‘Public safety cadet.’ Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois 17-year-old accused of two murders during civil rights protests in Kenosha Tuesday night, was a high school dropout and an unabashed supporter of police and President Trump.
■ Social media posts indicate he considered himself a militia member, out to protect businesses.
■ Video shows police letting him leave the scene.
■ A Sun-Times editorial: “What if Rittenhouse … had been black?”
■ Court records show his mom sought an order of protection against a classmate who’d allegedly bullied him.
■ Early this year, BuzzFeed News reports, he was in the front row of a Trump rally.
■ Dead in the shootings: Two men who leave behind daughters—including a “super-talented” skateboarder whose girlfriend told protesters last night he “took down an armed gunman with nothing but his … skateboard.”
Cop named. Kenosha police have identified the man whose actions triggered the protests—seven-year veteran Officer Rusten Sheskey, caught on video firing seven times into the back of Evanston-raised Jacob Blake at almost point-blank range.
■ Sheskey told a reporter a year ago: “People trust us.”
■ Led by the Milwaukee Bucks, athletes across the country boycotted games in protest of Blake’s shooting.
■ The Bears are skipping practice.
■ Overnight, Kenosha was mostly peaceful.
■ Joe Biden and Kamala Harris talked to Blake’s family by phone yesterday.
■ In his vice presidential nomination acceptance speech last night, Mike Pence asserted that “the violence must stop, whether in Minneapolis, Portland or Kenosha,” but he didn’t mention Blake.
‘Mostly false,’ ‘out of context,’ ‘misleading.’ Pence’s address gets PolitiFact-checked.
■ The Guardian’s Night Three recap: A “whirlwind of lies great and small.”
■ Forbes recounts five of the biggest.
■ Trump adviser and woman-in-a-conflicted-marriage Kellyanne Conway gave a sort of “farewell address,” declaring Trump “the president we need.”
■ Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan: “Conway undermined the truth like no other Trump official. And journalists enabled her.”
■ Democrats’ counterprogramming for Trump’s acceptance speech tonight: A Kamala Harris address condemning the president for a “profound failure of leadership” in the pandemic.
■ More than 100 ex-aides to the late Republican Sen. John McCain are backing Joe Biden.
■ Stephen Colbert explains why he didn’t watch any of Wednesday’s convention proceedings: “We’re facing a global pandemic that has killed 180,000 Americans, heavily armed Rambo wannabes are murdering people in our streets, the strongest hurricane in the history of the Gulf Coast is making landfall as I speak, and the RNC’s message is: Who’s up for four more years?”
■ Onion satire: “RNC Forced To Pad Out Final Nights Of Convention With Illegitimate Trump Children.”
Officers on notice. Chicago’s school board has voted to extend its contract with the city’s police department for another year—but also to develop a police-free safety plan by next spring.
■ As dozens of protesters gathered outside the home of Oak Park’s village president, trustees there voted down a plan to shift funds from the police department to social services.
Deadliest year. The Cook County medical examiner says the county’s about to blow through its record for most deaths in a year—and it’s not just the pandemic.
■ As the region confronts a potentially deadly heatwave, Chicago’s opened six cooling centers.
■ Updating coverage: A hurricane labeled as potentially “unsurvivable” slammed into the Gulf Coast overnight …
■ … killing at least one person, a 14-year-old girl.
■ The Conversation: Hurricanes and wildfires are compounding the risks of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Thanks to Ted Cox and Pam Spiegel for making this edition better.