Erin Allen: Good morning. Welcome to Monday. I'm Erin Allen and this is The Rundown. So If you’re planning to mail in your vote for this month’s election, the deadline to apply, like the election itself, is coming up fast. You have to apply to vote-by-mail by this Thursday at 5pm. My colleague Tony Arnold is doing some reporting on this. He says that so far the elections board has sent out more than 200-thousand ballots. But the majority of ‘em haven’t been turned back in yet. If you’re in that majority, your ballot has to be postmarked by election day on February 28th. You can also put it in a dropbox, and there should be one in your ward at an early voting location. You can find more information and apply to vote remotely at chicagoelections.gov.

A few weeks ago, we talked on The Rundown about the issue of “period poverty.” And my colleague Araceli Gomez-Aldana is reporting on a new center on the South Side that’s looking to help end the problem. Chez Smith founded the Gyrls in the HOOD Foundation five years ago. Before she opened the center, she was working out of her “HOOD mo-BILL,” teaching reproductive health education and providing tampons and pads.

Chez Smith: I know, girls are missing days of school, or if they’re using, like newspaper or paper towels then they have an accident at school. And now, you know, they have to be sent home. And they're ruining their uniform pants. So you know, if mom is struggling to make ends meet, you might have to wait two weeks to get her check to buy more uniform pants for you to go back to school.

Erin Allen: The center is open six days a week on the corner of 71st and St. Lawrence. And if you want to know more about menstrual equity and period poverty, check out our episode called “Understanding menstrual equity and detaching the stigma from periods.” You can find that wherever you get your podcasts.

More news on the Illinois assault weapons ban from my colleagues at The Chicago Sun-Times. Early this past weekend, a federal judge in Chicago denied a motion that was seeking to block the ban in the state. Judge Virginia Kendall also denied a similar ordinance in Naperville. She ruled that the Illinois and Naperville bans on selling assault weapons are quote “constitutionally sound.” Because they’re quote particularly dangerous weapons and high-capacity magazines are particularly dangerous weapon accessories.” What’s special about this is that Kendall’s decision is the first from a federal judge considering whether the ban meets the standard set out by the Supreme Court last year. In that ruling, whose majority opinion was written by Justice Clarence Thomas, restrictions on weapons must be limited to dangerous and unusual arms that aren’t commonly used.

And there was another big ruling last week in Illinois that affects data privacy cases. A manager at White Castle here in Chicago sued the fast food company for not getting her consent before requiring that she scan her fingerprint to access her paystubs. The court ruled that this violated Illinois’ biometric privacy law, and a person can win damages for each time their data is collected. Mark Denzler is with the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association. He says this could lead to businesses having to pay billions of dollars.

Mark Denzler: When you talk about companies investing in Illinois, and you talk about wanting to attract jobs and economic development, and they see the types of decisions coming out of Illinois courts, they are going to pass on Illinois.

Erin Allen: Ed Yohnka with the ACLU of Illinois called the decision a win for protecting individual privacy.

And now it's time for a few quick hits. This week marks one year since Russia invaded Ukraine. And this morning, President Biden made an unannounced visit to Kyiv to express solidarity with Ukrainians. He met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and made announcements. A half a billion dollars of additional assistance to Ukraine and New sanctions on Russia Biden said he’ll release more details in the next few days. You can go to npr.org for more info on that. 

And over the weekend, the Cook County Land Bank gave away 12 vacant lots in Englewood. Residents and community groups in the neighborhood were the ones who received them. The land bank was created to get rid of blight. Some of the lots will become home to a pop-up arts and culture spot. And a Detroit-bred, Chicago-based icon in courtroom television is hangin’ it up. The Judge Mathis show has ended after 24 seasons. Which makes Greg Mathis the longest-running Black male host on television.

As for the weather today, partly cloudy and pretty warm today! It’s currently in the low 30s, going up to the mid 40s in the late afternoon. Going down to the low 40s tonight.

And as a reminder, our morning episodes are coming in at a new time. I’ll be here in your ears around 8ish every morning Monday through Friday. And that’s it for now. And that’s it for now. Later today I’m talkin with the creators of this new show on WEtv called Kold and Windy. It’s giving Power meets Empire, but very much Chicago drama. It’s scandal, and oooh it’s drill music.

Speaker 5: Because of the news of drill in Chicago. And it also happens such a negative connotation. We felt like it was important to tell the story behind not just what the sensationalism that you see on the news.

Erin Allen: The creators are going to tell us about how they're using the show to subvert the narrative of what it's like on the South Side that's today at 2pm. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you then.

WBEZ transcripts are generated by an automatic speech recognition service. We do our best to edit for misspellings and typos, but mistakes do come through.