155 mph. Updating coverage: Hurricane Ian’s windspeeds as it approached Florida’s southwest coast were just short of Category 5—the most dangerous.
■ Here’s the live Associated Press interactive storm tracker.
■ And He Knows Nasty Dept.: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis early today warned, “This is going to be a nasty, nasty day.”
■ The Onion: “FEMA Urges Florida Residents To Stock Up On Memorial Supplies.”
■ On the upside, it devastated some of the country’s biggest tobacco farms.
■ BuzzFeed News: Puerto Ricans, still struggling with the damage wrought by Hurricane Fiona, fear they’ll again be forgotten.
Welcome. The official count of migrants bused to Chicago by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s political stunt is close to 1,500.
■ Gov. Pritzker’s press secretary: Busloads are arriving “every day.”
Then you saw it, now you don’t. The Daily Beast reports that Republican candidates across the country have stripped their websites of pre-primary content supporting Donald Trump and opposing abortion rights.
■ Columnist Rex Huppke mocks Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for “heroically” fleeing a subpoena in a federal lawsuit filed by groups seeking to help Texans access abortion services outside the state. (Cartoon: Excerpt from commentary by Jen Sorenson.)
■ A pregnant comedian delivers what the Beast calls “killer abortion jokes” in a new standup special debuting Friday.
Time is running out to see Nick Cave: Forothermore at the MCA before it closes October 2! Don’t miss seeing this major exhibition from the Chicago artist, whose art is a celebration of the way art, music, fashion, and performance can help us envision a more just future. Book tickets for the final week.
‘Easy’ does it. After a Reddit user flagged a grim association with suicide, Metra’s under fire for a longstanding billboard along the Kennedy Expressway encouraging motorists to “take the easy way out.”
■ A National Alliance on Mental Illness leader sees progress in the controversy, which she says probably wouldn’t have happened a decade ago.
■ The embattled CTA has reason to be a little proud: 173 new security camera monitors have been installed in customer assistant booths at all 146 train stations.
■ The Better Government Association spotlights Chicago’s new weapon in its war on drag racers and spectators: $150 tickets for parking in the bike lane.
The Museum of Contemporary Art is a Chicago Public Square advertiser.
Nice (part-time) work if you can get it. Block Club Chicago ranks Chicago City Council members by salary.
■ Block Club’s landed a $1.6 million grant to launch an investigative team focused on the South and West Sides.
Good news, bad news. Your Local Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina surveys the new COVID-19 booster rollout and concludes that, while it’s better than last year’s uptake, it’s still “really low.”
■ The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says health care workers need not wear masks indoors anymore—unless they’re in areas of high COVID-19 transmission …
■ … which the Chicago region is not.