Holiday horror. At least five people died and dozens were hurt when an SUV rammed through a seasonal parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
■ Updating coverage: The Associated Press reports police were checking the possibility the driver was fleeing the scene of a crime.
■ Sources told ABC News that investigators had found no connection to the verdict delivered at Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial in Kenosha.
‘It really was self-defense.’ Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown, who watched that trial beginning to end, says acquittal was the right call …
■ … but a Harvard law professor says the outcome “flies in the face of legal standards for self-defense.”
■ A Tribune editorial: The verdict “must not become an open invitation to … ‘chaos tourists,’ looking for violent trouble.”
■ Rittenhouse’s lawyer accuses prominent Republicans—including Donald Trump Jr.—of trading on his client’s celebrity: “I think it’s disgusting.”
■ Columnist Robert Reich: Rittenhouse verdict fallout “will continue to divide America along the Trumpian fault lines of fear, violence, and racism.” (Cartoon: Keith J. Taylor.)
■ Saturday Night Live’s open mocked Rittenhouse as a “lovable scamp … put through a nightmare of a trial just for doing the bravest thing any American can do: Protecting an empty used car lot in someone else’s town” …
■ … and then the “Weekend Update” segment piled on, with the hope that “he got all of that shooting out of his system before he becomes a cop.”
■ The Onion: “Rittenhouse Sentenced To 45 Years Of CPAC Appearances.”
‘Historic opportunity.’ The executive director of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning hails the benefits for Illinois—innovations that the Trib says could only be dreamed of until now—in the Build Back Better plan …
■ … which, according to at least one House progressive, still lacks support from the Senate’s “corporate” Democrats.
■ Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s record-long floor speech to delay the bill’s House passage was rife with falsehoods.
■ CNN explains why gas is so cheap at discount joints like Costco, BJ’s Wholesale Club and Sam’s Club.
Amazon’s Obama gift. Founder Jeff Bezos is chipping in $100 million to the Obama Presidential Foundation—the biggest single donation yet in the campaign to build a Chicago monument to the president …
■ … and it comes in honor of the late civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis.
‘This isn’t true, and it’s dangerous.’ Fox News’ plan to stream “a revisionist history of Jan. 6” has prompted two prominent conservative commentators—Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg—to leave the organization.
■ CNN’s Brian Stelter describes Goldberg and Hayes as “reality-based conservative thinkers who refused to capitulate to Donald Trump.”
■ WhoWhatWhy satire: “Whether you believe that Trump won or that Biden stole the election … there is a place for you in the modern Republican Party.”
Maskless holiday. Dr. Anthony Fauci says families fully vaccinated against COVID-19 “absolutely” can ditch the face coverings for holiday gatherings …
■ … a good thing to know, since odds are good Chicagoans will spend Thanksgiving indoors.
■ All Chicago adults now are eligible for booster shots.
■ A Biden administration official reports that, ahead of the president’s deadline today, more than 90% of federal workers have received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine.
Comics’ union push. Workers at the company that publishes Spawn and The Walking Dead have launched a campaign to unionize.
■ Bloomberg: “Even in a Labor Shortage, You Can’t ‘Just Go Get a Job.’”
