Politics
The chief prosecutor of the world’s top war crimes court sought arrest warrants Monday for leaders of Israel and Hamas, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, over actions taken during their seven-month war.
Ald. David Moore told WTTW News he will 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.
Other measures regulate garbage truck littering, allow yoga in schools
Lawmakers passed more than 200 bills this week ahead of their scheduled May 24 adjournment. Many of the measures will soon head to Gov. J.B. Pritzker, including a bill that changes how damages accrue under Illinois’ first-in-the-nation biometric data privacy law.
In 2022, the General Assembly created a task force to research the state of journalism in Illinois. Data from Northwestern University showed one-third of local outlets have closed since 2005, creating an 86% decline in newspaper jobs over that span.
In the middle of Mental Health Awareness Month, Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton hosted a panel in Springfield at which he pledged to expand the state’s behavioral health services.
One year into Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration. Campus encampment cleared at DePaul. And will Springfield help Chicago Public Schools close its deficit?
The final agreement calls for 11 officers to serve suspensions totaling 275 days for their conduct that led to the death by suicide of a 33-year-old woman in December 2021, records show.
A proposed rule recognizes the medical uses of cannabis and acknowledges it has less potential for abuse than some of the nation’s most dangerous drugs. The plan approved by Attorney General Merrick Garland would not legalize marijuana outright for recreational use.
Chicago Public Schools teachers and administrators aren’t shying away from Mayor Brandon Johnson’s claim the city’s schools are “owed” $1 billion from the state. But they dramatically scaled back their immediate demands during a rare joint CPS and Chicago Teachers Union lobbying trip to the state Capitol on Wednesday.
U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer rejected nearly all of the demands made by the coalition of police reform groups behind the consent decree, the federal court order requiring CPD to change the way it trains, supervises and disciplines officers.
“Illinois cannot simply hope that its remaining fiscal challenges will disappear on their own,” the Civic Federation says in a new report. “They will not until they are addressed head on.”
The “Brown Revisited” recreation is being made available at brown.oyez.org. It will be part of a website, painstakingly put together by former Northwestern University professor Jerry Goldman, that allows people to hear oral arguments in decades worth of Supreme Court cases and follow along with written transcriptions.
The juxtaposition of a popular program with how to pay for it highlights the tensions Illinois lawmakers face with weeks left before the end-of-month deadline to pass a new state budget.
“People put me in charge to change course. And what is very clear, I say this with all due humility, people know we are changing course in this city. There should be no doubt in anyone’s minds that we are moving in another direction. I believe people are up for it. And I’m looking forward to the implementation of many of the things that we’ve already put forward.”
Employment levels in Chicago and beyond have rebounded since the COVID-19 pandemic, but a new report has found teens and young adults across the city, particularly those of color, are still struggling to find consistent work.
The City Council’s Police and Fire Committee unanimously advanced the nominations of Anthony Driver Jr., Remel Terry, Aaron Gottlieb, Abierre Minor, Kelly Presley and Sandra Wortham to serve four-year terms on the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability.