R.I.P., Joel Daly. An iconic Chicago TV news anchor is dead at 86. Media critic Robert Feder remembers Daly as “a lawyer, actor, author, pilot, country singer and champion yodeler.”
■ Tribune columnist Heidi Stevens is taking medical leave, to “get my heart back up to full working order,” after contracting COVID-19.
■ Also from Feder: Dozens of journalism, government and community leaders are denouncing the Community Renewal Society’s decision to gut its acclaimed and award-winning publication about race and poverty, The Chicago Reporter.
‘It probably all hinges on the president’s behavior.’ NBC News assesses the prospects for tonight’s final Donald Trump-Joe Biden presidential debate.
■ The AP: What to watch for …
■ … including what The Dallas Morning News calls the “elephant in the room”: That new mute button. (Cartoon: Keith J. Taylor.)
■ The Daily Beast goes “Inside the Right-Wing Media Echo Chamber’s Smear of NBC’s Kristen Welker,” tonight’s moderator.
■ The Washington Post: “Trump is averaging more than 50 false or misleading claims a day” …
■ … so many “that the Fact Checker team cannot keep up.”
■ The Atlantic’s endorsement: “The president of the United States poses a threat to our collective existence. The choice voters face is spectacularly obvious.”
■ Taking off the gloves, Barack Obama says Trump has emboldened people “to be cruel and divisive and racist.”
■ Here’s all 37 minutes of Obama’s “drive-in rally” in Pennsylvania.
The ‘crazy fringe.’ Democratic Illinois Congressman Sean Casten says his challenger, the reactionary Jeanne Ives, and the Republican Party have fallen into madness.
■ Trump’s been tweeting his support for Illinois Republican congressional candidates—including one whose dad is backing Biden.
‘Vote-by-snail.’ Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown says suburban Cook County’s return rate on mail ballots registers markedly below showings for Chicago and the state as a whole: “Here we are voting earlier and earlier, yet the results could come later and later.”
■ Vice News: Almost 21,000 Election Day polling places have been eliminated nationwide—a 20 percent drop from 2016.
■ The Conversation: Illinois is one of just four states that don’t offer statewide online tracking of mailed-in ballots.
■ Ready to make your decision? Check the Chicago Public Square voter guide.
‘She will be confirmed.’ Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham is crowing about the committee’s vote to advance Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination despite Democrats’ boycott.
■ Biden pledges to create a “bipartisan commission of scholars, constitutional scholars, Democrats, Republicans, liberal, conservative … to over 180 days come back to me with recommendations as to how to reform the court system because it’s getting out of whack.”
Chicago’s ‘pandemic budget.’ Mayor Lightfoot’s proposal includes pain and disappointment for just about everyone.
■ She’s rejecting calls to cut the police budget …
■ … and, a Trib editorial asserts, counting on a rescue from “risky borrowing.”
■ The Sun-Times questions “a sure-to-be-contentious $94 million property tax hike that would increase annually by the rate of inflation.”
‘That’s just not how it works.’ Gov. Pritzker says Trump’s pressure for a COVID-19 vaccine by “a date certain” casts a shadow over the process—so he says he’ll want his own team of experts to evaluate whatever Trump pinches out.
■ PolitiFact dissects Trump’s claims about National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci … and finds them wanting.
■ The CTA is installing vending machines for masks, sanitizer, gloves and other personal protective stuff.
■ Among the pandemic’s latest casualties because of workers’ positive coronavirus tests: At least four Logan Square bars and restaurants.
‘She 15! She too old for you!’ Esquire dissects a scandalous “ope!” moment for presidential lawyer and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in Sacha Baron Cohen’s new satire/documentary for Amazon Prime, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.
■ Critic Richard Roeper’s review: “A fearless and funny comic force.”
