If you can spare a sec and haven’t already done so, please nominate Chicago Public Square for best newsletter and best blog in the Reader’s Best of Chicago poll? And now the news:
‘He didn’t say a word.’ A gunman who opened fire on employees at a Virginia Walmart break room was also an employee …
■ … who then killed himself.
■ Updating coverage: Ahead of a court appearance today, lawyers for the suspect in the fatal shooting of five people at a Colorado Springs gay nightclub say their client, to whom they refer as “Mx. Aldrich,” is nonbinary.
■ The Washington Post: Proud Boys keep popping up at LGBTQ events. (Cartoon: Excerpt from Jen Sorensen’s commentary at The Nib.)
■ Author and ex-Chicago newspaper editor Mark Jacob: “Mass shootings are a small price to pay for Republican politicians to hobnob with rich donors, eat fancy food and ride around in limos.”
■ The Onion: “Weapon Added To Each Thanksgiving Place Setting In Preparation For Blowout Family Argument” …
‘A failure of our criminal justice system.’ That’s how an attorney for an unarmed man shot by a Chicago police officer during an arrest at a CTA Red Line station almost two years ago describes a judge’s acquittal of the cop.
■ CWBChicago tweets: “This is a pretty serious loss for [Cook County State’s Attorney] Kim Foxx's office.”
■ Here’s video of the incident.
■ Survivors of a Halloween mass shooting in Chicago gathered Tuesday for a “healing discussion” and to encourage more donations to a GoFundMe benefit account that so far had raised just $345.
Sisters aren’t doing time for themselves. A couple of Chicago siblings will get off with just 30 months’ probation after pleading guilty to joining the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrection.
■ A police report on a wrong-way crash that killed a 35-year-old Skokie woman suggests that the other driver—Jan. 6 defendant Shane Woods of Auburn, Illinois—was attempting suicide.
‘A nightmare day for Donald Trump.’ Politico says a Supreme Court ruling that gives House Democrats years of the ex-president’s tax returns is just one of several “acute threats” that have put him “in a vise unlike any he’s faced before.”
■ Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple rips major media outlets a new one for promoting “an inaccurate depiction of the national political mood heading into Election Day.”
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is a Square advertiser.
It’s great that Lin’s alive. Still engaged in chemotherapy for cancer, WXRT-FM host Lin Brehmer on Monday returns to the air after a hiatus that began in July.
■ Autoweek: Interference from electric cars’ motors could kill AM radio.
Toying with danger. The Illinois Public Interest Research Group Education Fund warns holiday shoppers to beware recalled playthings still readily available for purchase online.
■ It especially flags toys with magnets and small batteries.
■ Read the full 37th annual report here.
‘Uplifting and yet deeply melancholy and really funny.’ Movie critic Richard Roeper says the semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans feels like Steven Spielberg telling us, “Here is where all those movies came from.”
■ The Tribune’s Michael Phillips gives three-and-a-half stars to Netflix’s documentary on the rise of black filmmakers in the ’60s and ’70s, Is That Black Enough for You?!?
Thanks given. Chicago Public Square owes its continued presence in your inbox to everyone who simply opens and reads this dispatch daily.
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