Stories by Heather Cherone

Raymond Lopez, first elected to represent the 15th Ward on the Chicago City Council in 2015, has been one of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s most frequent critics.

The officer is a member of the department’s SWAT Team, who are not equipped with body-worn cameras, according to a statement from the agency known as COPA, which is charged with investigating police misconduct.

Leaders of the groups that successfully pushed Chicago elected leaders to support a map that redraws the 11th Ward to include a majority of Asian American voters warned members of the City Council that asking voters to decide the boundaries of the city’s 50 wards “fans the flames of racial division.”

Led by Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who is the vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee, Illinois Democratic leaders unveiled their plan to bid for the convention on Wednesday. At an unrelated news conference Thursday morning, Lightfoot began showcasing Chicago’s attributes.

The plan calls for offering residents 50,000 prepaid cards that will cover $150 worth of gas as well as 100,000 passes that will cover $50 worth of CTA fares. 

Two sources told WTTW News that Lightfoot will ask the Chicago City Council to confirm Deborah Witzburg as the city’s inspector general. Witzburg resigned as Chicago’s deputy inspector general for public safety on Nov. 1, saying she would apply for the top job.

A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit that sought to stop a portion of Jackson Park from being transformed into the home of the $500 million Obama Presidential Center.

A deeply blue city in the center of an increasingly red Midwest could give Democrats a chance to reach voters in nearby swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin, both of which proved crucial in President Joe Biden’s victory over former President Donald Trump in 2020.

Nicole Lee is the first Chinese American, the second Asian American and the first Asian American woman to serve as an alderperson in the city of Chicago.

If confirmed on Monday, Nicole Lee would become the first Chinese American to serve as an alderperson.

Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th Ward) had urged the Illinois Supreme Court to overturn decisions by the Illinois State Board of Elections as well as lower courts that allowed politicians accused of political corruption to use funds contributed by supporters of their campaigns to defend themselves from accusations of wrongdoing while in office.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re about to make history here,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said, just before the first electronic vote.

The Chicago City Council voted 34-13 to settle the lawsuit, the first significant payment approved by city officials to compensate Chicagoans who alleged they were mistreated by Chicago Police officers during the unrest and protests that swept the city in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. 

Mayor Lori Lightfoot does not expect to pick one of the three finalists and ask the Chicago City Council to ratify her decision until early summer, a significant delay since the fall, officials said.

The centerpiece of Mayor Lori Lightfoot's efforts to crack down on crime after violence soared in 2021, the measure will remain in limbo for at least another month.

The public will get its first glimpse of the $3.5 million effort that began in 2017 to modernize the operations of the Chicago City Council at Wednesday’s meeting — as long as the network is willing, and the cloud does not crash.

The measure ratifies decisions made by Treasurer Melissa Conyears Ervin after her 2019 election to stop new investments in oil and gas firms while moving $70 million in investments from 225 fossil fuel companies. 

Housing Commissioner Marisa Novara said the initial imposition of the fee in April 2021 had helped slow gentrification-fueled displacement happening along the popular biking and jogging trail and in Pilsen, one of the city’s most in-demand real estate markets.

The Chicago City Council is set to pay $450,000 to the family of a man who was struck and killed by a car driven by a Chicago Police officer.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and New York City Mayor Eric Adams have both pushed back against policies adopted in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd in May 2020 that were designed to address inequities in the criminal justice system fueled by systematic racism. 

“I don’t agree with the argument that because public corruption is ongoing and persistent, apparently that I should just throw up my hands and not sentence you to a term of imprisonment because it won’t do any good,” Judge John F. Kness said.

Wednesday’s meeting will be the second time in six months that alderpeople have called an emergency meeting of the City Council to publicly push back against Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot — and the three-person committee advising her — will have to work fast to narrow down the applicant pool and nominate a replacement for the disgraced grandson and nephew of Chicago Mayors Richard J. Daley and Richard M. Daley who was convicted Feb. 14 on seven counts of lying to federal bank regulators and filing false tax returns.

Thirty-three alderpeople currently support the ward map backed by the Black Caucus — eight short of the votes needed to avert a referendum in June. 

It is the second time in six months that alderpeople have called an emergency meeting of the City Council to publicly push back against Lightfoot’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The alderpeople demanded the session one day after the deadline for Chicago Police Department members to get at least the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Designed to ease congestion on the Kennedy Expressway around O’Hare Airport, the new tollway will connect Interstate 90 and Interstate 294.