Who’s backing whom? With Election Day just four weeks away, editorial boards are hopping off the fence. Today, it’s the Tribune—backing Gov. Pritzker’s reelection: “He engendered trust during some of the darkest hours in the history of this great state.”
■ Ex-Trib columnist Eric Zorn credits the board “for not holding it against Pritzker that he refused to meet with them during the endorsement process” …
■ … even though, in Zorn’s assessment, Pritzker displayed “mealy-mouthed cowardice” at last week’s debate.
■ Keep tabs on the Trib’s emerging list of endorsements here (not behind a paywall).
■ Also just out: Injustice Watch’s guide to the judicial elections.
■ Axios Chicago explains why the Illinois Supreme Court race is generating so many attack ads.
■ Ready to vote? Check the Chicago Public Square election guide.
‘A mass uprising of nonviolent civil resistance.’ Salon spotlights the contrarian contention of farsighted filmmaker Michael Moore—a lonely voice in his 2016 prediction of Donald Trump’s victory— that Democrats will win big this year.
■ Moore today: “MAGA is about to get the whoopin’ of their lives.”
■ The Onion: “Conservative Man Proudly Frightened Of Everything.”
Shirt spotted. Sight seen over the weekend at the Roots N Blues Festival in Columbia, Missouri: One of those new Chicago Public Square T-shirts, sported by reader Terry Buehler.
‘There are times when circumstances … are out of our control.’ Amtrak has issued only measly refunds and wan apologies for a Detroit-to-Chicago train ride through hell Friday.
■ A Detroit-area woman is demanding an “after-action report basically saying what protocols happened, which did you abide by, which ones did you not do, which ones were disregarded.”
■ Zorn again: “The ghastly experience of passengers … should be a serious blow to the passenger rail service.”
■ The threat of an economy-crippling rail strike is back.
■ Hackers took down O’Hare and Midway airport websites for hours Monday.
■ Want to get to O’Hare via the CTA after 11 p.m.? You’ll have to take a bus—not a train—and you’ll need a boarding pass. Correcting: The CTA says it ain’t so.
‘If I had not been shot, paralyzed, and had to be in a wheelchair, it would have been a perfect school day.’ Eight-year-old Fourth of July shooting victim Cooper Roberts is back in class with his twin brother.
■ The Associated Press: Demand’s growing for kids’ books that address traumatic events such as school shootings …
■ … as conservative political action groups pump millions into local school races—for candidates who promise to remove offending books from libraries.
‘This guy peddled bullshit to the press 15 times and yet somehow his picture isn’t pinned behind every newsdesk in the country with the warning Do Not Ask This Man About Anything.’ Condemning journalists who swallow unquestioningly whatever cops tell them about “police-involved shootings,” HBO’s John Oliver ripped ex-Chicago Police Department spokesman and, more recently, police union mouthpiece Pat Camden a new one.
■ Oliver cited 2016 reporting by the Chicago Reader.
‘Dethrone the colonizers.’ Protesters seeking to memorialize indigenous people who were executed under orders from President Lincoln vandalized a Lincoln statue in Lincoln Park yesterday.
■ A handful of politicians say it’s time for Chicago to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day.
■ Neither Mayor Lightfoot nor Gov. Pritzker showed up at Chicago’s Columbus Day parade—but Pritzker challenger Darren Bailey did.
■ Block Club Chicago: Someone stole a Rogers Park church’s pro-LGBTQ sign.
Prime precautions. Bloomberg: As Amazon launched its “Prime Early Access Sale,” research suggested that, especially for vacuums, “some prices posted on Amazon that look like they are marked down … might actually reflect a price increase.”
■ Consumer Reports: How to get the best deals in this sale.
■ Shopping from home? ZDNET reports: “Employees will not give up remote working without a fight.”
■ The Labor Department is proposing a rule that would classify more gig workers as employees instead of independent contractors.
‘Best sketch of the night.’ /Film’s Ethan Anderton says Saturday Night Live improved substantially in its second episode of the season—especially in a segment squarely focused on the season’s new cast members.
■ See it here.
■ Lizzo talks to Vanity Fair: “When people look back at the crystal flute, they’re … going to see that it was owned by James Madison, but they’re going to see how far we’ve had to come for someone like me to be playing it in the nation’s capital.”
■ Yours awaits if you designate at least $75 to Square in the Chicago Independent Media Alliance fundraiser running through Monday.