U.S. District Court Judge John Kness has yet to set a trial date for Austin, who pleaded not guilty after her June 2021 indictment. The hearing, which lasted less than 15 minutes, was the first time Austin has appeared in a federal courtroom since her indictment.

The new regulations ban new dollar stores — defined as stores offering an assortment of goods, most advertised at less than $5 — from opening within one mile of another dollar store owned by the same company.

“I’m going to spend all that money, I can assure you of that,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said.

Voters in two precincts of the 7th Ward will be asked whether Ald. Greg Mitchell (7th Ward) and Mayor Brandon Johnson should “support a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) ordinance to prevent the displacement of renters, condo & home owners in South Shore in light of the impact of the Obama Center and growing development in the area.”

Chicago spent less than $160 million on a host of programs including affordable housing, mental health, violence prevention, youth job programs and help for unhoused Chicagoans through Dec. 31, 2023, according to reports to the federal government.

The full Chicago City Council is set to vote Wednesday on the proposal crafted by Ald. Matt O’Shea (19th Ward), who has been fighting the proliferation of dollar stores for nearly a decade. 

“I’d like to think it will serve as a deterrent,” Elmhurst University professor Constance Mixon said. “But none of the other 37 convictions served as a deterrent. It ought to make people think twice. But I don’t know. I’d like to be optimistic.”

Chicago firefighters rescued multiple people from a fire that broke out on the sixth floor of an Uptown high-ride Friday morning.

The jury asked two questions on Tuesday and none on Wednesday. In all, they have deliberated for approximately 18 hours across three days and are set to resume Thursday morning.

The first communication from the jury came approximately an hour into deliberations on Tuesday and focused on one of the charges facing one of Ed Burke’s codefendants, businessman Charles Cui.

Deliberations began Monday afternoon after U.S. District Court Judge Virgina Kendall spent more than three hours reading more than 300 pages of jury instructions.

By contrast, Burke’s attorney portrayed the former alderperson as a “good man” and a dedicated public servant who relished his ability to move the city’s bureaucracy and “thrived on connecting the right people.”

Closing arguments continued Thursday in the high-profile corruption case of the longtime 14th Ward alderperson and Finance Committee chair, with prosecutors zeroing in on perhaps the most elaborate of four criminal schemes Burke is charged with.

The settlement is the largest police misconduct settlement approved by the City Council in 2023.

The Chicago City Council voted 31-18 to resolve the lawsuit filed by the family of Darius Cole-Garrit, which claimed the officers who shot the 21-year-old threatened him hours before they nearly ran him over and then shot him in the back as he fled.

As disgraced former Ald. Danny Solis (25th Ward) took the stand Tuesday afternoon in the landmark corruption trial of his former friend and colleague, who ruled City Hall with an iron fist for decades, Burke’s squad of attorneys will now get their chance to make their case that he is not a criminal, but an “old school, hardworking public servant.”