He gone. Days after his suspension—facing one federal lawsuit, with more anticipated—the police chief who led a raid on a small weekly newspaper in Marion County, Kansas, has quit.
■ The paper’s publisher, former University of Illinois journalism professor Eric Meyer, says the interim chief—the department’s sole remaining certified law enforcement officer—has agreed to resume a 50-year tradition of giving the paper weekly reports on the department’s activities.
‘We are deeply concerned …’ The progressive advocacy group Indivisible Chicago is pressing Mayor Johnson and City Council leadership to lift the curtain on the city’s long-term strategy to house the unhoused—arriving migrants and Chicagoans alike.
■ CWBChicago: A downtown City Council member wants to shutter a major migrant shelter just off Michigan Avenue.
Bylines at last. Columnist Eric Zorn praises CWB for finally naming a reporter who’s apparently “written nearly every story on the site going back to September 2019” [Correction, Oct. 4: Managing partner Tim Hecke writes, “The mass change of bylines on old stories was an error. My intention was to put my byline on the story about the judge’s no-writing policy. I went about it the wrong way and ham-handedly changed the byline on a few years of stories.”] …
■ … and for blowing the whistle on “a presumptuous and ignorant judge who didn’t seem to understand that we administer justice in public here in the United States.”
‘He is there, but his goal in all his legal cases seems to be to play to the public, where his displays of victimization and dominance have always served him.’ Historian Heather Cox Richardson surveys the Manhattan trial for Donald Trump, his oldest sons and other acolytes …
■ … a case that Reuters says hangs his entire business empire in the balance.
■ The Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes: “Trump … seemed unusually unhappy yesterday, don’t you think?”
■ The Associated Press: Trump’s treating the trial as a campaign stop.
■ Presidential son Hunter Biden’s pleaded not guilty to federal gun charges.
‘Look at you, big guy. Talking like someone who actually wants to get things done rather than railing against imaginary conspiracies. … Who’s a good House Speaker? Whooooooo is one?’ USA Today columnist Rex Huppke recommends Democrats send Kevin McCarthy this invitation.
■ Punchbowl News: “McCarthy is stuck. He probably can’t win with Republican votes alone. Democrats don’t trust him.”
■ Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer: Democrats shouldn’t save McCarthy.
■ Esquire’s Charlie Pierce: “The Republican Party must collapse if the republic is to survive.”
■ NBC News has unearthed anonymous 2022 texts sent to Elon Musk providing “a playbook for the takeover and transformation of Twitter”—a scheme that the network says foreshadowed much of what Musk has done since, “including his ongoing attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization founded by Jewish Americans to counter discrimination.”
■ Popular Information has questions about a purportedly non-partisan organization: “Is No Labels a thinly disguised effort by Wall Street and Trump supporters to deny Biden a second term?”
‘Long-standing pattern of child sexual abuse.’ The Guardian: The FBI’s interviewed people who’ve lodged that complaint against a secretive Christian sect whose lifelong members include Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
■ Law professor Joyce Vance—“not always … a fan of the attorney general’s approach to Trump and insurrection”—says Merrick Garland’s “quiet persistence may well prove to be exactly what the moment demands.”
‘An absolutely revolutionary scientific discovery.’ Your Local Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina explains the pandemic-busting work that landed two researchers the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
■ Today’s Nobel winners: Scientists who figured out how to track electrons’ movements in the smallest fractions of seconds.
■ The Onion: “54-Year-Old Facebook User Wins Nobel Prize For Own Extensive Internet Research Into Dangers Of COVID Vaccine.”
You can’t strike—you’re laid off. As the United Auto Workers walkout expanded to cover Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant, the company laid off hundreds at a nearby stamping facility in Chicago Heights …
■ … and an engine plant in Ohio.
■ The union representing dozens of employees at Chicago’s iconic sky-high Signature Room is suing management, accusing it of failing to provide enough notice of the restaurant’s shutdown.
■ Block Club Chicago: Amazon warehouse workers near Chicago are injured at above-average rates.
Know anyone near Teutopolis? Illinois State Police are asking people with doorbell or security cameras to check for video of a vehicle that may have been involved in a horrific crash Friday on U.S. Highway 40.
■ Other footage of the vehicle can be seen here.
■ The five victims have been identified—including a man and his children, ages 10 and 7.
Chicago’s arts ‘crisis.’ A report commissioned by Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events finds the city’s cultural scene up against increasing costs and shrinking audiences, budgets and revenue.
■ A Tribune editorial: “Corporations must step up. … Museums and world-class theaters make their job of recruiting talented staffers much easier.”
‘I missed my writers so much. I was so happy—so happy to see them this morning. I will admit, by lunch, I was a little over it.’ Late Night’s Seth Meyers and other hosts returned to the airwaves after the writers’ strike.
■ Other hosts’ returning monologues: Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon.
Invasive Species Dept.
■ Time: “A ‘widespread’ bedbug outbreak is taking over Paris during Fashion Week.”
■ The New York Times: NASA aims to build houses on the moon by 2040.
■ Poynter’s Tom Jones to football fans complaining about Taylor Swift getting so much attention in Sunday’s Chiefs-Jets game: “You need to calm down.”
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■ Author Kurt Wehrmeister and illustrator Kathryn Nagel will do a reading, sign books and lead kids in a hands-on art workshop Saturday, Oct. 14, in Geneva.