A short time ago, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said he conferred with medical and other scientific experts who told him that “to avoid the loss of potentially tens of thousands of lives we must enact an immediate stay-at-home order – so that’s what I’m enacting today.”
“I don’t come to this decision easily, I fully recognize that in some cases I am choosing between people’s lives and saving people’s livelihoods,” the governor said at a news conference. “But ultimately you can’t have a livelihood if you don’t have a life.”
The order, which kicks in tomorrow at 5 p.m. and concludes at the end of the day April 7th, means you can still head out to the grocery stores, pharmacies and gas stations, doctor’s offices and hospitals, all of which will remain open. But most “non-essential businesses must stop operating.”
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who was also at this afternoon’s news conference said “this is not martial law.” City park facilities and libraries will shutter after 5 p.m. tomorrow.
The governor said law enforcement will be keeping an eye out, but the state and local municipalities do not have the capacity to police everyone. For that reason, officials are asking people to adhere to the order.
Meanwhile, fresh from clinching the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate, former Lake County Sheriff Mark Curran Jr. says voters he’s spoken with are questioning the local and national leaders’ response to the coronavirus, including calls to limit access to bars and restaurants.
And wealthy Chicagoans are opening their checkbooks to help with coronavirus response efforts.
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Whether this was coming has been a topic in The Spin for days now.
Illinois is set to enact a stay-at-home order on Saturday aimed at containing the coronavirus that has sickened nearly 600 in Illinois and killed at least five. You can read my colleagues’ story here. Earlier, California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered residents to stay home unless they needed to travel.
Pritzker was asked at today’s news conference about his legal authority to issue the order. The governor said “the Emergency Management Act, the Public Health Act in the state of Illinois . . . give the authority either to the governor or the director of public health to make decisions as we have for the state.”
Support for these measures go beyond bipartisanship, the governor said.
“There really is nothing political about this virus or the response to it. We’ve been in consultation – Democrats and Republicans talking to one another, political leaders, nonpartisan leaders, trying to get this right,” Pritzker said.
Just last night, Lightfoot gave a live address on local TV stations that offered no hint that this was coming — showing at once the evolving nature of state and local governments’ response to the pandemic.
About the mayor’s speech: During the 5 p.m. speech, Lightfoot provided a look at the city’s effort to contain the virus including an announcement that Chicago Public Schools’ closings will be extended through April 20 and the domino effect of all these businesses shuttering either by government order or because the Loop and neighborhoods have become ghost towns over the pandemic. To that end, she announced a small business loan fund.
The mayor’s approach offered a bit of certainty: “I want you to be able to lay your head down at night comforted by the fact that we are ready to meet this challenge,” she told viewers.
From her election night victory speech to last night’s 15-minute address, Lightfoot is involved in writing her speeches, her staff said.
“Mayor Lightfoot enjoys speechwriting and is very hands-on in the process. She works with our speechwriters on the communications team along with the appropriate team members” from various departments, her communications director, Michael Crowley, said in a statement. Asked about the big-picture goal, Crowley wrote: “Given the singular and unprecedented nature of this address, the Mayor dedicated a particular focus to crafting her messaging to best and most clearly convey the urgency of the situation, while also providing Chicagoans with the confidence that they deserve.”
Read the Tribune’s team coverage here.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson tells The Spin he spoke with President Donald Trump by phone last night, a day after sending a letter to the White House over concerns that the coronavirus could overtake jails where prisoners share cells and other confined areas make social distancing difficult at best.
“We keep on hearing the most vulnerable in all of this is the seniors, but those in (jail) have no way to social distance — you can’t social distance,” Jackson, the leader of the South Side-based Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, said. In a letter dated March 18, Jackson asked the president to test inmates currently behind bars and to release non-violent offenders awaiting trial to empty the jails a bit and lessen the likelihood of an outbreak. Read the full letter here.
“I told him, ‘they need to be tested immediately,’ and I could tell some of (what I was sharing) was new information to him,” Jackson said.
The president’s response? “He’s taking it into consideration,” Jackson said. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jackson’s letter lays out what he’s asking the president to do: “I am urging you to consider immediately testing the 2.2 million persons currently incarcerated,” Jackson wrote. “They are a captive audience and should not be devoured by the virus should someone in prison have it and spread it. And please consider releasing those arrested for non-violent offenses who are still incarcerated, but not convicted, after they have been tested for the virus so that they do not endanger the health of other inmates or the general public if they are released. We cannot leave those without healthcare to threaten the healthcare of all.”
Jackson told The Spin that a lot of people are talking about how senior citizens are the most vulnerable to COVID-19, but “I haven’t heard the president, the vice president talk about inmates.”
The Tribune’s Megan Crepeau and Annie Sweeney wrote a piece about how the Cook County jail began releasing low-level inmates today from the Southwest Side facility, one of the nation’s largest pre-trial detention centers, to ease coronavirus concerns, something officials have been considering for days.
Jackson talked about how some jails are a revolving door of people who could expose the jail population to the illness.
“You may be in jail and your cellmate has it,” he said. “And they congregate in groups of 10-12 to talk, to play cards, but they should really be segregated.”
While Jackson and Trump may not align politically – Trump’s a Republican, while Jackson recently backed Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination, though he ran for president in 1988 as a third party Independent — the two have had an open line of communication since at least last summer when the Jackson family became part of a campaign to release Rod Blagojevich from prison.
“I’ve talked to Jared” Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and sometime adviser “and I’ve been in touch with the president.”
“And listen, I’ve had a relationship with presidents since Nixon,” he says, referencing Richard M. Nixon, the Republican president who resigned amid the Watergate scandal.
U.S. Senate candidate: Not everyone ‘sold’ on government response to the coronavirus
As noted in The Spin yesterday, Mark Curran talked to a Springfield talk radio station and questioned whether the state and national response to the coronavirus outbreak has gone too far.
Today he talked with The Spin – before the governor announced the stay-at-home order – by phone: “There’s a lot of people out there who haven’t been sold on the fact that everybody needs to quarantine — if everybody really needs to quarantine they need to do a better job explaining why.”
“At this point, there’s a small percentage of people who will get this, and I talked to a lot more people who are concerned about what this is going to do to us economy. They’re more concerned about that than what the virus is going to do to them.”
Asked whether he agrees with those concerns or doesn’t favor the restrictions, he said, “I think it’s OK to ask those questions. I’m not going to pretend what we’re doing is right or wrong, but there’s really nothing going on in terms of a debate (among elected leaders) — it’s just the government telling us what’s going to happen.”
A conservative Republican, Curran won Tuesday night’s GOP nomination and will challenge four-term incumbent U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, a popular Democrat, in the November general election.
Curran’s heeding the advice personally from President Donald Trump — whom he supports — along with Democratic Gov. Pritzker’s and Mayor Lightfoot’s repeated calls for social distancing. But he questions state and local government leaders’ decisions to essentially shutter restaurants and bars.
“Illinois, essentially, is at the bottom on every fiscal category, so when we come out of this, what will that look like? How many businesses are going to close, how many people are going to lose their homes? People are worried about how they’re going to feed their family, and how much bigger hit the Illinois economy will take. None of these seemed to be discussed at all.”
Beyond government, Curran said “the response of the religious community is not acceptable,” noting that shutting churches is not a way to help the faithful “during a time of great anxiety.”
“Have some outdoor services, invite people — space them 5 feet apart and have the service on a speaker system,” he said.
Chicago’s wealthy political players open their checkbooks for coronavirus relief
Citadel and Citadel Securities, founded by billionaire Ken Griffin, is donating $2.5 million to the Greater Chicago Food Depository, which is helping as part of a citywide emergency distribution plan, and to Chicago Public Schools, where free to-go boxed breakfasts and lunches are being distributed even as schools are shuttered over the coronavirus outbreak. The food depository will get $1.5 million for those efforts while CPS will get the remaining $1 million, according to the mayor’s office. Griffin is the wealthiest Illinois resident.
Griffin has opened up his wallet during various political campaign seasons, largely to Republicans and conservative political action committees, but he’s known to give to a Democrat here there. Last year he kicked in $1 million to the Chicago mayoral campaign of Bill Daley, son and brother to two Chicago mayors long considered the bosses of the city’s old Democratic machine.
Wealthy businessman Willie Wilson, a perennial candidate for elected office, also is donating thousands of masks to Chicago’s first responders. You can read Fran Spielman’s report in the Chicago Sun-Times.
This week, outgoing 3rd District U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski, who narrowly lost the Democratic primary to businesswoman Marie Newman, suggested in his concession speech that a single issue — abortion — likely ended his political career. One of the last-standing socially conservative Democrats in office, he’s staunchly anti-abortion and the party “shunned” him for it, clearing the way for Newman.
“There was one issue that loomed especially large in this campaign — the fact that I am pro-life. I was pilloried in millions of dollars in TV ads and mailers because of this. I was shunned by many of my colleagues and other Democratic Party members and operators — I was shunned for my pro-life stance,” Lipinski, of Western Springs, said.
He nodded to the tide changing on abortion views and how many of his Democratic colleagues who once opposed abortion switched their stance on the issue, something he said as a Roman Catholic he could never do in good conscience. It may also signal a changing demographic in Illinois’ 3rd Congressional District that includes Chicago’s Southwest Side and stretches into suburban Cook, Will and DuPage counties.
But Newman, a LaGrange businesswoman, told Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn this week: “I don’t think abortion was really a factor at all. I mean, yes, it’s a very important issue. I believe in women’s rights. I trust women to make decisions on their reproductive health. But I don’t obsess over abortion like Dan does.” Read the rest of Zorn’s column here.
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