COVID’s little helper. Merck says it’s developed the first oral antiviral against COVID-19: A pill that, in experiments so far, has cut hospitalizations and deaths by half among people already infected …
■ New to the ranks of the infected: Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
■ Illinois’ daily cases are down, but September was Illinois’ deadliest pandemic month since February.
■ Remember Mayor Lightfoot’s hard-and-fast deadline for city workers to get vaxxed? Not so hard or fast.
■ Chicago Public Schools’ new CEO says that, as of today, all the city’s schools will have COVID-19 testing.
■ The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is strongly recommending vaccination for women before or during pregnancy.
‘Please stop. It is not appropriate.’ That was a note from Lightfoot to the now-indicted ex-chief of the City Club of Chicago after his series of texts to her pleading that he was “duped” into a bribery scheme involving Commonwealth Edison.
■ A Sun-Times investigation: You pay more in property taxes because 27,288 Cook County homeowners—including Sen. Tammy Duckworth—pay nothing.
‘We have guns coming at us from every direction.’ A Tribune investigation linking a single handgun stolen in Wisconsin to more than two dozen Chicago shootings has prompted Sen. Dick Durbin to introduce a bill requiring better security at the nation’s gun stores.
■ The rise of expressway shootings in Chicago—at least 185 so far this year—has prompted state police to import troopers from other regions and double patrols here.
More sunlight for moonlighting cops. Mayor Lightfoot tells Axios Chicago she wants closer monitoring of the lucrative side jobs police take—because the city can be liable when they screw up.
■ New University of Washington research concludes more than half of all U.S. police-involved killings go unreported—and most of those victims are Black.
‘Move campus parties … into sororities.’ A couple of Northwestern University professors who’ve been studying Greek life suggest that moving parties away from frats is one way to prevent drugging scandals like the one over the weekend at NU.
■ The New York Times: Students at big universities with powerful frat cultures—including Northwestern—are demanding an end to Greek life.
‘Women (like me) who also have names with errant Y’s in them should not pick other women who have names with errant Y’s in them. … But she leaves me no choice.’ Men Yell at Me blogger Lyz Lenz’s Dingus of the Week: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, for “holding up key legislation that is supported by 96 percent of Democrats in the House and the Senate and 70 percent of Americans, just because she once used Excel.”
■ Journalist Matthew Yglesias: “Sinema isn’t blocking popular progressive ideas because she’s getting corporate money; she’s getting corporate money because she’s blocking popular progressive ideas.” (Cartoon: Keith J. Taylor.)
■ Among the progressives who’ve been blocking the big infrastructure bill: A couple of Illinois representatives who want to spend more.
Protests nationwide. Across Illinois and around the country Saturday, reproductive rights activists plan marches and rallies focused on restrictions approved in Texas.
■ In House hearings on the matter, three Democratic congresswomen shared deeply personal testimony about their abortions.
■ The Center for Public Integrity surveys Republicans’ “historic” wave of state restrictions on the right to vote.
Google helped snare Capitol insurrectionists. Wired has uncovered 45 federal criminal cases that relied on Google geolocation data to pin suspects to scenes of the crimes.
■ Platformer concludes that a Senate inquiry into Facebook constituted “the rarest sort of Congressional hearing about social media: A productive one.”