Impeachment plan. The House Judiciary Committee has OK’d guidelines for an impeachment investigation into Donald Trump.
■ The Washington Post: The committee’s Democrats have privately been mapping out a strategy echoing charges that led to Richard Nixon’s resignation.
■ CNN’s Brian Stelter reviews fresh revelations about Trump’s lies on Hurricane Dorian: “This embarrassing episode was even worse than it seemed last week.”
Faceoff. In a first for this presidential campaign, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders will share a debate stage tonight …
■ … and you can watch online here and via a slew of online and streaming apps.
■ Warren’s new initiative: Expand everyone’s Social Security benefits …
■ … and she has an online calculator to show what it would mean for you.
■ The Trump campaign this afternoon plans to fly a critical banner in the skies over the debate stage.
‘We will not be doing that in Chicago.’ The Sun-Times’ Lynn Sweet says Chicago’s school chief, Janice Jackson, yesterday coolly told off a congressional Wisconsin Republican pushing her to gather information about the immigration status of students’ parents.
■ A suburban middle school principal is quitting after the district learned he was on a “Do Not Hire” list following a Chicago schools investigation into “sexually harassing misconduct.”
Illinois’ new top judge. Justice Anne Burke has been elected chief of the Illinois Supreme Court—as her husband faces federal corruption charges.
■ Cook County Circuit Court judges* vote
■ Vox: Why the Senate is rushing through a judicial nominee Trump has picked for one of the country’s most powerful courts …
■ … a man Esquire’s Charlie Pierce describes as “a candidate … that makes even some of the leading sheep in the Republican congressional caucus gag.”
■ Ex-Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has a new job.
Your tax dollars at work. The Tribune has uncovered a hidden cost of Chicago police misconduct: Millions paid to private lawyers in those cases—a sum that last year amounted to double what the city spent on the agency that investigates bad cops.
■ The Trib says Chicago cops’ secret background checks of speakers at police board hearings go back years further than previously revealed.
■ Chicago’s inspector general: Chicago police are doing an alarmingly poor job of maintaining cop cars.
Vaping’s rising toll. The latest accounting more than doubles the number of people in Illinois afflicted by vaping-related illness.■ Vox: Trump’s move to ban flavored vaping products could hinder anti-smoking efforts. (Cartoon: Keith J. Taylor.)
Good news for animals, bad news for the environment? The Environmental Protection Agency says it’ll cut the use of animals in chemical toxicity testing …
■ … but environmentalists say the result could be less protection against chemicals harmful to people and the environment.
■ The Trump administration was set today to complete rollback of an Obama-era rule that limited use of polluting chemicals near bodies of water.
■ Time is devoting an entire issue to the climate crisis: “What you will not find in this issue are climate-change skeptics. … The science on global warming is settled. There isn’t another side, and there isn’t another moment.”
■ Environmentally contaminated North Side industrial land could get new life sooner under a deal with the City of Chicago.
■ The Onion: “New Pop-Up National Park Offers 500 Square Feet Of Pristine Wilderness For Next 2 Days.”
GameStopped. Video game retailer GameStop plans to close up to 200 stores by yearend.
■ A national tour brings the Rick and Morty-inspired Rickmobile to Chicago Friday.
The Healthy Kids Running Series is a Chicago Public Square advertiser.
* One of whom is married to your Chicago Public Square publisher.