Not standing pat. The company responsible for Land O’Lakes butter is dropping its support for racist Iowa Rep. Steve King.
■ So is pet-food company Purina.
■ Also: The chairman of the House Republican campaign arm.
■ Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke compares Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee to Martin Luther King Jr.
■ That “rabbi” who joined Vice President Pence in memorializing the victims in the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre? Defrocked 15 years ago.
‘Every day he fuels a sense of chaos.’ National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg says the Pittsburgh slaughter wasn’t President Trump’s fault, but he’s not helping.
■ Trump’s again fueling the notion that Central American refugees constitute an invasion.
■ CNN’s Chris Cuomo says Trump’s pre-election rabble-rousing relies on language “propagated by Stalin, used by Hitler.”
■ Neil Steinberg in the Sun-Times: “The Republican Party is turning our country into crazyworld.”
■ The Intercept: “Fox News has done more to incite domestic political violence than Donald Trump.”
■ A Fox News headline you might not have expected: “Pelosi predicts Dems ‘will win’ the House, as Colbert pleads not to jinx it.”
Voting by mail? The deadline’s tomorrow. Details—with endorsements, details on free rides to your polling place and more—in the updated Chicago Public Square voter guide.
■ Tribune columnist Eric Zorn: “Stop complaining about the candidates for governor and make a choice!”
Your school, graded. Illinois has released its ratings of all the state’s public schools for the 2017-18 year, and you can search the list here. (But be patient: This being Illinois, the site can be verrrrry slow.)
■ Nearly half Chicago’s schools failed to make the cut.
■ The ratings have been overhauled: No more “failing.”
■ A Trib editorial: Close more Chicago public schools.
■ Illinois’ highest paid superintendent has been fired after an investigation into misconduct.
■ At the other end of the cradle-to-grave spectrum, U.S. News & World Report has ranked Illinois nursing homes.
‘A lot of people are scared.’ As kids and parents take to the streets for trick-or-treating, Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood has particular reason to be wary—because whoever randomly shot and killed two people there last month is still on the loose.
■ A woman recalls growing up in a Chicago neighborhood that used to burn witches in effigy: “It’s like I was in a cult and didn’t know.”
The Trib’s fate? The newly re-renamed parent of the Chicago Tribune, Tribune Publishing, has reportedly set a deadline for those interested in buying the company: Tomorrow.
■ Redevelopment of the Trib’s printing plant property is one of the items on the agenda for today’s Chicago City Council meeting.
■ The Sun-Times’ Mark Brown: “An ambitious proposal to ask Chicago voters to approve a tax increase on the sale of high-end real estate to fight homelessness has hit a snag before it even gets started. The snag is Ald. Edward M. Burke.”
■ Cabbies and their usually bitter rivals, Uber and Lyft drivers, plan to rally outside the council meeting to demand limits on new for-hire vehicle licenses.
■ Watch today’s meeting on the web.
‘They were ugly.’ A suburban Chicago female firefighter has won more than $11 million in her lawsuit over sexual harassment …
■ … and now a judge will consider what to do to keep it from happening to others.
■ Chicago aldermen are pushing for more frequent firefighter exams to diversify the department.
■ Google engineers are planning a walkout to protest the company’s protection of a sexual abuser—and its CEO says he’s down with that.
‘Devastating’ Target closings. Chicago shoppers are despondent over the chain’s decision to shutter two South Side stores (a story that was, by far, the most-clicked link in yesterday’s Chicago Public Square).
■ The Carson’s department store is coming back from the dead—at one location only—the day after Thanksgiving.
■ NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space telescope is dead.
Oceanic crisis. Reuters documents a “climate crisis beneath the waves”: Off the U.S. East Coast and other waters around the globe, “marine creatures are fleeing for their lives.”
■ A new study concludes that, since 1970, humanity has wiped out 60% of the world’s animal populations.
Horrific food tales. Restaurant pros share their scariest professional stories with the Trib’s Phil Vettel.
■ The Trib’s Christopher Borrelli revisits Chicago’s “history of food poisonings, both intentional and otherwise.”
■ Oreo prices are headed up.
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