The union believes the city’s TIF surplus is approximately $500 million, and if that amount is handed to CPS, it would not only allow the district to keep its promise to keep cuts out of the classroom, it would help reverse initial cuts to custodial staff, classroom assistants, crossing guards and Safe Passage workers.

During a virtual briefing that included Mayor Brandon Johnson and members of his senior leadership team, Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling also stressed that his officers won’t assist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who attempt to conduct raids, nor will Chicago cops ask for the immigration status of crime victims or anyone seeking help.

Chicago Police Sgt. Michael Vitellaro was acquitted by a Cook County judge on felony charges of aggravated battery and official misconduct in connection with the incident that began when his son told him July 1, 2022, that his bicycle had been stolen from outside the Park Ridge Public Library. The Civilian Office of Police Accountability investigated the incident and determined Vitellaro violated six department rules and used excessive force against the teen.

“The man either does not believe, or will not admit, that more police on the streets would deter crime — even though we know that it would.”

Chicago has the highest number of lead water service lines in the nation, with an estimated 412,000 of about 491,000 lines at least partly made of lead or contaminated with the dangerous metal.

“The left-wing outlet In These Times even saw in (Brandon Johnson’s) victory the emergence of a ‘new Chicago school’ that would take back the city from the acolytes of the old Chicago School of the free market economist Milton Friedman. … Unfortunately for Johnson, his efforts to patch over Chicago’s budget problems led to a lot of bruising, reputation-damaging political fights.”

“The part, apparently, that Brandon Johnson is fated to play if Trump sends the National Guard to Chicago is the woke foil, visibly and loudly representing all that is wrong about the left’s attitudes toward crime and policing.”

In the short term, Quigley advocates dramatic cuts, employee layoffs and furlough days in an “austerity budget that focuses on the fundamentals” — and sets aside less needed services — as the only way out of a $1.12 billion budget shortfall. He accused the rookie mayor of ignoring Chicago’s “dirty little secret”: “No one really wants to talk about just how bad the pension crisis is because everything hasn’t collapsed yet.”

“We still have mothers who are burying young boys, and their sons are dying prematurely. That is a serious issue. And for individuals to make us try to feel as if we’re witnessing things getting better, that’s not right,” Brooks said. “We have let the world know that this is an issue in Chicago. And we can’t let the mayor nor the governor dictate how that is said…. The only thing that they’re really concerned [with] when it comes to Black lives that matter, is Black lives matter that vote.”

“People who happen to want to help, whatever the motive may be,” Wilson said, “I welcome it.”  

Twenty-six members of the City Council fired off a letter to school board members Wednesday urging them to reject taking a loan that would reimburse the city for the $175 million pension payment. That’s despite the city’s budget — approved by the council in December 2024 — counting on CPS making the payment.

“With a benevolent billionaire in the governor’s office, a Democratic supermajority in the statehouse and a willing partner in City Hall, there has never been a better opportunity to right the past wrongs of racial discrimination.”