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‘Fearmongering and lies.’ Gov. Pritzker is among those condemning U.S. House Republicans’ gathering in Chicago for a forum on crime instead of doing something to, you know, keep the government from shutting down.
■ Surprise (not): It’ll be held at Fraternal Order of Police HQ.
■ Chicago’s overnight crimes include the case of a North Side AT&T store where robbers zip-tied the staff as they stole phones and other products.
■ Video caught the assault and robbery of a man in a North Side alley.
■ A string of campus robberies has Chicago colleges on edge.
■ As of next week, DePaul’s going to require IDs to enter campus buildings.
Tow trick. Chicago police say scammers are using tow trucks to steal cars from crash scenes downtown.
■ The AP: “New cars are supposed to be getting safer. So why are fatalities on the rise?”
■ The Lever: California’s governor’s veto of a safety bill governing driverless trucks illustrates the rise of the robotruck lobby.
Hands off, Trump. Visiting a South Carolina gun store yesterday, the former president said he wanted to buy a Glock handgun—but federal law says he can’t …
■ … so the Trump campaign is walking back a claim he did.
■ USA Today columnist Rex Huppke: Brace for this week’s “veritable tsunami of GOP stupidity.”
‘The Klan murdered my protector.’ In a heartbreaking account of his childhood as a bullied kid, former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich recalls how his benefactor went on to be killed while campaigning to register Black voters in Mississippi.
■ The Supreme Court today allowed the drawing of a new Alabama congressional map—replacing a Republican-drawn version that diluted Blacks’ votes.
■ ProPublica: “Wisconsin’s Republicans went to extremes in gerrymandering. Now they’re scrambling to protect that power.”
■ Pro-Israel Political Update columnist Steve Sheffey: “The GOP Is antisemitism central.”
■ Meanwhile, across the aisle: The Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes gleefully declares indicted Democratic New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez “an old-school crook.”
‘The heart of the dry rot afflicting our political coverage.’ Esquire’s Charlie Pierce condemns an ABC/Washington Post presidential poll. (If you hit a paywall, copy that link into an incognito browser window.)
■ Columnist Isaac Schorr: “Stop giving bad, misleading polls attention.”
■ NewsGuard: Twitter’s X’s engagement “soared by 70% for Russian, Chinese and Iranian disinformation sources following a change by Elon Musk.”
‘A brief tornado’? The National Weather Service says that’s a possibility today …
■ … as the Chicago area faces the prospect of severe storms, with hail and heavy rain.
■ The Heat Rising newsletter: Despite more bad weather, “people are still buying houses in hurricane-prone and wildfire-prone areas … [as] state-operated insurers have been … effectively propping up housing markets.”
Pandemic puzzle. Your Local Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina says the first winter with COVID-19 that we’re not in a public health emergency poses a big question for hospitals and nursing homes: “Do we reinstate mandatory masking?”
■ COVID gets part of the blame for a cutback in flights at London’s Gatwick Airport.
■ Free at-home COVID tests are back, baby …
■ … but we still have no at-home tests for RSV and only one for flu.
■ ProPublica: A New York security guard who enforced a school district’s mask mandate wound up facing a criminal charge.
Florida library purge. Popular Information: One school district has ordered librarians to remove all books featuring LGBTQ characters—even those where “a character has, for example, two mothers or … a gay best friend.”
■ Columnist Matt Baron: “I love Wikipedia … a champion of creating accurate information for all.”
Move over, Hal. Amazon’s teaming up with the University of Illinois to launch a new center for artificial intelligence research.
■ Author and columnist Cory Doctorow: Apple “is dreaming up new ways to sneakily sabotage electronics repair while claiming to be a caring environmental steward, a lie that covers up the mountains of e-waste that Apple dooms our descendants to wade through.”
Presidential first. In what filmmaker and author Michael Moore calls “The Day the Filthy Rich Were Sure Would Never Come,” Joe Biden was set today to do something no one can recall another chief executive doing: Walk the picket line with United Auto Workers.
■ Chicago writers are celebrating the tentative end of their long strike against Hollywood …
■ … which could bring the return of late-night TV shows next month …
■ … although actor-y guests may be in short supply because their separate strike continues.
‘I was not informed of the hoops the public would be asked to jump through—and if I had been, I would not have encouraged my audience to go through all of this.’ Moore apologizes for telling his readers—in a post shared Friday by Chicago Public Square—that they could watch a new show on Apple TV+ for free.
■ Brace yourself for ads on Amazon’s Prime Video—unless you’re willing to pay even more.
Heal quick, Rick. Author and media columnist Rick Kaempfer, who on Sept. 15 declared himself on break, has unfortunately taken that word literally—breaking his arm in three places while mountain biking.
■ His Facebook post: “Guess I’m not a teenager anymore.”
■ Columnist Eric Zorn mourns: “The major news outlets in Chicago no longer pay much attention to developments in local media … even though the local media scene is more diverse and multi-dimensional than ever, and facing more challenges than ever.”
Ciao, Gina’s. Berwyn-area residents are mourning the shuttering of Gina’s Italian Ice.
■ Owner Gina Tremonte on Instagram: “It’s been a pleasure serving you for the past 46 years.”
■ The closure followed an unsuccessful effort to sell the building and business (June link).
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