Democrats’ big night. Tuesday’s off-year elections brought the party unvarnished good news …
■ … none more noteworthy than what the ACLU calls “a critical victory for reproductive freedom.”
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “Opponents of abortion rights have worked hard since the summer. … None of it worked.”
■ USA Today columnist Rex Huppke on votes in Ohio and Kentucky: “It’s clear Americans continue to not like having their rights taken away, and that spells serious trouble for the Republican Party.”
■ Illinois Gov. Pritzker can claim some credit in Ohio.
■ Noah Berlatsky at Public Notice: “48 hours ago, pundits were rushing to explain how … the Democratic Party is doomed. … And then, we had an actual election.”
■ The conservative Drudge Report: “DEMS WIN AGAIN. MAGA ELECTION NIGHTMARES” …
■ … or, as The Wall Street Journal puts it, with fewer capital letters: “Abortion Rights Supporters Rack Up Victories, Putting GOP in Bind for 2024.”
■ Republicans held onto the Mississippi governorship, but it was close.
■ Punchbowl: “Maybe for just a minute, this will stop Democrats from hand-wringing.”
■ Slow Boring proprietor Matthew Yglesias sees “a national political climate that is better for them than you’d expect based on Biden’s approval rating.”
One for the books. Tuesday’s losers included the repressive Moms for Liberty.
■ Reader columnist Ben Joravsky mocks Chicago Ald. Ray Lopez’s defeated move to regulate “Little Free Library” boxes.
‘Five nonviable candidates will assemble onstage for no good reason.’ That’s Jimmy Fallon, looking ahead to tonight’s Republican presidential debate …
■ … to be broadcast on NBC—in controversial partnership with the election-denying Salem Media Group, owner of Chicago’s regressive WIND-AM.
■ PolitiFact will be live-checking the proceedings.
■ Poynter’s Tom Jones pleads, “Will someone ask about Donald Trump?”
■ Ex-Chicago and network TV news reporter Jim Avila says all of Trump’s court sessions should be televised live.
Censureship in the news.
■ A few Democrats—including Illinois’ Brad Schneider—joined the U.S. House Republican majority in a rare censure of Congress’ only Palestinian American, Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, for rhetoric criticizing Israel’s government.
■ After the Chicago City Council forced a vote on censure for Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, who got physical with Ald. Emma Mitts during last week’s sanctuary city debate, Mayor Johnson cast a tie-breaking vote to reject the motion.
■ Mitts herself opposed the censure.
■ Columnist Julie Vassilatos on sanctuary opponents: “We are not covering ourselves in glory.”
Your move, Chicago. The City Council’s sending voters an advisory referendum in March on whether to increase taxes on real estate sales valued at more than $1 million—to fund programs for the homeless.
■ An angry crowd—“Do you want a race war?” one woman reportedly shouted—forced a council committee to recess during discussion of an advisory referendum on Chicago’s designation as a “sanctuary city.”
■ The Better Government Association condemns improper City Council adjournments: “There’s a democratic process, and it isn’t ‘Turn off the lights and mics.’”
Sneezy? Blame climate change. Experts tell Block Club that a warming Earth is responsible for Chicago’s longer and more intense allergy seasons.
■ A Tribune editorial: Especially in light of climate change and the need to decarbonize civilization, a massive and expensive project to replace Peoples Gas pipelines in Chicago should be “rethought entirely.”
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