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One protest with about two dozen demonstrators gathered outside Chicago Police District 18 Sunday was one of several so-called “lead-up mobilizations” by the Coalition to March on the DNC. Each of these demonstrations, they say, is designed to highlight particular demands as they build support and grow in numbers on the road to the convention in August.
People were heading home after a busy, summery day at the beach when police began to report altercations breaking out within the crowd around 8:20 p.m. Police said the gunman opened fire on a 38-year-old man who was standing in the parking lot, striking him in the back.
Illinois lawmakers passed legislation prohibiting drivers from stopping their vehicles on the shoulder of the road anywhere within a half-mile radius of O’Hare. The measure also directs the Illinois Tollway Authority to install automated traffic safety cameras within the half-mile radius.
One activist said, “Now, with the DNC coming into Chicago, every police officer is going to be downtown Chicago working overtime. But that leaves open for the rest of Chicago. We’re asking for more police presence. We’re asking for more patrols of police officers, very important. We don’t like our children getting shot. Okay? We have to do something for our children.”
The complaint detailed instances where the university and its leadership allegedly ignored policy violations by students, faculty and unaffiliated individuals, allowing disruptive and dangerous behavior to escalate without consequences.
“People are leaving this state in droves because of high property taxes, high income taxes, and the like … X,Y,Z name your tax. In 2019 the gas tax went up by double. We don’t know the results of what happened with this 2019 task force that has 88 members and yet we are doing another bill,” said state Rep. Brad Halbrook. “This isn’t rocket science. We’re not trying to put a man on the moon here. You could pull 10 people in and by tomorrow morning, we could have an answer to what needs to be done here to reform
In Illinois alone, state courts issued $3.4 billion in so-called nuclear verdicts from 2009 to last year. The industries that received the most nuclear verdicts in Illinois were broadcasting, casinos and gaming, and health care technology.
“The display of a license shall not serve as authorization for law enforcement or any other person to search, view or access any other data in your phone,” state Rep. Kam Buckner said.
Illinois state Sen. Mike Simmons couldn’t say if required hair-care plans for foster children would come at a new cost to the state or the foster parent.
In October, it was reported that an assistant to Illinois Emergency Management Agency Director Alicia Tate-Nadeau quit after it was revealed that state taxpayers paid over $240,000 for her salary in just seven months, double the salary for Tate-Nadeau.
Forty-nine Illinois nursing homes closed between 2019 and 2022, according to the state’s Department of Public Health; 2023 data is not yet available. In that same time period, six new facilities opened. The closures mean more than 2,500 nursing home beds have vanished.
“The state is fiscally irresponsible and in a bad position,” said investor Christian Gore. “There are scenarios in Cook County where property taxes have increased four to six times virtually, making it an illiquid market.”
“Mayor Johnson, he and I have really aligned our interests in supporting environmental justice communities,” said Angela Tovar, the city’s chief sustainability officer. “If we’re saying that we’re committed to environmental justice, we have to commit to the principles of understanding that we have to allow for the community to speak for themselves.”
Chicago-based M3 strategies conducted a poll of likely voters in Illinois earlier this month, proportionally distributed among Chicago, its suburbs and rural voters; Illinois remains a bellwether for America, so these results suggest how voters in similar regions in America think about these issues. While Democrats and Republicans converge on perceptions of climate change, there is still no clear consensus for Biden’s policies
“Lucas … lost his patience and said, ‘To hell with you guys, I’m going to take my museum to someplace that actually wants to build it,” said Columbia Law School professor Thomas W. Merrill.
For some long-tenured press operators such as Andrew Whitaker, 69, who started as a 24-year-old in 1979, the final production runs at the Freedom Center will be the end of the line for their printing careers after choosing a severance package over the commute to Schaumburg.
Funding for the controversial $150 million high school was slated for a vote last summer, which didn’t happen. CPS says the proposal is still “under review,” but a website has been taken down, and stakeholders say it’s been months without an update.
Ald. David Moore plans to force a vote on an order that accuses Mayor Brandon Johnson of having “usurped the will of the City Council and their ability to represent constituents” by canceling the city’s contract with SoundThinking, which operates the ShotSpotter gunshot detection system.
State leaders issued a report touting Illinois’ abandonment of representational government in favor of executive fiat during the pandemic as effective. They failed to take responsibility for job recovery lagging the nation by a year and seeing public schools suffer.
Wendy Khabie and Lisa Fields Lewis ,national co-chairs of the Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern: The active members of Northwestern’s board of trustees have either shamefully been asleep at the wheel or, equally disturbing, in the driver’s seat, allowing the situation at the university to deteriorate to a point that it takes a subpoena from the United States Congress to hold them accountable.
“There was mention in the supporting material of a ‘community board,’ but this phrase does not have positive associations for all Chicago voters. The public may well be suspicious of ‘experts’ and ‘elites,’ but they do not therefore trust ‘community boards’ to make decisions that affect their homes and neighborhoods. “
During a staged hold-up in Bucktown last year, one of the “robbers” accidentally fired their gun, severely injuring a liquor store clerk, according to one source. During that caper alone, five “customers” were “robbed.”
Orphe Divounguy, senior economist at Zillow Group: “Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Unfortunately, the prophets of doom may have finally gotten one right. While I was hopeful for a Chicago turnaround and had remained very optimistic about the metro’s economic prospects, the most recent data confirmed my worst fears. It seems Chicago’s population problems will continue, at least for the foreseeable future.
If you’ve been in Illinois long enough to go through a school district tax hike referendum, you’ll understand what’s going on right now as state lawmakers prepare to vote on the 2025 state budget.
Ted joined Shaun Thompson to talk about about the Chicago Teachers Union’s absurd new contract demands, why so many Chicago teachers are chronically absent, and Brandon Johnson’s failed first year as mayor.
“The unrest is unlikely to stop when universities break for the summer; protesters are pledging to disrupt the August Democratic National Convention planned to be held in Chicago. … The names are well-known among Democratic funding circles: Soros, Rockefeller, and Pritzker. Yet before the anti-Jewish protests swept college campuses over the last few months, their financial ties to the student groups were not widely known. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a member of the same wealthy Pritzker family, is not among the donors. “
Tax increases on sportsbooks and corporations, which Gov. JB Pritzker’s office says are needed to both balance the budget and maintain the state’s trend of credit upgrades, could be sticking points as legislators negotiate the governor’s $52.7 billion budget proposal.
They say both groups are being targeted by the same system of racism and oppression. “The system of racism, of white supremacy, is the one that’s forcing young Black and Brown people into prison.” The protest was organized by the Coalition to March on the DNC.
Last weekend, at least 29 people were shot, four fatally, in gun violence across the city, police said.
A Streeterville resident recognized two of the men as residents of the Inn of Chicago migrant shelter, home of more than 1,200 new arrivals.
“Tens of thousands will be here for the DNC to tell dems no business as usual,” Faayani Aboma Mijana, with the Colation to March on the DNC, said. “We won’t be bullied into voting for a party supporting a genocide. I do think this is building pressure on Democrats.”
Jim Dey: “The real issue, of course, is not whether the state’s population is going up or down by tiny percentages. The problem is that Illinois, unlike all its neighboring states, is not growing. That means the state’s increasingly heavy tax burden is falling on a relatively static population, a real problem lost in the political back and forth as to whether the estimates are off by a small amount.”
“A city perceived as high crime, high cost and more concerned with pleasing union bosses than trade-show organizers must improve its reputation.”
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