No one to watch over him. The Washington Post reports that U.S. Capitol Police cameras caught the break-in at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s California home early Friday, when a man broke in and tried to kill her husband—but no one was looking.
■ Prosecutorial documents say the suspect told police he was on “a suicide mission.”
■ USA Today columnist Rex Huppke: “If you want a preview of what’s going to happen when an election-denying Republican loses in next week’s midterm elections … look no further than the right’s lightning-fast, lie-filled hijacking of the attack on … Pelosi’s husband.”
‘The trouble with the polls.’ Media writer Tom Jones explores reasons not to trust those headlines.
■ Author Michael Moore rejects a parade of stories suggesting polls have shifted in Republicans’ favor: “The men who own and run the media have NO clue just how outraged the vast, vast majority of women remain over having it shoved in their face once again that they are second-class citizens who are never going to hold real power.”
■ An AI-powered analysis of interruptions on cable TV suggests women get fewer chances to speak on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News.
■ Press Watch proprietor Dan Froomkin asks, “Why aren’t mainstream journalists sounding the alarm about the threat to democracy?”
■ The New York Times paints a picture of “Democrats’ Last Stand in Wisconsin.”
■ The Daily Beast turns a wary eye on Arizona’s gubernatorial race—an election with “enormous consequences” for the nation.
■ The Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg sees hope for the U.S. in Brazil’s presidential election …
■ … but aides to Donald Trump are preparing for him to announce a campaign for reelection as soon as next week.
‘A hatchet piece.’ That’s how Republican political operative—and repeatedly unsuccessful candidate—Dan Proft describes a Sun-Times report on his political action committee’s seeming attempts to suppress Chicago’s Black vote.
■ Beware text-message scams sending you to the wrong polling place.
■ PolitiFact debunks an Instagram video asserting that postal workers can “do anything they want” with mailed-in ballots.
■ Thursday’s the last day to get vote-by-mail applications to the Chicago Board of Elections and the Cook County Clerk.
■ Ready to map your ballot? The Chicago Public Square voter guide awaits.
‘Nobody is safe.’ Chicagoans living on the East Garfield Park block where 14 people—including three children—were shot Halloween night tell the Sun-Times guns and violence are a fact of daily life there.
■ CWBChicago: Bodycam video shows a cop shooting that left a man dead in Old Town a month ago.
■ Block Club Chicago: “Mayor Lightfoot’s police detail fired shots in Logan Square after a grandfather was robbed at gunpoint.”
■ A Sun-Times editorial demands stricter gun-control laws: “We need to say guns will not rule our communities.”
‘The child is advising he is in the room full of victims.’ ProPublica and The Texas Tribune have “for the first time obtained recordings of more than 20 emergency calls and dozens of hours of conversations … that lay bare the increasing sense of urgency and desperation” as police botched the response to a Uvalde, Texas, shooting spree that left 19 kids and two teachers dead.
■ Grieving Uvalde families gathered yesterday at the Texas Capitol to mark the Day of the Dead.
‘Catering to the platform’s biggest charlatans and liars is an inauspicious start.’ Popular Information reviews the first five days of Elon Musk’s Twitter.
■ Christianity Today columnist Bonnie Kristian: “Perhaps the death of Twitter would be less of a tragedy and more of a biblical jubilee.” (Illustration: Excerpt from cartoonist Jen Sorensen’s longer survey of Twitter’s evolution.)
■ A suggestion for making Twitter “the most profitable company in history,” courtesy of The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah: “Charge white people to say the N-word.”
■ New Yorker satire from Andy Borowitz: “Elon Musk Says Twitter Will Give Blue Checks Only to Verified Conspiracy Theorists.”
■ An FCC commissioner says the U.S. should ban TikTok.
Pink-stuff scramble. Bloomberg details a shortage of antibiotics including amoxicillin, often used to treat strep throat and other bacterial infections.
■ China’s zero-tolerance approach to COVID could spell holiday product shortages in the U.S.
‘50 States, 50 Abortions.’ One person in every state shares a story with PopSugar.
■ From Illinois: “I felt like I was being punished for rejecting my baby in the first place.”
■ A new analysis concludes Illinois saw one of the biggest rises in abortions after the Supreme Court’s April decision.
Great: Pumpkin smashes. As decorative gourd season winds down, here’s a list of places collecting used jack-o-lanterns for composting instead of clogging up landfills.
■ Smashing Pumpkins plays the United Center Saturday night.
Good deed-doers in the news.
■ Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, has gifted the Chicago Urban League the largest donation in its 106-year history: $6.6 million.
■ Skateboard champ Tony Hawk is grooming a generation of skateboarding advocates who also understand the mechanics of community organizing.*
Patty Reilly-Murphy is a Chicago Public Square advertiser.
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■ You know, just like Sally Noble, Stephanie Textor, Patrick Olsen, Paul Clark, Julie Martin, Barbara Cimaglio, Marcie Dosemagen, Eric Zorn, Melissa Leeb, Donna Rigsbee, Harla Hutchinson, Deb Abrahamson, Julia Winn, Mike Trenary, Julie Ross, Don Moseley, Mark Wukas, Matt Baron, Diana Lauber, Jerry Role, Victoria Engelhardt, Joe Sjostrom, John Culver, Andrea Agrimonti, Timothy Baffoe, Joe Hass, Mena Boulanger, Dawn Haney, Joseph Lynn, Ryan Bird, Mark Miller, Sandy Kaczmarski and Richard Milne.
■ Mike Braden made this edition better.
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* Seventeen years ago, Hawk’s good deeds benefitted your Square columnist’s family.