Next top cop. Mayor Lightfoot is bringing in the retired ex-chief of Los Angeles’ police department, Charlie Beck, to run Chicago’s department on an interim basis after the retirement of Supt. Eddie Johnson.
■ Beck left the LA department early after a year of scandal (January 2018 link).
■ In 2018, The Intercept detailed Johnson’s “long record of justifying police misconduct.”
■ The mayor who appointed Johnson, Rahm Emanuel, recalls him as a “total mensch.”
■ A Tribune editorial blasts Emanuel and Rich Daley’s taxpayer-funded police protection: “Former mayors can take the bus just like the rest of us.”
A ‘legacy of slavery.’ A new study backs up a Chicago City Council push to wipe out the city’s “sub-minimum wage” for tipped workers.
■ A Sun-Times exposé: The Navy told a lieutenant colonel honored for saving two lives in Afghanistan that he’d served long enough to get free college for his kids, but the math was off by six days—and now he and his daughter are on the hook for more than $20,000.
So cold. The U.S. is in for an Arctic blast that could set 170 records next week—possibly including Chicago’s coldest Veterans Day.
■ National Geographic from January: “Why cold weather doesn’t mean climate change is fake.”
■ At Trump’s EPA, the Post details a “flagrant problem.”
‘Whatever it takes.’ A source tells Axios ex-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is ready to spend as much of his $52 billion fortune as necessary to win the presidency.
■ Matthew Yglesias in Vox: Republicans’ smear campaign against Joe Biden shatters Biden’s theory of politics.
■ A New York Times editorial: “Billionaires are getting nervous” about Elizabeth Warren’s plans for higher taxes on the wealthy.
■ The Onion: “Gates Foundation Pledges $25 Billion To Eradicate Whatever Disease Drives People To Support Taxing The Rich.”
■ Late-night hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers have been mocking Trump for his “new favorite word that is not a word.”
Weird texts explained. If your phone rendered an old or otherwise mysterious text message Thursday, here’s why.
■ The Guardian details the strange history of interstellar messages.
OK Captain. Star Trek star William Shatner mixed it up for hours on Twitter with a user who inaccurately dissed him with the putdown “OK Boomer.”
News orgs behaving badly. New York’s Irin Carmon condemns ABC and CBS for punishing the staffer who leaked footage of a reporter complaining ABC crippled an investigation of convicted and now-dead sex offender Jeffrey Epstein: “It is shameful.”
■ Poynter’s Tom Jones: “Donald Trump Jr. appeared on The View on Thursday and it went down pretty much like you would have expected.”
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