Health insurance exec killed. Updating coverage: The CEO of UnitedHealthcare, the insurance arm of the giant UnitedHealth Group, was reportedly shot outside a Manhattan hotel, hours before his company was to hold its annual meeting with investors.
■ Days after West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park—serving many patients from some of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods—cut off baby delivery by midwives and family medicine physicians, Cook County is offering free doula services for pregnant patients.
■ A judge will consider the first legal challenge to Missouri’s near-total ban on abortion. (Cartoon: Marc Stopeck.)
■ Up today before the U.S. Supreme Court: A challenge to Tennessee’s law keeping transgender youth from gender-affirming medical treatments.
Now the real fun begins. After weeks of delay, Donald Trump’s transition team has agreed to let the FBI conduct background checks on incoming staffers.
■ The AP surveys what Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, Kash Patel, has said he’d do with the bureau.
■ ABC News: Black Republicans feel left out of Trump’s second-term cabinet nominations.
Petewatch. Updating coverage: Trump’s reportedly reconsidering his choice of scandal-scarred Pete Hegseth to head the Defense Department.
■ NBC News: Hegseth’s drinking worried his Fox colleagues.
■ Guess which media outlet is not “all over” concerns about Hegseth.
■ Popular Information: “The New York Times and other outlets … appear uninterested in a foreign donor personally enriching Trump after he won the presidency.” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
‘An astonishing six hours.’ Historian Heather Cox Richardson reflects on an attempted “self-coup” by South Korea’s president.
■ The Verge features editor Sarah Jeong was there when it happened: “People were organized, angry, and a little drunk.”
■ A Northwestern University professor calls it a reminder that, “until the 1980s, South Korea was a military dictatorship and martial law was declared frequently.”
■ LateNighter surveys TV hosts’ reactions—including The Daily Show’s Ronnie Chieng: “South Korea, stop giving Trump ideas. He didn’t know you could do that.”
■ Historian and author Timothy Snyder says South Koreans provided a model for Americans bracing against Trump’s next term: “Ignore the declaration of martial law, and … do the very things that their president tried to forbid them to do: Speak, gather, resist.”
■ Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer offers a “Resistance 2.0” approach to Trump II.
‘A full-blown free marketplace of ideas, something we’re going to need.’ That’s columnist Joyce Vance, celebrating that “it was Bluesky, not Twitter, where the most recent developments were available” on the situation in South Korea.
■ Wired: Bluesky CEO Jay Graber vows to keep the platform from enshittifying.
■ Follow Chicago Public Square there here.
Tent situation. With Chicago’s last temporary Near West Side migrant shelter closed …
■ … WBEZ’s Chip Mitchell shadowed a couple left out in the cold—recovering from addiction and looking for work.
He’s baaaack. Ex-Mayor—now U.S. ambassador to Japan—Rahm Emanuel returned to Chicago, in the words of Politico’s Shia Kapos, “sounding like a man who isn’t finished with public life.”
■ He tells the Sun-Times he’s “not interested” in taking over as Democrats’ national chair.
■ Present Mayor Brandon Johnson says he aims to lower Chicago’s homicide total next year to a level unseen since 2015: Fewer than 500 homicides.
■ Columnist Neil Steinberg: Johnson “says he first learned of the problems with his former communications director, Ronnie Reese, when allegations of bad behavior became public. … Did he ever talk to the man? Because I did, and was it memorable.”
‘Should bureaucrats be required to think through the extended effects of decisions like funding a highway intersection or approving an offshore wind farm?’ A Vanderbilt University law professor surveys the damage justices could inflict this term on federal environmental protections.
■ Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is whining about two Democratic-appointed federal judges’ reversals of their decisions to retire—which would have given Trump power to pick their successors.
It’s not just you. The Ringer updates a growing crusade against offensively bright auto headlights.
■ Ground Zero in that fight: The subreddit r/FuckYourHeadlights.
Dead zone. Stephen King is killing his three Maine radio stations.
■ Spotify’s Wrapped listener year-in-review feature has dropped.
■ This year, it comes with an AI-powered podcast.
AI replaced 600 writers. Chicago-based online marketing company CEO and Chicago Tribune alumnus Brent Payne explains enthusiastically—in an artificial-intelligence-written post—how AI let him cut “part-time, stay-at-home parents who had been with us for over a decade.”
■ Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow envisions an emergency room of the near future, staffed by an AI medical consultant: “It sounds like you have a knife sticking out of your back! If this is correct, please press or say ‘1.’”
Chicago Public Square mailbag. Public Narrative / Community Media Workshop cofounder Thom Clark takes issue with a column linked from yesterday’s edition—Rex Huppke’s assertion that President Biden’s pardon of his son “made a mockery of our justice system”: “How many gun-bearing guys are arrested with no permit for said weapon and end up serving time for that crime? Given the clear retributive nature of the incoming clown car cabinet, a dad did right by his recovering son. These Christian nationalists never read that part of the Bible about forgiveness.”
■ PolitiFact bestows a rare Full Flop rating on Biden’s pardon.
Voted yet? Square welcomes your support in the final round of the Reader’s Best of Chicago poll—for Best Newsletter and Best Independent Website.
Cookies! The Trib’s announced the winners of its 38th annual Holiday Cookie Contest.
■ Here are the champs’ recipes.
■ Block Club’s assembled a map of Chicago places selling live Christmas trees.