scoring (26.1 points per game) after Sam Darnold threw five touchdown passes in a 42-21 victory over the Falcons last week.
The Bears know what they’re up against. The Vikings showed off their run-pass versatility and depth in their overtime victory against the Bears on Nov. 24 at Soldier Field. Aaron Jones had 22 carries for 106 yards and a touchdown. And with All-Pro wide receiver Justin Jefferson contained (a season-low two receptions for 27 yards), Jordan Addison (8-162, one touchdown) and tight end T.J. Hockenson (7-114) stepped up.
The key matchup will be the Bears’ defensive front against the Vikings’ offensive line. The Bears had three sacks and nine quarterback hits against Darnold at Soldier Field. But they’ve had just three sacks and six quarterback hits in two games since, against the Lions and 49ers.
“We have to make sure we have the call ready and our cleats in the dirt with great communication and clear understanding of how to execute our concepts,” Washington said, “and we give ourselves the best chance.”
The Vikings have won six in a row and most recently demolished the Falcons.
Jared Goff matched a career high by throwing five touchdown passes for the NFC North-leading Lions (12-2), whose loss gives the Vikings a chance to pull into a tie for the division lead with a win against the Bears on Monday night at home.
WASHINGTON — Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who had polio as a child, says any of President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees seeking Senate confirmation should “steer clear” of efforts to discredit the polio vaccine.
“Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous,” McConnell said in a statement Friday. “Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming Administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.”
The 82-year-old lawmaker’s statement appeared to be directed at Trump’s pick for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., after a report that one of his advisers filed a petition to revoke approval for the polio vaccine in 2022. That vaccine is widely considered to have halted the disease in most parts of the world.
McConnell’s words were a sign that Kennedy, who has long advanced the debunked idea that vaccines cause autism, could face some resistance in the soon-to-be GOP-controlled Senate.
“Mr. Kennedy believes the Polio Vaccine should be available to the public and thoroughly and properly studied,” said Katie Miller, the transition spokeswoman for Kennedy, in response to questions.
The New York Times reported that the petition was filed by a lawyer now helping Kennedy select candidates for federal health positions in the incoming administration.
Any individual or company can file a petition with the Food and Drug Administration, which typically fields hundreds of requests at any time relating to various food, drug and medical issues. Most petitions are denied, but the FDA is required to respond to each one in writing.
Vaccines have been proven to be safe and effective in laboratory testing and in real-world use in hundreds of millions of people over decades — they are considered among the most effective public health measures in history.
McConnell contracted polio at 2 years old but survived because of “the miraculous combination of modern medicine and a mother’s love,” according to the statement. He praised the “saving power” of the polio vaccine for the “millions who came after me.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a post on X that it was “outrageous and dangerous for people in the Trump Transition to try and get rid of the polio vaccine that has virtually eradicated polio in America and saved millions of lives.
He said Kennedy should clarify his own position on it.
Trump announced last month his selection of Kennedy, saying Kennedy would work to protect Americans “from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives.”
But that pick was met with alarm from scientists and public health officials, who fear Kennedy would unwind lifesaving public health initiatives such as vaccines.
Kennedy has pushed other conspiracy theories regarding vaccines, such as that COVID-19 could have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, comments he later said were taken out of context. He has repeatedly brought up the Holocaust when discussing vaccines and public health mandates.
Kennedy said he plans to remake the Department of Health and Human Services, an agency with sprawling reach and a $1.3 trillion budget, if he is approved. He has suggested the FDA is beholden to “big pharma,” and his anti-vaccine nonprofit has called on it to stop using COVID-19 vaccines.
During the COVID-19 epidemic, his nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, petitioned the FDA to halt the use of all COVID vaccines. The group has alleged that the FDA is beholden to “big pharma” because it receives much of its budget from industry fees and some employees who have departed the agency have gone on to work for drugmakers.
Children’s Health Defense currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.
MADISON, Wis. — Five people have been killed and others injured after a shooting Monday at a private Christian school in Wisconsin, including a child who caused the attack, authorities said.
Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes was speaking to reporters when the death toll rose to five from three people. He offered no details on the victims but says others were wounded in the shooting at Abundant Life Christian School.
Barnes says police officers who responded did not fire their weapons.
Police had blocked off roads around the school Monday afternoon.
Agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have responded to the scene to assist local law enforcement.
“We are praying for the kids, educators, and entire Abundant Life school community as we await more information and are grateful for the first responders who are working quickly to respond,” Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers said in a statement.
Abundant Life Christian School is nondenominational and has about 390 students, from kindergarten through high school, according to its website.
