Nine lower-level Republican lawmakers are now running to be speaker, leader of the House and second in second in line to the presidency — none with any clear shot for the gavel.
Politics
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s 2024 spending plan would increase the overall CPD budget to nearly $2 billion, accounting for more than 31% of the city’s $5.7 billion corporate fund, by far the most of any city agency or department.
Members of the Illinois legislature will reunite on Tuesday to take care of any unfinished business before the year’s end, including deciding the ultimate fate of measures rejected in whole or in part by Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
The deal, which must be approved by the Chicago City Council, resolves the issues left over from the contract agreement reached by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot in July 2021 that ended the longest union negotiations in the city’s history.
Judith Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter Natalie, were out of the Gaza Strip and in the hands of the Israeli military, an army spokesman said. Hamas said it released them for humanitarian reasons in an agreement with the Qatari government.
An Evanston mother and daughter held hostage by Hamas are released. And immigration protests turn chaotic as a Chicago alderwoman gets physically assaulted.
The Republicans have no realistic or workable plan to unite the fractured GOP majority, elect a new speaker and return to the work of Congress that has been languishing since hard-liners ousted Kevin McCarthy at the start of the month.
Here’s what it means for Chicago to be a sanctuary city and how that status has fueled the debate over Chicago’s newest arrivals.
Brighton Park community members rallied Thursday against Mayor Brandon Johnson’s plan to build a “winterized base camp” for migrants on a vacant, privately owned lot in the area.
The prolonged stalemate risks keeping the House intractably shut down for the foreseeable future after the unprecedented ouster of Kevin McCarthy as speaker.
The Department of Healthcare and Family Services (HFS) announced the cutoff date on Thursday, making good on a spring promise to limit membership in order to keep costs in check. Activists who want the program expanded rather than curtailed said that the move was expected but nonetheless disappointing.
“Any violent act against an elected official in our city is unacceptable and must be condemned in the strongest terms," Mayor Brandon Johnson said in a statement.
City officials have issued 150% more municipal ID cards so far in 2023 than in all of 2021 and 17% more than in all of 2022, according to city data.
The analysis by Fitch said the rating upgrade “is driven by a decline in the city’s long-term liability burden stemming from steady growth in the economic resource base and improved debt management practices.”
People who own certain guns and other items now prohibited under the state’s assault weapons ban still need to register them with the Illinois State Police. But ISP says it plans to hold additional public hearings about that process and may refine the rules before they become permanent next year.
Next steps were highly uncertain as a bipartisan group of lawmakers floated an extraordinary plan — to give the interim speaker-pro-tempore, U.S. Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., more power to reopen the House and temporarily conduct routine business.
