Good afternoon! I hope y’all enjoyed the weather over the weekend. While it snowed today, we could see temperatures back in the 70s later this week. Here’s what else you need to know.

1. A look at Brandon Johnson’s place in the national progressive movement

We’re about a month away from the swearing in of Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson and the new City Council on May 15.

Today, the Associated Press examines the significance of Johnson’s victory to the national progressive movement, which has increasingly focused on local-level elections to build power from the bottom up.

This strategy also “may help the movement find future stars, with today’s city and county officials becoming tomorrow’s breakout members of Congress and only moving further up the political ladder,” the AP reports. [AP]

Meanwhile, the City Council is also poised to become more progressive, more diverse and younger. My colleague Tessa Weinberg looks at how this may help Johnson’s agenda. [WBEZ]

2. Two teens were shot as hundreds streamed downtown, intensifying the need for youth programs, advocates say

Two teenagers were shot as hundreds of youth gathered in downtown Chicago on Saturday. Several videos posted on social media show vehicles being broken into and set on fire, report my colleagues at the Chicago Sun-Times.

A similar situation a year ago resulted in Mayor Lori Lightfoot successfully pushing the City Council to lower the city’s curfew for young people to 10 p.m. from 11 p.m.

Critics of the change were quick to point out the curfew’s ineffectiveness over this weekend, and they’ve increased their calls for more youth programs and opportunities as we quickly approach the summer.

In a statement, Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson said that though he does not condone the “destructive activity” that took place downtown, it was not constructive to demonize youth who he said have been starved of opportunities in their own communities. [Chicago Sun-Times]

3. Dozens of Cook County employees have resigned or been fired in ongoing investigations into COVID-19 relief fraud

In what sounds like an “only in Chicago” kinda story, 48 employees in the Cook County court clerk’s office no longer work there after investigators found they defrauded the Paycheck Protection Program, reports my colleague Frank Main.

It’s unclear how many of the employees were fired or resigned. But officials with the county’s inspector general office also found six employees at other county agencies had defrauded federal relief programs, Main reports.

Last year, the Cook County sheriff’s office reported having discovered evidence of more than a dozen inmates engaging in PPP fraud and forwarded those accusations to the FBI. [Chicago Sun-Times]

And earlier this year, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation found clusters of pandemic relief loans went to the same Chicago addresses, including homeless shelters. [Chicago Sun-Times]

4. A vending machine will offer free Narcan at a CTA Red Line station

The vending machine will be located at the 95th Street station, and it is “the first of its kind to help people who overdose on the CTA,” reports Block Club Chicago.

The move comes amid a national push to expand access to Narcan, a medication that can reverse overdoses. At least 1,981 people died from opioid overdoses in Cook County last year, tragically marking a new record, according to the county medical examiner’s office.

Last month, the Food and Drug Administration approved a Narcan nasal spray to be sold over the counter. And it’s expected to be available in Chicago in the coming months, according to a city official.

Some advocates told Block Club the next move should be expanding access to Narcan to all CTA stations, as well as gas stations and airports. [Block Club Chicago]

5. Chicago’s Center For UFO Studies celebrates its 50th anniversary

The Center for UFO Studies, located in a basement in Norwood Park, is one of the longest-running research centers dedicated to answering a big mystery: Are we alone in the universe?

“If a UFO landed on earth tomorrow, I wouldn’t be surprised,” Mark Rodeghier, the center’s director, told Block Club Chicago.

The center was the first to excavate the 1947 Roswell crash site in the ’80s, Block Club reports.

“We dug holes there and didn’t find anything besides a few military buttons,” Rodeghier said. “But that doesn’t mean the phenomenon isn’t real.”

Hundreds of people mail letters each year to the center about their encounters with UFOs, Block Club reports. The center is now scanning 80,000 UFO cases to create a public database on the topic. [Block Club Chicago]

Here’s what else is happening

• An investigation is underway after a Black teenager was shot in Kansas City, Mo., after mistakenly showing up at the wrong house to pick up his siblings. [AP]
• Dominion’s defamation case against Fox News was delayed by a day for settlement talks, reports the Washington Post. [WaPo]
• Artists and advocates want Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson to address problematic monuments. [WBEZ]
• Thousands of Black history archives will be made available to the public through a $2 million grant to the Chicago Public Library. [WBEZ]

Oh, and one more thing …

I saw The Super Mario Bros. Movie over the weekend with the nephews, and the theater was packed even though the movie came out more than a week ago.

Super Mario is the top-grossing movie of the year so far, and it will soon cross the $1 billion mark at the worldwide box office, reports The Hollywood Reporter. [THR]

So is this the beginning of a Super Mario cinematic universe like Marvel? A sequel seems inevitable. And Jack Black, who played Bowser, has pitched Pedro Pascal to voice the villain Wario for a future movie.

“You know, what if there is a more powerful, more evil villain?” Black said in an interview with GameSpot. “Then I may need to be turned to help Mario and the rest to defend our universe against some other unseen force of evil. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Wario. Pedro Pascal is Wario.” [Deadline]

Tell me something good …

Since the world apparently can’t get enough of Super Mario, I’d like to know what is your favorite game to play. It can be a video game, board game or whatever. And it can either be a game you enjoy now or when you were a kid.

I didn’t play this game, but my brother did when we were kids. Every morning, when we’d pass by this one house on our way to elementary school, my brother would pick up a newspaper on the lawn and hurl it on top of the house’s roof.

One time our grandparents visited us, and my grandmother asked why there were so many newspapers on top of that house when we drove by it, which cracked me and my siblings up.

Feel free to email me, and your response might be shared in the newsletter this week.