Trump at war. CNN’s Stephen Collinson says the president’s “unleashed fury, fact-bending rants and persecution complex are conjuring an image of someone seeing his presidency slipping through his hands” …
■ Republican strategist Rick Wilson in The Daily Beast: Republicans in private have “that hang-dog, dick-in-the-dirt fatalism of men destined to die in a meaningless battle in a pointless war.”
■ A Los Angeles Times editorial concludes Trump’s reported talk of an alligator-filled moat at the border is evidence of “just how dangerous it is to give the power of the presidency to a person who has no brakes and no discernible empathy” …
■ … and anyway, Stephen Colbert says, the president stole the idea from him.
■ A private company to which the Trump administration has shifted care for detained migrant children is getting paid for staffing a Florida facility with 2,000 workers—even though the last kids left in August.
■ A tale of an imaginary CNN studio was one of at least 59 lies Trump told last week—a number that CNN says happens also to be his average over the last 12 weeks.
■ The New York Times dissects Trump’s falsehoods about the House impeachment inquiry.
■ Presidential counselor Kellyann Conway’s husband, George, writes at great length (more than 11,000 words) in The Atlantic: Donald Trump is unfit for office.
Transcript mystery. The Washington Post says odd markings are fueling doubts about what Trump has called “an exact word-for-word transcript” of a phone call at the heart of Congress’ impeachment inquiry.
■ Today, a diplomat who resigned Friday as the president’s emissary to Ukraine has been testifying privately to Congress about that call.
■ Bloomberg Businessweek explores the origins of Trump’s impeachment peril: His obsession with digging up dirt on Joe Biden.
■ BuzzFeed News: “Political Operators Are Impersonating Real Americans To Flood The Government With Fake Comments.”
‘Hurry back, Bernie.’ The Tribune’s Dahleen Glanton on presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ health problems: “It doesn’t matter whether you intend to vote for him, or whether realistically, he can even win. What Sanders brings to the campaign trail is an optimism that no other candidate has been able to duplicate.”
■ Candidate Elizabeth Warren’s newest plan—a 22-minute read on Medium—would overhaul labor law to enhance workers’ ability to organize and strike.
The Museum of Science and Industry’s new name. A rich guy who’s making the largest donation in the museum’s history will get his name on the joint.
■ As the trend of big companies moving suburban jobs to the city escalates, the Japanese-owned Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. is putting its fancy and massive Deerfield HQ on the market.
■ Champaign-based News-Gazette Media, publisher of the newspaper serving the University of Illinois community, says it expects to cut more than 100 jobs.
■ Major layoffs are reportedly on the way today at Sports Illustrated.
Strike date set. The clock’s ticking toward an Oct. 17 deadline for Chicago teachers, support staff and Chicago Park District workers to walk off the job.
■ The teachers’ plan could mean a shorter school day for students.
■ Politico’s Shia Kapos: Teachers’ “beef” is really about “exorcising demons of the mayoral campaign.”
■ A new report says Chicago Public Schools spent almost $7 million last year to protect kids from sexual predators.
■ Financial challenges facing the higher education market are driving Roosevelt University’s plan to acquire Robert Morris University.
Never again. Illinois’ legislative inspector general says two of House Speaker Michael Madigan’s former aides—dumped for sexual misconduct—should never return to the state’s payroll.
■ Gov. Pritzker wants a state senator under federal investigation stripped of his job as chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee.
Path to insolvency. A Tribune investigation concludes that, even though then-Mayor Emanuel raised taxes to put the city’s underfunded worker pension funds on a “path to solvency,” the funds’ budget hole over the last four years has gotten $7 billion deeper.
■ Funny thing: A conference for administrators of hundreds of Illinois’ local police and fire pension funds—many of them in fiscal trouble—cost taxpayers $8 million.
■ Emanuel’s father is dead at 92.
Public Narrative is a Chicago Public Square advertiser.
Thanks to reader Mike Braden for flagging a missing quotation mark near the top of this issue.