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![]() David GreisingChicago Tribune |
The reorganization of the City Council that got underway in March, not long after Lori Lightfoot lost her bid for reelection in the mayoral primary,...
OK, so new Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch still is in the early days of his first big turn on the public stage. He told the Economic...
The Chris Welch coming-out party had its latest event this week when the new speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives laid out his views on a...
Mayor Lori Lightfoot is in a tight spot. It’s a spot she built herself, so she’s responsible for the fix she’s in. And how she gets out will...
When the director of the Illinois Board of Elections, Steve Sandvoss, was targeted in an online extortion attempt last week, he reportedly took the...
Mayor Lori Lightfoot broke ground Wednesday for the new Bronzeville Winery, a Black-owned business, that is set to open this summer. It wouldn’t...
Parents of children with disabilities learn to dread the day the bus stops coming. Beginning at age 22, when people with disabilities “age out” of...
Illinois at times can seem a state that never misses a chance to miss a chance. Earlier this year, there still seemed a possible chance for meaningful...
I don’t know about you, but the string of farewell columns this month has exhausted me. Familiar voices are suddenly quiet, and they’ll be missed....
In the last week of June, Mayor Lori Lightfoot suffered her first loss of a City Council vote. By a one-vote margin, the council rejected...
Rarely does Chicago get cited as an example of best practices. When the chance arises, it’s best not to miss it. So here goes: The city of Chicago...
The final few days of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s single term as mayor have given rise to an urban parlor game in which participants guess what she will...
Much has been made of a new progressive era in Illinois politics, and a series of recent public remarks by elected Chicago officials formed a triptych...
For more than two decades he controlled the state legislature as speaker. He was the head of the state Democratic Party. He vied with governors and...
When Ald. Tom Tunney, 44th, got caught sneaking customers into Ann Sather, the landmark restaurant he owns on Belmont Avenue, he called it an “error...
If the fat of airport construction ever really starts frying down Peotone way, we can look back on this week as one point in which the insiders really...
With the news that Gov. J.B. Pritzker spent $51.5 million to back an advertising campaign for his graduated-rate tax proposal, the contest to win the...
In the week since U.S. Attorney John Lausch charged Commonwealth Edison with bribery, most of the attention has focused on Public Official A —...
Public Official A has not been charged with a crime, and if that ever were to happen, he would be entitled to a presumption of innocence. He would...
In the ongoing effort to get control of the city’s streets, Mayor Lori Lightfoot staged a news conference last Friday that was meant to make a...
Even before the pandemic hit, we knew 2021 was going to be a pick-your-poison budget for Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Thanks largely but not...
What can go wrong will go wrong. We’ve known that forever. Nobody ever told us it would all go wrong at the same time. Floods, plague and fire are...
When Illinois House Minority Leader Jim Durkin began forming a special investigative committee to consider a censure against Speaker Michael Madigan,...
In that first, clean-sweep phase after she was sworn into office last year, Mayor Lori Lightfoot got a unanimous vote for the first few measures of...
Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s plan to hike property taxes in the city of Chicago annually, based on increases in the cost of living, is designed to avoid...
In the passage of just a few days, Lori Lightfoot’s mayoralty transitioned from initial cool command of the new job to a kerfuffle over an unproved...
Mayor Lori Lightfoot keeps edging up to Chicago’s fiscal mess, like a hiker toeing her way toward the rim of a steep canyon. And who can blame her?...
As any gardener knows, the middle of July is that pivotal time when we need to pull the weeds or risk letting them strangle what’s left for the...
When President Donald Trump revealed on Wednesday he may commute the 14-year prison sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, it made a...
As Mayor Lori Lightfoot approaches her 100th day in office, Tuesday, she already has scored a number of historic firsts: first African American woman...
In 2007, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg first floated a serious plan to bring congestion pricing to the car-choked streets of lower Manhattan. In...
I’ve just pored through two dark summer dramas that should be must reads. They’re filled with tales of cannibalization, regional strife and...
It turns out the people of Chicago don’t have a tidy answer to solving the city’s $838 million budget gap, much less the steep incremental...
Rachel Otwell, a reporter for NPR Illinois, does not have the celebrity of Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor of The New York Times, or Ronan Farrow of The...
By the time Mayor Lori Lightfoot delivered her budget address last week, the Chicago Teachers Union was already on strike. The federal investigation...
The U.S. Supreme Court, in ruling in favor of Mark Janus’ free speech rights to withhold a $45 monthly payment to the union at his Illinois...
It was a case of police abuse that riveted the nation. Videotaped violence, under the cloak of darkness, at the hands of uniformed cops. Cries for...
The dueling tycoons are filling the summer airwaves with an onslaught of ads that are memorable for their meanness and estrangement from the truth —...
The first freshly dead body I ever saw lay in the back of a police vehicle, an African-American teenager who had tried to shoot an off-duty cop. He...
Chicago politics is filled with unwritten rules befitting the city’s clout-drenched history. One such classic was once directed at a young Abner...
Rahm and Rauner. Rauner and Rahm. Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Gov. Bruce Rauner could have made beautiful music together. Instead, there has been nothing...
Writing about Sears Holdings Corp.’s bankruptcy is a bit like dusting off a corporate obituary that’s been in the works for years: Sears Holdings,...
At the end of a bitterly fought gubernatorial campaign, it has come down to this: a tale of two houses. That’s right. The two leading candidates —...
No one, other than Mayor Rahm Emanuel, will ever know exactly why he decided against seeking re-election. But there can be little doubt that the...
Perhaps never before have Chicago’s mayoral race activities been as convoluted and confusing as those taking place ahead of the 2019 primary. There...
Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Tim Evans, chief judge of the Cook County Circuit Court, are caught up in a dispute about the effectiveness of Evans’ bail...
Over a six-year period beginning in 2014, 61 people died in 42 residential fires, in Chicago buildings where the city had prior knowledge of...
It’s striking that the groundbreaking for the Obama Presidential Center this week and the 150th anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire next week are...
The charges of sexual harassment of lifeguards and other aquatics employees at the Chicago Park District, and signs of serious government mishandling...
In the heyday of undercover reporting in Chicago, Bill Recktenwald was a master of disguise. For a probe of election fraud in the late 1960s, he went...