“It is not a good look for him to have the oxygen and audacity not to show up,” Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th Ward) said.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott are trading barbs over buses of migrants sent to Chicago. Our politics team weighs in on that story and more.

Chicago Police stepped up their use of the city’s overall curfew law this summer recording 141 curfew violations, an increase of approximately 57% as compared with the same period in 2021, according to police department data. 

Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the eight-month delay was not caused by her lack of support for the commission, which will have the final say on policy for the Chicago Police Department.

Ald. Derrick Curtis (18th Ward), a Lightfoot ally, sent an email on June 2 to residents of his Far South Side ward that included an advertisement for the mayor’s re-election kickoff event at the Starlight Restaurant on June 8. 

In 2016, Navy Pier officials asked City Council to approve an update to the pier’s planned development, authorizing, among other things, the construction of a transient marina on its north side, where boats could dock for the day. The project is now the subject of a lawsuit. 

Chicago’s financial picture has been buoyed by the city’s red-hot real estate market and nearly $2 billion in federal aid designed to help the city withstand the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Seventeen people applied to replace soon-to-be former Ald. Michele Smith on the Chicago City Council and represent the city’s 43rd Ward, including Timmy Knudsen, Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s handpicked chair of the city’s Zoning Board, the mayor’s office announced late Friday.

Google’s announcement that it would take the Helmut Jahn-designed structure off the state of Illinois’ hands caps a years-long effort to figure out what to do with 1.2-million-square-foot building at Randolph and LaSalle streets with its distinctive red-and-blue accented steel frame.

A growing list of alderpeople have announced they will not be running for re-election in 2023, or have already resigned from the City Council. We hear from four of them. 

The Chicago City Council voted to create Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability more than a year ago after a contentious debate between Mayor Lori Lightfoot and alderpeople who demanded the board have real authority over the Chicago Police Department. Every deadline set by that ordinance has been missed.

“This brings our city one step closer towards ensuring that every Chicagoan can live in a walkable, affordable community that is connected to transit and all of its benefits,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said.

Authored by Ald. Michele Smith (43rd Ward), the chair of the City Council’s Ethics and Government Oversight Committee, and backed by the Chicago Board of Ethics, the package was significantly revised to win the support of Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who blocked the measure from advancing for several months.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot criticized the Chicago Board of Ethics on Monday for acting “as judge, jury and executioner” when investigating officials for violating the city’s ethics ordinance.

Armando Serrano and Jose Montanez, who were released in 2016 after serving 23 years in prison for the murder of Rodrigo Vargas, would each get $10.25 million if the settlement is approved by the City Council. 

So-called “sideshows” have popped up all over the city in recent weeks, where hundreds of people gather to watch cars spinning “doughnuts” — sometimes in a ring of gasoline set on fire.