CTA safety: Off-track. A Sun-Times editorial says the execution of four people as they slept on a Chicago Transit Authority train Monday makes clear the agency’s fallen behind on passenger safety.
■ Politico’s Shia Kapos: “It’s seldom we write about crime at the top of Illinois Playbook. … But this isn’t just any crime. It’s senseless. Authorities say no one was robbed. And there appear to have been no arguments leading up to it.”
■ The mayor of Forest Park, who says he can’t recall the village’s last homicide: The victims likely didn’t even see their assailant.
■ The Housing Forward charity for those without homes calls the crime “a devastating reminder of the realities that people face when they do not have a safe place to sleep.”
■ The suspect—whose record includes five previous criminal cases since 2012—was due in court today.
■ Last night, an on-duty CTA worker was shot and wounded outside the Howard terminal in Rogers Park.
■ Meanwhile: A federal judge in Rockford has ruled unconstitutional a law forbidding Illinoisans with concealed carry permits from carrying guns on public transit …
■ … a decision the state may yet appeal.
■ A 39-year-old Chicago man faces murder and attempted murder charges for an April mass shooting that left a 9-year-old girl dead and 10 relatives wounded.
Big thinking on small business. Vice President Harris today planned to endorse a massive increase in tax incentives for small business startups …
■ … with—in contrast to Donald Trump—higher taxes on the rich.
■ Her goal: 25 million new businesses.
■ Press Watch proprietor Dan Froomkin: The New York Times “bizarrely credits Trump with proposing to ease housing demand through the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants—something so twisted I don’t think the Trump campaign has actually suggested it themselves.”
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke: JD Vance “is officially the worst vice-presidential candidate pick in all of U.S. history.”
■ Will Bunch at The Philadelphia Inquirer: “We’ve become so used to the deeply ingrained sexism of Trump’s movement that the unvarnished scorn for women that comes across yet again in the Arlington fracas has received little attention.”
■ Rick Perlstein for The American Prospect: “Our political journalists can’t be bothered to report on Donald Trump applauding an attempted assault on political journalists.” (Original column retracted and corrected.)
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich: “Why does the press keep wasting our time on absurd bulls**t?”
‘Oh: Acclimented. … That’s when you get acclimated to Trump being demented.’ Back in action after a break, Stephen Colbert and other late-night hosts piled on to Trump’s severe case of word salad.
■ Jimmy Kimmel quizzed his audience on which things Trump did and didn’t do over the summer.
■ Pulitzer-winning cartoonist and columnist Jack Ohman: “Can Trump just be institutionalized immediately?”
■ The Washington Post explores Harris’ choice not to lean into the historic aspects of her candidacy—as the first Black woman and the first South Asian woman to lead a major party’s presidential ticket. (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
■ Add “Hold On, I’m Coming” to the list of songs Trump’s forbidden from playing at his rallies.
‘Not a problem that can be killed away.’ The Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg shares his original version of today’s column on the Israel-Hamas war—before it was, in his words, “um … slightly diluted … to perhaps enhance your reading pleasure by avoiding the possibility of offending anybody in any way.”
■ Here’s what the paper published.
■ In a first, the leader of Hamas faces U.S. Justice Department criminal charges—including conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals.
■ Filmmaker and author Michael Moore is sending $356 to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund—because, he says, that’s how much the average American taxpayer has contributed since October to a war on civilians.
A Square public service announcement
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Can it, diversity. Add Molson Coors to the roster of companies retreating from diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
■ Popular Information exposes the nonsense the Florida Department of Education is floating as a training manual for sex education programs.
He’s back. Veteran media watcher Brian Stelter, fired by CNN two years ago, is returning to the network—and his Reliable Sources email newsletter.
■ Axios rounds up a list of Chicago media stars leaving TV, radio and print.
It’s not just Chicago Public Square. As yesterday’s edition noted Facebook’s capricious removal of a post critical of media fact-checkers, the platform was also suppressing journalist and podcaster Mark Caro’s post linking to his Northwestern University Local News Initiative piece about the value of news organizations’ homepages …
■ … in an era during which “X/Twitter, Facebook and Google are directing less traffic to news sites.”
Square readers are everywhere. Here’s Tony Till sporting a Square T-shirt up north: “Chicago has its Bean; Rochester, Minnesota, has its Zucchini.”
■ Those shirts are in short supply. One-day only deal: Pitch in $100 or more today and get a shirt free—while supplies last. (If you contribute and no shirts are available in your size, you can have your money back!)