Pelosi’s husband attacked. Someone who broke into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home overnight assaulted her husband, Paul, with a hammer.
■ He was expected to recover fully.
■ The Pelosis’ home was vandalized in January 2021.
■ The Conversation: American voters are angry—good for turnout, bad for democracy.
■ It’s seven-plus years in jail for a guy who dragged a cop into the mob at the Capitol insurrection.
Iowa’s that way. In the candidates’ only joint appearance of the campaign, Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s challenger, Republican Kathy Salvi, seemed unaware that Iowa is to the west.
■ The candidates agreed on one thing: They support a Bears move to Arlington Heights.
■ A lawsuit filed by downstate Republican Rep. Mike Bost—and backed by a Trump-allied nonprofit—threatens to invalidate tens of thousands of Illinoisans’ mailed-in ballots that arrive after Election Day.
■ Ready to vote now? Check the Chicago Public Square guide.
Party line crossed. For the first time, departing Republican U.S. Rep.—and Donald Trump thorn—Liz Cheney has endorsed and will campaign for a Democrat: Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin.
■ Caught on a hot mic: President Biden and Sen. Chuck Schumer fretting over Democratic Senate odds in Pennsylvania and Georgia.
■ Sarah Gruen and Chandler Dean at McSweeney’s: “If I emailed my parents like Democrats email me.”
‘The bird is freed.’ That was Elon Musk’s triumphant tweet late last night as he assumed control of Twitter …
■ … and proceeded to (reportedly) dump three top executives …
■ … including the legal policy chief who presided over Donald Trump’s ban from the service. (Image: Modified AI-generated picture by Dall-E.)
■ The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel: “Musk could actually kill Twitter.”
■ A rush of racist slurs and Nazi memes surfaced quickly after the deal was announced.
■ Musk is Men Yell at Me columnist Lyz Lenz’s runner-up for Dingus of the Week: “This is the only time I’ve rooted for Elon Musk to ruin something.”
■ The deal makes Twitter a private company, as of next month no longer listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
■ The European Commission’s internet market commissioner tweeted back a reminder that Twitter will not be completely free of regulation there: “In Europe, the bird will fly by our [EU flag emoji] rules.”
‘Innocent kids shouldn’t be getting killed.’ A 7-year-old Chicago boy’s death by a stray bullet—as he washed his hands in a bathroom before dinner—came just a week after his father’s death following heart surgery.
■ A Sun-Times/WBEZ/NPR investigation spotlights Chicago’s arms race: Cops are seizing “switches”—devices that convert handguns into illegal machine guns that can fire 20 shots in a second.
■ The Sun-Times’ Stephanie Zimmermann: High-capacity magazines for weapons have become a mass-market item—and “you don’t need a license or a background check to buy one.”
■ Chicago’s youth curfew faces a court challenge from the social justice group GoodKids MadCity, which says the rules unfairly target minority kids.
■ Columnist Will Bunch praises a teacher who “did what 376 Uvalde cops couldn't”—when she “confronted the St. Louis gunman and sacrificed her own life in a confrontation that likely bought time for her students.”
■ Columnist Mona Charen: Time for “a national volunteer initiative to get retired teachers, business people, younger adults with free time, and anyone else with knowledge to tutor a couple of nights a week.”
‘Few are capable of a world-class self-immolation like the disgraced rap star just experienced.’ Columnist Neil Steinberg says the business losses suffered by the guy formerly known as Kanye West—now just Ye—have overshadowed his original “antisemitic spew.”
■ Ye’s taking his lumps from The Wieners Circle—and on a Chicago mural from which he’s been blacked out.
■ Sources tell CNN he has “a disturbing history of admiring Hitler.”
■ Stephen Colbert’s banned Ye from The Late Show: “I have no excuses for why I didn’t do this before. … We have never asked him to be on the show, and I’m not sure he’s aware that I have a show. But I had to do it now because I was afraid he would just show up at any moment.”
Free TV. Cord Cutter Weekly has codes you can use to get no-cost trials of Apple TV+ and Paramount+—and discounts on a bunch of other services.
■ Consumer Reports surveys 2022’s best smartphones.
Patty Reilly-Murphy is a Chicago Public Square advertiser.
Can you beat Square in this week’s news quiz? No, you cannot. Because Square got all eight questions right.
Curtain rising. The University of Illinois officially launches the Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies with an online lecture this afternoon: “Re-Enchanting Our Relationship to Film and Media History.”
■ Register to join free via Zoom.
■ Revisit a 2002 Ebert essay that profoundly influenced the development of Chicago Public Square and its predecessors: “In Cyberspace, Writing Is a Performance.”
Thank you. The numbers are in: In the Chicago Independent Media Alliance’s Save Chicago Media campaign earlier this month, total contributions from readers ranked Chicago Public Square seventh among 39 participating organizations.
■ It’s never too late to add your support for Square …