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Since taking office, judges have granted detention in 80 percent of violent crime cases, 85 percent of aggravated domestic battery and 76 percent of machine gun cases, all higher than under the previous state’s attorney, Kim Foxx.
“Look, they’re going to have to find 34 alders who can compel working people that they’re gonna balance the budget off of their backs,” Johnson said, vowing to “protect the working people of Chicago.” It would take 34 alderpeople to override a mayoral veto.
“I think we need to make sure that there is a law enforcement component of if somebody is not in compliance, to have the ability to go and get them,” Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke said.
“I don’t know anybody who feels like Chicago is affordable. Chicago, year after year after year, is getting less affordable, especially for homeowners. In a few years, if we allow this crisis to persist, there will be no homeowners,” Political and social commentator James McCoy said.
Tuesday, Gov. JB Pritzker said he is still encouraging people to protest immigration enforcement. “I’m not going to discourage people from showing up in protest,” Pritzker said at an unrelated event in Chicago. “I think that’s one of the best ways in the United States to get your message across, again peacefully, peacefully.”
A federal appeals court is deliberating whether hundreds of undocumented immigrants arrested in the Chicago area in recent months should be released from detention and sent home with electronic monitoring.
The presidential center in Jackson Park was announced in 2015 and was originally slated to open in 2021, but lawsuits and federal reviews suspended construction at times. Construction didn’t actually begin until 2021. The center’s opening had recently been set for sometime in spring 2026.
The overall college completion rate for CPS alumni is 48 percent — below the national average of 64 percent, according to an annual study from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research and the To&Through Project.
“President Trump loathes us. The bond market mocks us. Businesses flee us. Rich and middle-class families abandon us. Yet, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, ad nauseam, our fearful leader tries to explain away urban collapse as ‘equity.’ Now our civic humiliation has made the world stage. Chicago is officially an international disgrace.”
The governor said the legislation builds on an executive order issued in September, which includes language to make sure providers and pharmacies maintain their right to administer vaccines.
“Nothing’s being done to address the issues,” state Rep. Dan Ugaste said. “As a matter of fact, we just had a veto session … and it actually cost the people of the state of Illinois almost $11 billion.”
Instead, local governments are raising property taxes across the state to keep up with pension obligations, cutting the services those taxes should be paying for, and sometimes still going bankrupt.
Jim Dey: “So, from a political standpoint, everything is coming up roses for Pritzker. But from a policy standpoint, the Victory poll tells a different story. … The poll revealed that 59.5 percent of respondents said Illinois is on the wrong track. Pritzker, who signed the controversial SAFE-T Act law that ended cash bail, gets poor marks for addressing crime issues (crime: 34.1 percent good vs. 58.9 percent bad), taxes (32 percent good vs. 61.5 percent bad) and immigration (36.3 percent good vs. 57 percent bad.)”
Gerald Soukal has lived in the Garfield Ridge neighborhood his entire life, and was one of many taxpayers waiting in line Monday at the Cook County Building. “I don’t know what I’ll do,” he said. “My tax bill has doubled. It went from $9,600 to $19,100.”
The statement from the mayor’s office urged alderpersons to “make their proposals public” so they can be “evaluated and debated in the public sphere,” adding, “We [have] yet to see any viable proposals from this group.”
“Suing the City of Chicago for alleged police misconduct has become a mind-bendingly, lucrative enterprise — one that ravages public coffers, bankrolls offenders, and hamstrings law enforcement. The city’s recent decision to borrow $283.3 million to cover legal settlements is merely the latest evidence of a system in freefall.”
“Illinois’ business-class donor community — defined by its wealth, pragmatism and preference for policy-focused politics — appears to be consolidating behind Republican Ted Dabrowski in his run for governor, marking a shift away from President Donald Trump’s MAGA wing of the party that backed Darren Bailey in 2022.”
“In Chicago, as overall violent crimes are decreasing, in domestic cases, the number of killings of women and their children has continued to rise, year after year.”
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