Ad subtraction. With two weeks to go before the election, Chicago mayoral candidate Toni Preckwinkle’s campaign has pulled all its TV ads, which one political strategist says “means they’re broke,” with “polling numbers that show that there really isn’t a path.”
■ Zorn’s colleague, John Kass: Anti-gay political flyers targeting Lightfoot may help her campaign more than they hurt it.
■ Preckwinkle has offered an odd defense for her protege—and Cook County state’s attorney—Kim Foxx’s intervention in the police investigation of Jussie Smollett’s since-discredited hate crime report: “She made … the right decision because it was a decision that she made and she’s in the best position to make it.”
■ Get ready to cast your ballot—in Chicago and the suburbs. Check the updated Chicago Public Square voter guide.
‘Enormously expensive.’ The head of the University of Chicago Crime Lab says Chicago can end its plague of gun violence, but not cheaply: “Think well into the nine figures.”
■ Hear his lecture yesterday as a City Club of Chicago podcast.
■ Six Chicago cops committed suicide over the course of eight months.
■ The city’s pumping $32 million into 32 schools to expand advanced educational programs.
Electoral College #TimesUp? A University of Texas law prof details the pros and cons of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to overhaul presidential election law.
■ National Review: The Electoral College has “ensured stability and continuity in America.”
‘Potentially dangerous.’ Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan warns journalists against “premature judgments” regarding front-runners in the Democrats’ crowded race for president—especially coverage that portrays victory as inevitable for one of “the B-Boys”: Beto, Biden and Bernie.
■ NBC News: A liberal push among Democrats is fundamentally changing the nature of campaign management.
Boeing close call. A day before a Boeing 737 Max 8 crashed into the sea off Jakarta, killing 189 people, an off-duty pilot averted a similar fate for another Max 8.■ Cockpit recordings from the doomed jet reveal pilots’ frantic struggle for control.
■ U.S. airlines tell The Wall Street Journal why they kept flying Max jets when others around the world grounded them.
■ President Trump’s pick to head the FAA—Who knew the agency has had only an acting chief for more than a year?—is a former pilot who’s flown Boeing jets. (Cartoon: Keith Taylor.)
■ Chicago-based Boeing’s recently well-rewarded CEO is apologizing in full-page newspaper ads.
■ Meanwhile, the president overnight tweeted out years-old conspiracy-theory crap about the Transportation Security Administration.And speaking of the well-rewarded … University of Illinois at Chicago teaching assistants are on strike—citing, among other factors, “the university president recently got a $100,000 bonus for the third year in a row.”
■ ProPublica Illinois: The UIC acknowledges it missed warning signs that a prominent child psychiatrist was violating research protocols and putting kids with bipolar disorder at risk.
■ Chicago actors turned out yesterday to support Chicago Symphony Orchestra musicians on strike.
Lollapalineup. Ariana Grande, Childish Gambino and the Strokes are among the acts headed to Chicago in August for the 2019 edition of Lollapalooza …
■ … which is encouraging attendees to respect the environment …
■ … whose defenders have won an unprecedented—but temporary—victory over the Trump administration in federal court
Supermoonstruck. If skies are clear (and they probably won’t be), tonight around 8:42 will be an optimal time in Chicago to see 2019’s “third, last and best” full moon at perigee (its closest monthly approach to Earth): A Super Worm Equinox Moon.
■ A NASA probe has discovered something “never … seen before in any solar-system object.”
Thanks … to readers Mike Braden and Mark Wukas for typographical refinements noted above in red.