A judge said stop. They did it anyway. A coalition of independent news organizations has documented the use of tear gas and pepper spray on Chicagoans at least 49 times—mostly against bystanders and nonviolent protesters.
■ Borderless: What to do if you’re exposed to any of that shit.
■ That coalition’s collecting your video of the use of force by federal agents and the National Guard around Chicago.
■ An Associated Press investigation finds the Border Patrol evolving into “something more akin to a domestic intelligence operation … a mass surveillance network with a particularly American focus: Cars.”
■ An alliance of activist groups is advocating for a Thanksgiving consumer blackout of Target, Home Depot and Amazon—companies that it contends have capitulated to the Trump administration.
‘No blanket, nowhere to sleep.’ In an account the Evanston RoundTable describes as “one of the most extensive by any person caught up in the ICE dragnet,” a longtime Evanston resident born in Mexico recounts his 53 days in ICE custody.
■ An AP investigation: “Migrants thought they were in court for a routine hearing. Instead, it was a deportation trap.”
■ Chicago clergy are taking ICE to court over its restrictions on their religious freedom.
■ A United Methodist pastor in Chicago writes: “Chicago is in a state of holy rage.”
Full release? President Trump’s signed a bill that ostensibly compels his Justice Department to make public its case files on the president’s dead sex-offender pal, Jeffrey Epstein …
■ … but The Daily Show’s Ronnie Chieng flags the new law’s national security loopholes: “By the time Pam Bondi is done with these files, they’ll be more censored than the airplane version of Anora.”
■ Jimmy Kimmel: “We are now one step closer to answering the question, ‘What did the president know, and how old were these women when he knew it?’”
■ Trump’s again calling for Kimmel to be fired.
■ In one of those emails, Epstein writes to Pritzker: “Nice to see you, please come more often.”
■ The Maroon’s created a timeline of their exchanges.
■ The American Prospect: A bunch of companies are scrambling to hide their ties to Epstein-tainted plutocrat and former Harvard president Larry Summers …
■ … who, yes, now is taking a leave from his role teaching there.
■ Lawyer/columnist Robert Hubbell finds reasons to be cheerful: “Democrats and those who support democracy have repeatedly defeated Trump over the last two weeks—after months of feeling like Trump could do whatever he wanted without restraint or consequence.”
‘A barbaric assault.’ The U.S. attorney’s office has filed federal terror charges against a man accused of setting a woman on fire as they rode a CTA Blue Line train downtown.
■ The New York Times (gift link): When an Iowa city made its bus rides free, traffic cleared and so did the air.
‘A legacy that deserves to be held high, not thrown in the dirt, like his cut-up body was.’ Former Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent Stephen Franklin honors the memory of journalist Jamal Khashoggi—whose murder in Saudi Arabia Trump dismissed this week with the words “Things happen.”
■ Khashoggi’s widow tells the AP Trump’s words shocked her.
‘I’ve never gone in for body shaming, but honestly now, which of these two would you describe as porcine?’ Columnist Eric Zorn compares images of Trump and the reporter the president referred to as “piggy.”
■ Escapades proprietor Elaine Soloway asks, “Is that a step up, or down from his boast he could freely grab women by the pussy?”
■ Poynter’s Tom Jones: “Trump’s attacks on the media are not new, but they’re not normal, either.”
■ Cartoonist Jack Ohman offers “the only cartoon on this subject that didn’t have Trump as a pig (he is, of course, however)”:
The Kirk purge. Reuters reports that, two months after the assassination of reactionary activist Charlie Kirk, a government-backed pro-Trump campaign has led to firings and other retaliation against more than 600 people who refused to genuflect in Kirk’s honor.
■ Mother Jones contends that Trump owes “his corrupt and abusive reign” to one man: Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
‘Google didn’t kill the news business, but nor did it seriously try to save it.’ Columnist and ProPublica cofounder Dick Tofel takes a critical look at what Google’s former vice president of news suggests was a billion dollars misspent.
■ A Trib editorial (gift link) comes to Google’s defense against City Council detractors.
■ ZDNET: Update Google’s Chrome browser as soon as possible to avoid “a security vulnerability that has already been exploited in the wild.”
■ A data breach at Chicago’s St. Anthony Hospital may have compromised the personal information of more than 6,600 patients.
Broncos busted. Ford’s recalling a quarter-million Broncos whose instrument panels can fail.
■ CVS-owned, Chicago-based Oak Street Health is laying off 219 people—80 here—and closing health centers nationwide.
‘You’ve been doing such a great job in these troubled times.’ Those kind words accompanied a fresh contribution of support this week from a Chicago Public Square reader who—along with Bill Utter, Bill Paige, Kurt Wehrmeister, Jeff Baker, Paul Herrick, Jeanette Mancusi, Steve Newberger, Leonard Strazewski, Kathy Wyman and Doug Waco, Emily Gage, Chris Schuba, Stephen J. O’Neil, Paul Kubina, Terri Colby, Candice Goldstein, Alan Solomon, Mario Greco, Barbara Heskett, Dave Hodgman, Sherry Nordstrom, Angela Mullins, Scott Baskin, Ken Trainor, The Skubish Family, Jean Remsen, Jason Grey, John and Ann Keating, Gary Strokosch, Bill Higgins, Ken Scott, Michael Mini, Nancy Hess, Molly McDonough, Donna Barrows, Meg Ross, Thom Clark, Colette Verdun, Donna Peel, Bob Izral, Fredric Stein, Sam Hochberg, Stan Zoller, Jeff Weissglass, Graham Greer, Donna Rigsbee, Janice Marsh, Katie Roberts, Fritz Holznagel, Nancy Burns, Denise Pondel, Mark Hines, Shayna Robinson, Mary Lanus, Lawrence Weiland, Carol Lavoie Harper, Charles C. Allen II, Joe Lynn, Sandy Ridolfi, Lawrence Perlman, Dan Haley, Patricia Skaja, Tanya Surawicz, Sarah Hoban, Paul Colombo, Sarah Rodriguez, Laura Braden Temple, Nancy W. Cook, Mike Leiderman, Paul Pasulka, Julia Winn and Judith Alexander—keeps this thing coming.
■ Pitch in as little as $1, just once, and see your name atop tomorrow’s roll call.
■ Mike Braden made this edition better.
