The second-largest county in the United States has established a permanent guaranteed basic income program after the success of a previous pilot version.
The Cook County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved $7.5 million for a permanent guaranteed basic income program last week. Chicago, the largest city in the Midwest and third-largest in the country, is the county seat for Cook County.
Cook County made headlines as it established the guaranteed basic income program after many local governments across the country launched pilot versions.
The Cook County Board of Commissioners approved $7.5 million for a permanent guaranteed basic income program last week.(Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Guaranteed basic income programs have become a trend across the U.S. in recent years with more than 100 pilots launched since 2018. Mayors for Guaranteed Income grew into a coalition of 150 mayors pushing pilot programs, offering low-income participants up to $1,000 a month with no strings attached. The group has pushed pilot programs that have been adopted by municipalities across the country.
Once the largest publicly funded program in the nation receiving $42 million in federal funding from the American Rescue Plan Act, the Cook County Promise Guaranteed Income Pilot provided monthly payments of $500 to 3,250 households for two years, with no strings attached.
Economic Security Illinois Director Sarah Saheb described Cook County’s guaranteed basic income pilot as a “historic success” and said that when the federal government was “stepping back from its responsibilities to working families, Cook County is leading the way to ensure people can afford basic necessities.”
The commissioners told Fox News Digital that the decision to extend the program into permanence was based on findings from a survey on the county’s pilot program.
Guaranteed basic income programs have become a trend across the U.S. in recent years with more than 100 GBI pilots launched since 2018.(iStock)
The findings released by the commission in April showed that three-quarters of participants reported feeling more financially secure and 94% of participants used the funds to address financial emergencies during challenging times. Majorities also reported the program improved their mental health and lowered their stress levels.
The commission learned from the survey that participants mainly used the funds for essential needs such as food, rent, utilities, and transportation.
Illinois Policy Institute (IPI), a think tank that tracks public policy decisions in the state, told Fox News Digital that “Cook County is making its guaranteed income pilot permanent and committing millions to a failed strategy already shown to leave people with less work experience and lower earnings.”
“That should alarm anyone who wants real, long-term progress for low-income residents. A recent pilot program in northern Illinois, including Cook County, decreased workforce participation and lower individual income (before transfers),” said Josh Bandoch, head of policy for the IPI.
Democrats in the Illinois legislature are trying to advance an “Illinois Guaranteed Income Fund” through the Department of Human Services. (iStock)
In response to IPI, the commission told Fox News Digital that “outcomes and impacts vary depending heavily on program design: amount of cash, frequency/duration of payments, eligibility criteria (income-based, place-based, etc.), and local cost of living.”
“Cook County is partnering closely with the Inclusive Economy Lab at the University of Chicago to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the Promise Pilot. We will then design our next program in a thoughtful way that considers short- and long-term outcomes,” the commission said.
Joshua Q. Nelson is a reporter for Fox News Digital.
Joshua focuses on politics, education policy ranging from the local to the federal level, and the parental uprising in education.
Joining Fox News Digital in 2019, he previously graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in Political Science and is an alum of the National Journalism Center and the Heritage Foundation’s Young Leaders Program.
Story tips can be sent to joshua.nelson@fox.com and Joshua can be followed on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Burt Meyer, who invented toys like Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots, Lite-Brite and MouseTrap in the 1960s that delighted generations of children, has died. He was 99.
Meyer’s creations arrived in the postwar boom, when plastic molding and mass production transformed how American kids played. That shift opened the door for more dynamic toys, and Meyer seized the moment with designs that would stay on shelves for decades.
Meyer died on Oct. 30, said Rebecca Mathis, executive director at King-Bruwaert House, a retirement community in Burr Ridge, Illinois, where he lived.
Meyer succeeded by straddling two often conflicting worlds, carrying a boundless childlike imagination alongside a pragmatic understanding of machines.
The idea for Lite-Brite came in 1966 when Meyer was walking in Manhattan with Marvin Glass, who owned one of the largest toy design companies at the time, and the two men passed a window display featuring hundreds of colored lights. Engineers at the company doubted that electic lights could be safely adapted for children, according to Tim Walsh, who interviewed Meyer for his 2005 book “Timeless Toys.”
Meyer, an employee at Marvin Glass & Associates, insisted it could.
“There’s billions of ideas out there,” Walsh wrote, “but executing them into a final creative solution is often the hard part.”
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Meyer came up with a small backlit box and black paper sheets that allowed kids to create illuminated patterns. Lite-Brite was a hit, earning spots on Time Magazine’s list of 100 greatest toys and in the Strong National Museum of Play’s hall of fame. New versions are still being sold.
Meyer had a similar role with a design team that reimagined a bulky boxing arcade game for home use. The original concept stalled in development after a featherweight boxer died from a brain injury, making any toy that invoked the tragedy unmarketable, company leaders thought.
Meyer revisited the idea with a simple shift. “This is too good to pass up,” he recalled saying in a 2010 interview. “Let’s take it away from humanity, let’s make it robots. And we won’t have them fall over, we’ll have something funny happen.”
The result was Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots, a small game where players control the fighters’ fists by pressing buttons on joysticks. A player wins by hitting the jaw of the opposing robot, theatrically popping up the spring-loaded head.
The toy remained recognizable to later generations, appearing in the film “Toy Story 2,” and the toy company Mattel announced plans in 2021 for a live action movie adaptation.
Meyer launched his own firm, Meyer/Glass Design, in the mid-1980s. The company developed numerous best-sellers including Gooey Louie, where children picked boogers our of Louie’s nose, and the Pretty Pretty Princess board game. His son, Steve Meyer, ran the business until 2006, according to The New York Times.
Born in 1926 as Burton Carpenter Meyer, he enlisted in the Navy and served for two years as an aircraft mechanic. After retiring from toy making, he moved to Downers Grove, a suburb of Chicago, where he built small planes and could be seen deftly steering them aloft from a nearby private airfield well into his 80s.
In interviews, Meyer often drew parallels between aerospace engineering and toy design, saying both required ingenutity and teamwork.
“When you’re flying the airplane, use every resource that you have in there. That’s why we were able to turn out so many successful products,” Meyer said, crediting his success to the highly collaborative environment at Marvin Glass & Associates.
Meyer’s car had a vanity plate that said TOYKING, and by most accounts, he was. In a 2010 interview, he said he was still delighted by telling people what he did for a living, and having them respond: “Oh, I played with that!”
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — The Rev. Jesse Jackson has been released from a Chicago hospital where he was treated for a rare neurological disorder, his son said Tuesday.
The 84-year-old civil rights leader was discharged Monday from Northwestern Memorial Hospital, his son and family spokesperson Yusef Jackson said.
In 2013, Jackson, who now receives round-the-clock care at home, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. The diagnosis was changed last April to progressive supranuclear palsy, or PSP, a neurodegenerative disorder which can have similar symptoms to Parkinson’s.
Yusef Jackson thanked “the countless friends and supporters who have reached out, visited and prayed for our father,” as well as the medical and security staff at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
“We humbly ask for your continued prayers throughout this precious time,” Yusef Jackson said.
A protégé of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the two-time presidential candidate and internationally known founder of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition was hospitalized Nov. 14.
Visitors included former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, fellow civil rights leader the Rev. Al Sharpton and television court arbitrator Judge Greg Mathis.
After announcing his Parkinson’s diagnosis in 2017, Jackson continued to work and make public appearances, including at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. In 2023, he stepped down as leader of Rainbow/PUSH, which he began as Operation PUSH in 1971, but continued going to the office regularly until a few months ago.
His family says that Jackson uses a wheelchair, struggles to keep his eyes open and is unable to speak. Relatives, including his sons, Illinois U.S. Rep. Jonathan Jackson and Jesse Jackson Jr., a former Illinois congressman seeking reelection, have been caring for him in shifts.
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Landlords could no longer rely on rent-pricing software to quietly track each other’s moves and push rents higher using confidential data, under a settlement between RealPage Inc. and federal prosecutors to end what critics said was illegal “algorithmic collusion.”
The deal announced Monday by the Department of Justice follows a yearlong federal antitrust lawsuit, launched during the Biden administration, against the Texas-based software company. RealPage would not have to pay any damages or admit any wrongdoing. The settlement must still be approved by a judge.
RealPage software provides daily recommendations to help landlords and their employees nationwide price their available apartments. The landlords do not have to follow the suggestions, but critics argue that because the software has access to a vast trove of confidential data, it helps RealPage’s clients charge the highest possible rent.
“RealPage was replacing competition with coordination, and renters paid the price,” said DOJ antitrust chief Gail Slater, who emphasized that the settlement avoided a costly, time-consuming trial.
Under the terms of the proposed settlement, RealPage can no longer use that real-time data to determine price recommendations. Instead, the only nonpublic data that can be used to train the software’s algorithm must be at least one year old.
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“What does this mean for you and your family?” Slater said in a video statement. “It means more real competition in local housing markets. It means rents set by the market, not by a secret algorithm.”
RealPage attorney Stephen Weissman said the company is pleased the DOJ worked with them to settle the matter.
“There has been a great deal of misinformation about how RealPage’s software works and the value it provides for both housing providers and renters,” Weissman said in a statement. “We believe that RealPage’s historical use of aggregated and anonymized nonpublic data, which include rents that are typically lower than advertised rents, has led to lower rents, less vacancies, and more procompetitive effects.”
However, the deal was slammed by some observers as a missed opportunity to clamp down on alleged algorithmic price-fixing throughout the economy.
“This case really was the tip of the spear,” said Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel for the American Economic Liberties Project, whose group advocates for government action against business concentration.
He said the settlement is rife with loopholes and he believes RealPages can keep influencing the rental market even if they can only use public, rather than private, data. He also decried how RealPages does not have to pay any damages, unlike many companies that have paid millions in penalties over their use of the software.
The governors of California and New York signed laws last month to crack down on rent-setting software, and a growing list of cities, including Philadelphia and Seattle, have passed ordinances against the practice.
Ten states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington — had joined the DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit. Those states were not part of Monday’s settlement, meaning they can continue to pursue the case in court.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. civil rights leader Jesse Jackson was released on Monday from a Chicago hospital where he had been receiving medical care for at least 12 days, according to his family.
The 84-year-old Baptist minister, social activist, and former U.S. presidential candidate “remains in stable condition” following his discharge from Northwestern Memorial Hospital, his son and family spokesperson, Yusef Jackson, said in a statement issued through the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a Chicago-based political action organization the elder Jackson founded.
Jackson’s hospital admission was announced by Rainbow PUSH on November 12, when he was described as being “under observation” for a degenerative neurological disorder called progressive supranuclear palsy, or PSP. Jackson was diagnosed in 2013 with Parkinson’s disease, but his diagnosis was changed in April of this year to PSP, according to Monday’s statement.
No further details about Jackson’s condition or medical treatment were disclosed. But the family expressed thanks to friends and supporters for their prayers and visits.
“We bear witness to the fact that prayer works and would also like to thank the professional, caring and amazing medical and security staff at Northwestern Hospital,” Jackson’s son said. “We humbly ask for your continued prayers through this precious time.”
Jackson has been at the forefront of the U.S. civil rights movement since the 1960s, joining the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as a young protege of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and was present when King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968.
Some two decades later, as an outspoken critic of the Republican President Ronald Reagan, Jackson mounted a Democratic primary bid for the White House in 1984 but finished in third place. He ran for president once more in 1988 but failed again to clinch the party’s nomination, placing second.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Washington; Editing by Michael Perry)
CHELSEA, Mich. (AP) — Old Brick Farm, where Larry Doll raises chickens, turkeys and ducks, was fortunate this Thanksgiving season.
Doll’s small farm west of Detroit had no cases of bird flu, despite an ongoing outbreak that killed more than 2 million U.S. turkeys in the last three months alone. He also avoided another disease, avian metapneumovirus, which causes turkeys to lay fewer eggs.
“I try to keep the operation as clean as possible, and not bringing other animals in from other farms helps mitigate that risk as well,” said Doll, whose farm has been in his family for five generations.
But Doll still saw the impact as those diseases shrank the U.S. turkey flock to a 40-year low this year. The hatchery where he gets his turkey chicks had fewer available this year. He plans to order another 100 hatchlings soon, even though they won’t arrive until July.
AP AUDIO: Stores keep prices down in a tough year for turkeys. Other Thanksgiving foods may cost more
In an AP interview, Michigan Sate University food economist David Ortega says although turkey prices are forecasted to be 40 percent higher this year than last year, there are bargains to be had.
“If you don’t get your order in early, you’re not going to get it,” he said.
Thanksgiving costs vary
The shrinking population is expected to cause wholesale turkey prices to rise 44% this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Despite the increase, many stores are offering discounted or even free turkeys to soften the potential blow to Thanksgiving meal budgets. But even if the bird is cheaper than last year, the ingredients to prepare the rest of the holiday feast may not be. Tariffs on imported steel, for example, have increased prices for canned goods.
As of Nov. 17, a basket of 11 Thanksgiving staples — including a 10-pound frozen turkey, 10 Russet potatoes, a box of stuffing and cans of corn, green beans and cranberry sauce – cost $58.81, or 4.1% more than last year, according to Datasembly, a market research company that surveys weekly prices at 150,000 U.S. stores. That’s higher than the average price increase for food eaten at home, which rose 2.7% in September, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Datasembly showed a 2% decline in the retail price of a 10-pound turkey as of Nov. 17. Pricing out Thanksgiving meals isn’t an exact science, and the firm’s tally differed from other estimates.
The American Farm Bureau Federation, which uses volunteer shoppers in all 50 states to survey prices, reported that Thanksgiving dinner for 10 would cost $55.16 this year, or 5% less than last year. The Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute, using NielsenIQ data from September, estimated that feeding 10 people on Thursday using store-brand products would cost $80 this year, which is 2% to 3% lower than last year’s estimate.
Tempting turkey prices
Grocery chains are also offering deals to attract shoppers. Discount grocer Aldi is advertising a $40 meal for 10 with 21 items. Kroger said shoppers could feed 10 people for under $50 with its menu of store-brand products.
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump touted Walmart’s Thanksgiving meal basket, which he said was 25% cheaper than last year. But that was because Walmart included a different assortment and fewer products overall this year.
“We’re seeing some promotions being implemented in an effort to draw customers into the store,” David Ortega, a professor of food economics and policy at Michigan State University, said.
That’s despite a sharp increase in wholesale turkey prices since August. In the second week of November, frozen 8-16 pound hens were averaging $1.77 per pound, up 81% from the same period last year, according to Mark Jordan, the executive director of Leap Market Analytics, which closely follows the poultry and livestock markets.
Avian viruses are the main culprit. But another reason for turkey’s higher wholesale prices has been an increase in consumer demand as other meats have gotten more expensive, Jordan said. Beef prices were up 14% in September compared to last year, for example.
“For a big chunk of the population, they look at steak cuts and say, ‘I can’t or I don’t want to pay $30 a pound,’” Jordan said.
That’s the case for Paul Nadeau, a retired consultant from Austin, Texas, who plans to smoke a turkey this week. Nadeau said he usually smokes a brisket over Thanksgiving weekend, but the beef brisket he buys would now cost more than $100. Turkey prices are also up at his local H-E-B supermarket, he said, but not by as much.
“I don’t know of anything that’s down in price since last year except for eggs,” Nadeau said.
Turkeys are seen on a farm Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025, in Sylvan Township, Mich. (AP Photo/Mike Householder)
Turkeys are seen on a farm Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025, in Sylvan Township, Mich. (AP Photo/Mike Householder)
Tariffs and weather
Trump’s tariffs on imported steel and aluminum are also raising prices. Farok Contractor, a distinguished professor of management and global business at the Rutgers Business School, said customers are paying 10 cents to 40 cents more per can when companies pass on the full cost of tariffs.
Tariffs may be partly to blame for the increased cost of jellied cranberry sauce, which was up 38% from last year in Datasembly’s survey. But weather was also a factor. U.S. cranberry production is expected to be down 9% this year, hurt by drought conditions in Massachusetts, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In Illinois, where most of the country’s canning pumpkins are grown, dry weather actually helped pumpkins avoid diseases that are more prevalent in wet conditions, said Raghela Scavuzzo, an associate director of food systems development at the Illinois Farm Bureau and the executive director of the Illinois Specialty Growers Association. Datasembly found that a 30-ounce can of pumpkin pie mix cost 5% less than last year.
Frozen turkeys are on display at a Meijer store Friday, Nov. 21, 2025, in Canton Township, Mich. (AP Photo/Mike Householder)
Frozen turkeys are on display at a Meijer store Friday, Nov. 21, 2025, in Canton Township, Mich. (AP Photo/Mike Householder)
Cans of pumpkin are on display at a Meijer store Friday, Nov. 21, 2025, in Canton Township, Mich. (AP Photo/Mike Householder) _
Cans of pumpkin are on display at a Meijer store Friday, Nov. 21, 2025, in Canton Township, Mich. (AP Photo/Mike Householder) _
Potatoes are on display at a Meijer store Friday, Nov. 21, 2025, in Canton Township, Mich. (AP Photo/Mike Householder)
Potatoes are on display at a Meijer store Friday, Nov. 21, 2025, in Canton Township, Mich. (AP Photo/Mike Householder)
Farm to table
Back at Old Brick Farm, which has been in his family since 1864, Doll walked among his turkeys the week before Thanksgiving, patting their heads as they waddled between their warm barn and an open pasture. In a few days, he planned to deliver them to an Amish butcher.
Doll sold all 92 turkeys he raised this year, with customers paying $6.50 per pound for what many tell him is the best turkey they’ve ever tasted. He enjoys a little profit, he said, and the good feeling of supplying a holiday meal.
“I just love it, to think that, you know, not only are we providing them food, but the centerpiece of their Thanksgiving dinner,” he said.
___
Associated Press Video Journalist Mike Householder contributed.
Morgan Geyser, 23, was expected to appear for an extradition hearing in Cook County on Tuesday after her arrest in Posen, Illinois.
Posen Police Chief William Alexander said Geyser is not facing any local charges in Illinois, because those charges would only prolong the process of sending her back to Wisconsin.
Posen police confirmed Geyser and a 42-year-old friend were arrested Sunday night at a Thorntons truck stop at 14840 Western Av., after officers responded to a report of two people loitering behind the building, and found Geyser and her friend sleeping on the sidewalk.
Police said Geyser initially gave police a false name, and after repeated attempts to identify her, she told police she didn’t want to tell them who she was because she had “done something really bad,” and suggested officers could “just Google” her.
After providing her real name, officers confirmed Geyser had fled a group home in WIsconsin.
Geyser’s friend, who declined to give her name to CBS News Chicago, was released from custody after she was charged with obstructing identification for initially giving police a false name.
The friend told CBS News Chicago she and Geyser are best friends, and she didn’t want Geyser to be alone after Geyser left the group where she was living home in Madison. They hopped on a bus to Chicago together, and then walked to Posen, about 20 miles south of Chicago, and 170 miles south of Madison. The two of them stopped walking after Geyser injured her foot. Geyser’s friend said Geyser was just trying to get as far away from the group home as possible.
Before her capture in Illinois, Geyser was last seen around 8 p.m. Saturday.
The Madison Police Department said on Sunday that they weren’t aware Geyser was missing until nearly 12 hours after she left the group home where she was living.
The Wisconsin Department of Corrections received an alert Saturday night that Geyser’s ankle monitor had malfunctioned. The department contacted the group home where she lived about two hours later and was told she wasn’t there and had removed the bracelet, Madison police said.
Geyser had been living in the group home after she was released from custody earlier this year from Winnebago Mental Health Institute, a psychiatric hospital where she had spent the last seven years. She was released after three experts testified she had made progress battling mental illness.
The friend who was arrested alongside Geyser on Sunday night said police told her Geyser would be sent back to the Winnebago Mental Health Institute after her extradition hearing.
Geyser’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Geyser and Weier fled after the attack but were arrested as they were walking on Interstate 94. They told investigators they attacked Leutner to earn the right to be Slender Man’s servants and feared he would hurt their families if they didn’t follow through. They had planned to walk to Slender Man’s mansion in northern Wisconsin after the attack, they said.
Leutner barely survived. Geyser ultimately pleaded guilty to being a party to attempted first-degree intentional homicide in 2017 but claimed she wasn’t responsible because she was mentally ill. The following year, Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren had committed her to a psychiatric hospital for 40 years.
Weier pleaded guilty to being a party to attempted second-degree intentional homicide with a dangerous weapon in 2017, but like Geyser, claimed she was mentally ill and not responsible for her actions. She was committed to 25 years in a mental hospital but was granted release in 2021 after agreeing to live with her father and to wear a GPS monitor.
Calumet City aldermen are raising concerns about Mayor Thaddeus Jones’ municipal credit card after receiving a statement that shows the mayor, who was reelected in April, spent more than $44,000 in one month.
The spending, much of which took place during the Congressional Black Caucus’ 54th annual legislative conference in Washington, led the City Council to lower Jones’ credit card limit from $50,000 to $5,000 and consider asking the mayor, who is also a state representative, to reimburse the city for an undetermined portion of the costs.
Second Ward Ald. Monet Wilson said she raised concerns about Jones’ spending after receiving a list of bills for approval Oct. 23, which included unauthorized charges to a Hooters restaurant in Lansing, steakhouses in Chicago and Washington and private tours of Washington.
“The spending reflected in this bill list reveals a pattern of wasteful, unauthorized and excessive use of public funds that cannot, in good conscience, be ignored,” Wilson wrote in an email sent to Jones and other aldermen Oct. 23, the day of the City Council meeting. “I had hoped that some of these line items would raise questions from members of this council — because raised eyebrows should lead to raised phone receivers. Instead, silence seems to have replaced oversight.”
In response, Jones wrote that her email was “full of lies and misinformation.”
“I expect you to vote ‘yes’ tonight as the funds were reimbursed and approved already,” Jones said.
The council voted unanimously to remove 25 separate charges from the approved bill list. Restaurant charges removed include $480 spent on two occasions at the Lansing Hooters, $510 spent at Chicago Cut Steakhouse, $120 spent at Chicago Pita, $1,100 spent at Rosemont restaurant Carmine’s, $310 spent at Washington restaurant Ocean Prime and $2,700 spent at STK, a Washington steakhouse.
Other spending removed from the bill list included payments totaling $1,900 to Amazon, four payments of $4,500 to KSM Logistics, $6,300 in payments made to three separate vendors via Paypal, four payments to Southwest Airlines totaling $980, two payments of $820 to Private D.C. Tours, $690 in Uber rides and $530 to Uber Eats, according to the Oct. 23 meeting minutes.
At a Nov. 4 special Finance Committee meeting, Jones said he gave a $25,000 check to the city treasurer to cover the charges removed from the previous bill list, according to meeting minutes.
Further inquiry into spending via the municipal credit card during the Sept. 22-29 Washington trip uncovered tens of thousands of dollars in transactions recorded, some of which were not included in the October bill list but are visible on Jones’ credit card statements.
Wilson Community Liaison
Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune
Calumet City 2nd Ward Ald. Monet S. Wilson participates in a City Council meeting Nov. 9, 2023. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)
The City Council considered canceling Jones’ credit card entirely during a Nov. 4 Finance Committee meeting. Alds. Wilson, DeAndre Tillman and DeJuan Gardner voted in favor of canceling the credit card, while Alds. Shalisa Harvey, Ramonde Williams, Melissa Phillips and Miacole Nelson voted against.
“It wouldn’t put the council at risk of having to comb through various potential items of expenditures that are questionable,” Gardner said.
All seven aldermen did vote to reduce Jones’ card limit from $50,000 to $5,000.
“I would hope that this policy is followed now that the amount has been reduced significantly,” Gardner said.
Phillips said she was unavailable for comment while Tillman, Harvey, Williams and Nelson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
According to the credit card statement that closed Oct. 2, more than $44,000 was spent via Jones’ municipal credit card in September. The city budgeted $5,000 for Jones to spend during the Washington conference, and the council approved $4,800 on Sept. 11 for his lodging at a Marriott Marquis hotel.
Wilson and Tillman were also approved to attend the conference and provided $3,500 each for travel expenses, meeting minutes show. According to the Sept. 11 meeting minutes, city employees Juel Stanley, Jericho Thomas and Scott Nnamah and Ald. Harvey were also approved, though the amount allocated for each official to spend was not specified.
Calumet City Mayor Thaddeus Jones talks to area residents about property tax increases in the south suburbs on July 22, 2024, at Thornton Fractional North High School in Calumet City. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)
Jones declined to be interviewed, but in a statement said “I stand firm in the decision to have staff as well as our elected officials travel to Washington D.C. to take part in all of the impactful workshops and seminars in which the Congressional Black Caucus offered to local governments, not-for-profits, and business leaders throughout the nation.”
During the trip, Jones said, he and others met with representatives for Illinois’s two U.S. senators and congressional leaders, and made a request for $20 million. He said one of the Hooters charges “was for employees from public works and city staff (both men and women) who were working overtime at a previous event. THEY CHOSE HOOTERS. I treated them to lunch.”
Jones is under federal investigation for tax issues involving his campaign funds, the Tribune has reported, with the mayor and state representative paying tens of thousands of dollars in the first quarter of this year to a law firm that specializes in criminal defense.
Among the records that emerged with a 2022 subpoena were previously undisclosed details of a 2017 hearing on a complaint filed by two Calumet City aldermen with the State Board of Elections that alleged Jones spent political funds for personal use.
The complaint cited a series of expenditures by Jones’ campaigns, including for outings to Chicago White Sox and Chicago Cubs games, and nearly $7,000 spent between 2014 and 2016 at Hooters. The complaint also claimed payments to the Jones Foundation, a charity Jones founded that is headed by his wife, were illegally reported.
Following a hearing, the elections board ruled there was insufficient evidence to support most of the allegations and Jones was not fined.
Former Calumet City Ald. James Patton, who filed the complaint along with Tillman, this year mounted an unsuccessful challenge to Jones for mayor, losing in the Democratic primary.
Jones also came under fire last year after charges from Hooters, a Gordon Ramsey restaurant, a hotel in New Orleans and a Cadillac lease appeared on his municipal credit card statements. Jones promised to repay the city for some of the $13,000 in scrutinized expenses, though some of the disputed charges were ultimately approved by the council.
CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago has entered what many consider a new uneasy phase of a Trump administration immigration crackdown that has already led to thousands of arrests.
While a U.S. Border Patrol commander known for leading intense and controversial surges moved on to North Carolina, federal agents are still arresting immigrants across the nation’s third-largest city and suburbs.
A growing number of lawsuits stemming from the crackdown are winding through the courts. Authorities are investigating agents’ actions, including a fatal shooting. Activists say they are not letting their guard down in case things ramp up again, while many residents in the Democratic stronghold where few welcomed the crackdown remain anxious.
“I feel a sense of paranoia over when they might be back,” said Santani Silva, an employee at a vintage store in the predominantly Mexican neighborhood of Pilsen. “People are still afraid.”
Intensity slows, but arrests continue
Armed and masked agents used unmarked SUVs and helicopters throughout the city of 2.7 million and its suburbs to target suspected criminals and immigration violators. Arrests often led to intense standoffs with bystanders, from wealthy neighborhoods to working-class suburbs.
While the intensity has died down in the week since Bovino left, reports of arrests still pop up. Activists tracking immigration agents said they confirmed 142 daily sightings at the height of the operation last month. The number is now roughly six a day.
“It’s not over,” said Brandon Lee with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. “I don’t think it will be over.”
Bearing the brunt of the operation has been Broadview, a Chicago suburb of roughly 8,000 people that has housed a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center for years.
Protests outside the facility have grown increasingly tense as federal agents used chemical agents that area neighbors felt. Broadview police also launched three criminal investigations into federal agents’ tactics.
Community leaders took the unusual step of declaring a civil emergency this week and moving public meetings online.
Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson said the community has faced bomb threats, death threats and violent protests because of the crackdown.
“I will not allow threats of violence or intimidation to disrupt the essential functions of our government,” Thompson said.
Questionable arrests and detentions
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has touted more than 3,000 arrests, but the agency has provided details on only a few cases where immigrants without legal permission to live in the country also had a criminal history.
The Trump administration takes to social media to posts photos of supposed violent criminals apprehended in immigration operations, but the federal government’s own data paints a different picture.
Of 614 immigrants arrested and detained in recent months around Chicago, only 16, less than 3%, had criminal records representing a “high public safety risk,” according to federal government data submitted to the court as part of a 2022 consent decree about ICE arrests. Those records included domestic battery and drunken driving.
A judge in the cases said hundreds of immigrant detainees qualify to be released on bond, though an appeals court has paused their release. Attorneys say many more cases will follow as they get details from the government about arrests.
“None of this has quite added up,” said Ed Yohnka with the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which has been involved in several lawsuits. “What was this all about? What did this serve? What did any of this do?”
Investigations and lawsuits
The number of lawsuits triggered by the crackdown is growing, including on agents’ use of force and conditions at the Broadview center. In recent days, clergy members filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, alleging they were being blocked from ministering inside a facility.
Federal prosecutors have also repeatedly dropped charges against protesters and other bystanders, including dismissing charges against a woman who was shot several times by a Border Patrol agent last month.
Meanwhile, federal agents are also under investigation in connection with the death of a suburban man fatally shot by ICE agents during a traffic stop. Mexico’s president has called for a thorough investigation, while ICE has said it did not use excessive force.
An autopsy report, obtained by The Associated Press this week, showed Silverio Villegas González died of a gunshot wound fired at “close range” to his neck. The death was declared a homicide.
In October, the body of the 38-year-old father who spent two decades in the U.S. was buried in the western Mexico state of Michoacan.
Many of the once bustling business corridors in the Chicago area’s largely immigrant communities that had quieted down were seeing a buzz again with some street vendors slowly returning to their usual posts.
Andrea Melendez, the owner of Pink Flores Bakery and Cafe, said she has seen an increase in sales this week after struggling for months
“As a new business, I was a bit scared when we saw sales drop,” she said. “But this week I’m feeling a bit more hope that things may get better.”
Eleanor Lara, 52, has spent months avoiding unnecessary trips outside her Chicago home, fearful that an encounter with immigration agents could have dire consequences.
Even as a U.S. citizen, she is afraid and carries her birth certificate. She is married to a Venezuelan man whose legal status is in limbo.
“We’re still sticking home,” she said.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
On Sundays this fall, Robert Bryant and 70-some other inmates at Lancaster Work Camp in Trenton, Florida, gathered in the facility’s dayroom around a 50-inch Samsung flatscreen television. They had to share. They shared everything. They slept in rows of bunk beds with no separation, and took turns using four showers and four toilets that had no stalls and no walls.
But on Sundays, Robert demanded the TV be tuned to whatever game the Denver Broncos were playing. And demanded nobody change the channel. This was his window into his best friend’s journey, some 1,750 miles away.
Pat Bryant and Robert Bryant first met playing youth football in the seventh grade in Duval County, Florida, and have called each other cousin ever since. They are not actually related. Or maybe they are. They’ve never traced the family tree far back enough. But they share the same surname and were raised upon an edict that snakes through the streets of Jacksonville.
“Loyalty,” Robert said on a call with The Denver Post in early November. “Loyalty comes first.”
Pat Bryant has never forgotten that, from Duval County to Illinois to the Broncos, through years fighting the gravitational pull that’s torn apart his inner circle. In March 2022, Robert was arrested for armed robbery and carrying a concealed firearm. Through the four-year sentence that followed, Bryant added money to an online Securus account so Robert could call him anytime. And Robert did.
“He kept me from going insane,” Robert said.
In mid-September, Bryant stood at his locker in Denver, gesturing at his phone. The rookie Broncos wide receiver pulled up his Securus app, and scrolled through several contacts at correctional facilities around Florida. ROBERT BRYANT. WALTER ROSAS. Bryant pointed to his notifications, where a voicemail from the Florida Department of Corrections awaited.
“See, them boys blowing me up right now,” he told The Post.
About eight or nine of his friends from Jacksonville are in jail, Bryant estimated. Sometimes he tries to help them or their families out.
“Every now and then, I’ll probably send about $1500,” he said. “But that (expletive) add up. With six, seven of them boys, that (expletive) add up.”
Bryant trailed off. He mumbled, looking back at his phone.
“That (expletive) add up.”
From the day that Robert met him in the seventh grade, Bryant wanted out of Duval County. Family was the foundation, and football was the vessel. It was easy to “fall into the street life” in Jacksonville, Robert reflected. But the street life had nothing for Bryant, his father, Patrick Sr., said. He tried to bring friends along with him. He begged them to stay straight. Not all of them heeded his words.
In Denver, Bryant has reached heights they all once saw for themselves on the fields of Jacksonville. He caught five passes for 82 yards in the Broncos’ 22-19 win over the Chiefs last Sunday, and he has established a foothold in head coach Sean Payton’s offense.
Bryant has left Duval County behind, but Robert and many others still live through his eyes. Bryant has not let them go, wherever he’s gone.
“This (expletive) like a dream come true,” he said in September. “… I see it as my livelihood. This is how I’m finna feed my family. I gotta do this for a minute. This don’t last forever. My main focus — trying to make some sort of mark, whether it’s on the field, off the field, whatever it is, just leave some sort of mark.
“So when I hang my jersey up, people gon’ remember who I am.”
Pat Bryant (13) of the Denver Broncos takes the field before the game against the Tennessee Titans at Empower Field at Mile High on Sunday, Sept. 7, 2025. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
•••
Patrick Bryant Sr. once served as the athletic director of the Police Athletic League of Jacksonville. He spent long days monitoring games on weekends, so his son rarely went straight home after Pop Warner.
The idle hours after Bryant Jr. actually touched a football were often the most fun — he and friends running their imagination across the grass in Duval County.
They invented their own game. The rules were simple. They found an empty Gatorade bottle and tossed it high in the air. Whoever caught it had to run to a nearby gate to score. If they got tackled, though, they had to fling the bottle back into the air.
They called it throw ’em up, bust ’em up.
“I used to throw it, get tackled, throw it up, just keep catching that (expletive),” Bryant remembered. “When I got tired, I’d throw it up. Let somebody catch it. Then, I was gon’ tackle their ass.”
When Bryant put on a helmet, his Pop Warner team often struggled with blocking. Young kids don’t love blocking. Bryant was the exception. He sometimes waddled up to his father and asked if he needed to play center or guard. Then he’d sneak up on someone, and — before it was rendered illegal — throw a mean blind-side block.
The hits always made crowds murmur, Bryant Sr. remembered.
His son was fearless, Bryant Sr. said. But he still needed protection. The Bryants moved into a gated, middle-class neighborhood in Duval County because Bryant Sr. knew his kids — three boys, one girl — knew plenty of other kids who were in gangs.
Bryant had love, stability and friends. His friends didn’t all have the same. So he brought them over to his house. He met Robert in the seventh grade, and Robert still remembers Bryant throwing him a block that sprung him for his first touchdown. Bryant met 6-foot-6, 340-pound tackle Walter Rosas and basketball star Alim Denson, too. The four went on to play football together at Atlantic Coast High in Jacksonville.
“They stayed at our house on the regular,” Bryant’s mother, Louanne Harris-Bryant, said. “They came to visit Pat. But they ended up being surrogate sons to us.”
Everyone was subject to the rules. No drugs. No alcohol. No going to anyone else’s place unless the Bryants knew who, what and where. Any girls who came over had to sit on the couch — with parents in the room.
“So,” Bryant Sr. recalled, “it was no funny business going around.”
Robert still clings to the memories. The four of them in the car after football practice one day, bumping a friend’s unreleased song before dropping Robert off at his house. Singing. Dancing.
“It wasn’t no care in the world,” Robert recalled.
The city’s temptations dragged them out of that car, away from innocence.
“Everybody know how Jacksonville is,” Robert said. “How, people talking crazy, this, that, this, that. You feel like you gotta prove a point. It pull you deeper into the streets.”
Illinois wide receiver Pat Bryant is kissed by his mom after the team’s 23-17 upset win over Kansas after an NCAA college football game Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Champaign, Ill. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
•••
When Bryant was 13, one of his friends died from gun violence.
Loss, of one kind or another, has piled up since.
Rosas once had FCS and Group of Five scholarship offers, Atlantic Coast football coach Mike Montemayor recalled. He was sentenced to a seven-year prison sentence in 2022, on two counts of robbery with a deadly weapon. Denson was the captain of Atlantic Coast’s basketball team, and grew so close with Bryant that they called each other “twin.” He was sentenced to five years in county jail in 2022, on multiple counts related to grand theft auto and attempting to flee the scene of a crash.
Robert, who’d lost his father at 12 years old, stopped caring about football.
Bryant used to tell Robert that he had to make it for his friends and his dad. They wouldn’t want you to do this, Bryant told him.
“It was a challenge,” Robert said. “Going in one ear, and out the other. I went the whole opposite way. When, I wish — I wish, I should’ve listened to him.”
Montemayor used to tell Bryant: The sooner you leave, the better. Jacksonville would always be Jacksonville, he said. Nothing would change. And Bryant knew football was the exit lane.
He didn’t run much track and field in high school. He didn’t have blazing speed. Eventually, his 4.61-second 40-yard dash at the NFL combine became one of the biggest knocks on him as a prospect. Instead, Bryant honed in on his strengths as a receiver. He started catching 50 balls before and after practices to cut down on drops, Harris-Bryant recalled.
“I surrounded myself around people, like, I shouldn’t have been around,” Bryant recalled. “But I had the courage and the heart to, like – ‘Nah, I’m gonna go a different route.’”
In January 2023, as Bryant was slowly finding his footing in his second year at Illinois, Bryant Sr. sent his son a news story.
Denson had died in prison.
“That really shook him up,” Bryant Sr. remembered. “That shook him up for a while.”
Bryant couldn’t save his friends. He still tried. But he realized how to save himself after he lost his first friend at 13.
“That’s when that hit,” Bryant said when asked about when he knew he wanted out. “Like … ‘Two ways to this (expletive). You’re either gonna be dead, or in jail.’”
•••
In February, Broncos receivers coach Keary Colbert took a seat with Bryant at a table at the draft combine in Indianapolis. Colbert had a standard list of football questions to get through in 10 minutes, the same he asked every player on their first meeting.
They began talking. And talking. They talked about Jacksonville, and Illinois, and life in general. Colbert realized, with 10 minutes almost up, that he hadn’t asked a single question about football. He resolved to schedule a follow-up Zoom with Bryant.
And then they went back to just talking.
“I knew, sitting across from him at that little informal table … I knew he was a dog,” Colbert told The Post. “Like, I can tell he was a dog. You know what I mean? At that point, I knew what he was as a person, as a player.”
Illinois wide receiver Pat Bryant runs the 40-yard dash at the NFL football scouting combine in Indianapolis, Saturday, March 1, 2025. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
The personality was infectious, Colbert recalled. The film was, too. The blocking, the toughness and the 6-foot-3 frame jumped out to the Broncos’ staff. All the characteristics of the Sean Payton receiver archetype.
“If they don’t bite when they’re puppies, they generally never do,” Payton said in October. “And so, you saw it.”
It was not easy at first. Payton barked at Bryant multiple times in one open camp practice. He yanked him from one team rep.
That did nothing to his confidence.
In one September practice, Bryant lined up opposite former Broncos receiver Trent Sherfield on special teams and told the 29-year-old veteran that he “wouldn’t get downfield,” as Sherfield remembered.
“Even just at the beginning of training camp, the one thing I realized about Pat,” Sherfield told The Post, “was that he’s not afraid of anything.”
Slowly, Bryant has carved out a role in Payton’s offense by doing the dirty work. He’s told running backs to “find 13” on a block if they want to score, he said with glee after an October game. Bryant has won matchups over the middle with physicality and footwork, despite not possessing breakaway speed, and has racked up 10 catches for 185 yards in his last four games.
It’s just throw ’em up, bust ’em up in Denver. Different time. Different place. Same kid.
“If you’re good at the sport, you gon’ thrive, man,” Bryant said when asked in September about compensating for speed. “If you get to worrying about, ‘What advantage I got’ – I mean, obviously, you watch film. That’s a different story.
“But when you think about advantages and all that, my mindset’s like, ‘Bruh, where we’re going, I’m better than you. I don’t give a (expletive) about no stats. None of that. I’m a better football player than you.’”
Pat Bryant (13) of the Denver Broncos celebrates catching a touchdown pass from Bo Nix (10) during the second quarter against the Dallas Cowboys at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver on Sunday, Oct. 26, 2025. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
•••
On Sunday, Oct. 26, Robert Bryant and the members of Lancaster Work Camp sat in the dayroom watching Broncos-Cowboys on that Samsung. Late in the second quarter, Robert saw Bryant isolate to the left side of the formation. His excitement rose.
Robert watched Bryant burst off the line, beat his man, and haul in a 25-yard ball from Bo Nix for his first NFL touchdown. He watched his friend turn to the crowd at Empower Field and hit the Mile High Salute — a move that instantly made Bryant a fan favorite in Denver.
Across the country in Trenton, Robert started jumping up and down and cheering so fiercely that a correctional officer stepped in.
You’re yelling too loud, Robert recalled the officer saying.
Listen, man, Robert replied. That right there’s my brother. He just scored.
“I’m almost finna cry,” Robert said.
Not everyone picked up when Robert called across his four years in jail. Bryant did. He flipped the camera on video calls and showed his friend around Illinois’ facility.
You almost home, Bryant told his friend. When you get out, come up here.
Rosas cries almost every night now, thinking of Bryant, three years into his seven-year sentence at the Jackson Correctional Institution in Malone, Florida. A year and a half ago, Rosas got into a prison fight and was stabbed 14 times, he told The Post. Family members and Bryant held their breath.
The first phone call he made to Bryant, after a month in solitary confinement, both haunts and galvanizes Rosas. He hears the pain, still, tearing through his best friend’s voice.
What are you doing, bro? I already lost Alim. I thought I lost you, too.
“There’s some times, I’ve felt down in here, man,” Rosas told The Post, his voice trembling over a jail phone. “I wanted to give up so much, man. But I know – I know I can’t do it. For him. I gotta do it for him. Alim already died in here. I gotta make it home.”
Bryant still talks to Rosas almost every day, and the two have made a plan for the 6-foot-6 Rosas to become Bryant’s personal security guard when his sentence is done in 2028. Almost three years after Denson’s death, the 22-year-old Bryant is now the godfather of his old friend’s daughter, too.
“He always told us, like, ‘Man, we good,” Robert recalled. “‘We’re gon’ make it out of here. Just keep playing sports. We gon’ make it.’”
“Sure enough, he made it,” Robert added. “And he ain’t leave nobody behind.”
On Nov. 3 at 8 a.m., Robert Bryant was released from Lancaster Work Camp after successfully completing his sentence. He got home and got his phone.
President Donald Trump on Saturday said Chicagoans are asking to “bring in Trump” amid a recent crime wave in the Democrat-run city.
At least eight teens were shot, one fatally, and multiple police officers were attacked Friday after a riot broke out in the Chicago Loop, the city’s downtown central business district.
“Massive crime and rioting in the Chicago Loop area. Multiple Police Officers attacked and badly injured. 300 people rioting, 6 victims shot, one critical and one DEAD,” Trump wrote Saturday in a Truth Social post.
“In the meantime, Governor Pritzker and the Low IQ Mayor of Chicago are refusing Federal Government help for a situation that could be quickly remedied,” he added. “The people are chanting, BRING IN TRUMP!!!”
Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Fox News anchor Bret Baier clashed in October over Chicago’s homicide data.(Breaking Tonight/Fox News Channel)
The riot, which followed a Christmas tree lighting ceremony, broke out near State and Randolph streets at about 10 p.m. Friday, FOX 32 Chicago reported.
City Alderman Brian Hopkins of Chicago’s 2nd Ward said 300 juveniles were rioting and attacking officers with mace and stun guns.
At least one officer was hospitalized with injuries, he confirmed.
At least six children were shot, including a 13-year-old, two 14-year-olds, a 15-year-old, a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old.
Less than an hour later, a 14-year-old boy was shot and later died at a hospital. An 18-year-old man was also wounded.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and President Donald Trump have butted heads over law and order in the blue city. (Scott Olson/Getty Images; Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The violent weekend came days after a man with a lengthy criminal history was accused of ruthlessly setting a woman on fire while riding on a Chicago train.
Lawrence Reed, 50, who officials said “had no business being on the streets,” is charged with committing a terrorist attack or other violence against a mass transportation system.
Train footage shows Reed allegedly coming up behind a woman and pouring the liquid on her head and body before lighting her on fire.(U.S. District Court documents)
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson later called the train attack an “isolated incident.”
Records show Reed has been arrested at least a dozen times since 2017, with charges including felony aggravated arson and multiple instances of battery.
Despite prosecutors’ request to keep him detained, a blue city judge released him back into the community with an ankle monitor.
Alexandra Koch is a Fox News Digital journalist who covers breaking news, with a focus on high-impact events that shape national conversation.
She has covered major national crises, including the L.A. wildfires, Potomac and Hudson River aviation disasters, Boulder terror attack, and Texas Hill Country floods.
NEW YORK (AP) — There was a time when presidential hopefuls played coy about their ambitions, crisscrossing the country under the guise of helping other candidates and deflecting when pushed on their obvious plans.
Not so for some Democrats considering running in 2028. With no clear party leader and Democratic voters raring for a fight, some could-be candidates are being far more transparent about their intentions, doing away with pretensions as they try to gain maximum visibility at a time when authenticity is in high demand.
“Of course I’m thinking about it. I haven’t ruled it out,” New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker recently told Fox News during a trip to early-voting New Hampshire, even as he stressed that his focus is on 2026, when he will be up for reelection.
To be sure, many Democrats remain circumspect.
Of the dozen potential 2028 candidates The Associated Press requested interviews with to discuss the changing dynamic, none was immediately available. Some Democrats deflect questions and say their attention is elsewhere even as they campaign for others in early-voting states.
On the Republican side, an entirely different dynamic is brewing under the surface. Potential candidates are keeping low profiles amid expectations that President Donald Trump will play kingmaker in choosing his would-be successor.
Presidential campaign strategists say the Democrats’ less guarded approach makes sense given the wide-open 2028 field and sheer number of candidates competing for attention. Among the others who have said they are considering a run: Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who also was a White House chief of staff, and Hawaii Gov. Josh Green.
“Old rules just don’t apply to anything anymore,” said Jess O’Connell, a Democratic strategist who advised Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign. She said the change was a good thing for the party.
“You’ve got to be out there every single day fighting and sharing your vision,” she said. “And I think the more runway they have to talk to people in this moment and to communicate about meeting the needs of the future,” then the better.
Alex Conant, a veteran of the presidential campaigns of Republicans Marco Rubio, a former Florida senator who is now Trump’s secretary of state, and Tim Pawlenty, a former Minnesota governor, said the dynamics of the emerging Democratic primary, with no clear front-runner, have changed the calculus for candidates.
“I think the Democratic primary is going to be the longest primary of our life. It’s hard to recall a field that is this wide open. And the Democratic base is so hungry for someone to take on Trump and win back the White House,” he said. “The more crowded it is, the more important it is to start early.”
Candidates, he noted, are also “immediately more relevant if you might be the next president,” adding to the incentive to say the quiet part out loud.
Voters these days are also turned off by the kind of politician-speak that was once the norm.
“One of the takeaways from Trump is that people want authenticity,” Conant said. “Voters are rejecting candidates who sound like politicians, so the rhetorical tricks that politicians have used for decades to avoid answering questions now just irritates voters.”
Not everyone has embraced the approach.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker played coy on stage during a recent interview with journalist Kara Swisher, repeatedly dodging her questions about his expected timeline.
“Blah, blah,” she responded as he tried to pivot to talking about the strength of the Democratic bench.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has been equally circumspect, refusing to acknowledge any White House ambitions or even commit to running again for governor, even as the shadow of 2028 follows him everywhere he goes. But during an appearance on “The Breakfast Club” podcast last month, as he reflected on the arson attack on his official residence, he sounded like someone who is eager to remain in the arena.
“I love public service,” he said. “You can’t walk away now, with everything that’s on the line. … This is not a time to quit.”
His perceived national ambitions have become a frequent attack line for his potential GOP rival for governor, state Treasurer Stacy Garrity.
“We need somebody that is more interested in Pennsylvania and not on Pennsylvania Avenue,” Garrity said recently on a conservative radio show in Philadelphia.
There are risks for candidates
That is one of the risks for candidates, said Mike DuHaime, a longtime GOP strategist who advised the presidential campaigns of Chris Christie, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and George W. Bush.
In 2013, he noted, Christie’s opponent in the New Jersey governor’s race often tried to use his national buzz as a campaign issue against him.
Candidates, DuHaime said, also need to strike a balance and make that they are not distracting from midterm races by funneling money or attention away from candidates who need them.
“I think it makes sense not to be so coy because people kind of get it, but they still should be careful about putting themselves in front of the country cause it could backfire,” he said. They “have to be careful that they still look a little bit like team players.”
In other cases, candidates have genuinely not made up their minds, and may be lured by party leaders in early-voting states eager to draw rising stars to their events, DuHaime said.
“It’s very intriguing and exciting for candidates and would-be candidates to be asked,” he said, with some deciding, “Let’s go experience it, the national circus. Let’s be part of that.”
Along with potential legal considerations, O’Connell, the Democratic strategist, also noted that many of those expected to run have day jobs they need to balance. While picking fights with Trump certainly puts them in the spotlight, it could have ramifications for constituents if the Republican president retaliates, meaning that candidates will need to choose their moments wisely.
“You have to fulfill your obligations to the states that you’re in,” she said. “It’s not so much that you’re playing a game, it’s that I think that there are some practical considerations.”
“I think we’re going to see people struggling with that,” she added.
She also urged candidates to embrace what she called a “Beyonce-Taylor Swift strategy,” referring to the pop stars’ boosting the economies of the cities where they performed on tour.
“What I would advise anyone who wants to be president in 2028,” she said, “is to roll up your sleeves and help.”
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle won swift approval of her $10.12 billion 2026 budget on Thursday, calling its passage a protection against President Donald Trump’s cuts.
“The Trump administration is threatening our communities and targeting the very investments that keep families stable and safe,” Preckwinkle said at a post-board news conference with allies, pledging to protect essential services like the county’s flagship health system, which “faces an enormous financial crisis at a time when (the Affordable Care Act) and public health itself are under threat.”
The budget “includes more than $320 million to shore up our strategic reserves, ensuring the county can weather whatever comes next,” Preckwinkle said.
Preckwinkle made special note of the fact there is money in the budget to expand county Public Defender Sharone Mitchell Jr.’s immigration unit, which will get seven more positions next year, bringing it to 15.
By adding more lawyers, county officials expect to be able to represent more clients who are in the midst of the immigration process or facing criminal prosecution and deportation. The unit, Mitchell said Wednesday, has so far represented 190 clients.
Like the last several years, the 2026 budget does not include any layoffs or new taxes, fines or fees. The county has not raised its base property tax levy in nearly three decades. Avoiding those unpopular budget balancers is a political boost for Preckwinkle and board members who are facing primary elections in March.
In another election year move, applicants chosen by lottery to get rebates from the county’s homeowner property tax relief fund for low-income individuals with significant bill increases began receiving checks this week, officials said.
The budget remains largely unchanged from Preckwinkle’s initial proposal in October. Commissioners will give themselves pay raises — to $102,170 per year from $99,194 —the latest such increase tied to inflation that they voted to enact starting in 2022. Finance Chairman John Daley’s salary goes up from about $105,000 to $108,198.
Recent tweaks include roughly two dozen new positions at State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke’s office and new mental health and domestic violence programs. And thanks to the city’s planned record surplus of special taxing district funding, there will be nearly $20 million in new spending on homelessness, food benefits, and help for renters.
Its easy passage and the “collegiality” board members celebrated stood in stark contrast to the budget struggles swirling on the other side of the City Hall-County Building, which several commissioners alluded to after quickly approving a series of amendments in the Finance Committee.
Preckwinkle declined to offer any advice to Mayor Brandon Johnson or the City Council as they continue to negotiate. “I’ve always thought it’s important to stay in our lane,” she said.
Even Sean Morrison, the board’s lone Republican, supported the budget, estimating the county was in the “best fiscal position” in the state thanks to difficult pension fixes funded by a sales tax hike approved in 2015, the decision to refinance hundreds of millions in debt, and a flood of federal dollars hitting Cook County Health. The county has received a ratings upgrade every year for the last four years.
Morrison announced later Thursday that he would not seek re-election, saying he had come to “recognize the limits of what one voice can realistically achieve in a system so overwhelmingly weighted to one side.”
But many expect the following budget to be more difficult. The 2026 spending plan will tap reserves to weather what county officials think will be stormy conditions in 2027 and beyond. Health officials predict state and federal changes could result in an estimated $400 million “negative impact” on Cook County Health.
Reductions in federal Affordable Care Act tax credits could lead to more uninsured patients with limited ability to pay their bills coming to county facilities for care. New Medicaid work requirements that kick in starting in 2027 could lead to an estimated 10% of current enrollees losing coverage.
Eligibility checks for Medicaid patients will also happen twice a year instead of annually, which could lead to another 5% to 12% drop in coverage. Other stresses to the safety net hospital system could also bring in more uninsured patients, leaders have warned.
The county expects to lose nearly 29,000 members in its Medicaid managed care program, CountyCare, next year.
To prepare for that and other looming cuts, the board agreed to move some of the nearly $1 billion sitting in the county’s “unassigned” reserves; $65 million will go into a “grant risk mitigation fund” in case the Trump administration scales back federal grants and $55 million would go to a pension reserve.
Nearly $200 million will help make up for money the county expects to lose thanks to a lawsuit first brought by the Illinois Roadbuilders in 2018. A judge is scheduled to rule in early December about whether the county improperly spent money that should have been used on transportation projects. The county spent some of that money on public safety offices they argued helped enforce traffic laws.
Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke speaks to Cook County commissioners during her 2026 budget hearing at the County Building on Oct. 29, 2025. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)
Elsewhere in the budget, State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke won budget tweaks to add 10 positions to an “in-house digital forensics unit” she argued was sorely needed for attorneys to skim through reams of video evidence. That is paid for with a reroute of money set aside for capital projects. Six other new technology positions and eight victim witness specialists assigned to domestic violence cases in the office were also added in amendments.
In a statement, O’Neill Burke said the budget “is a positive step” in efforts to reduce violent crime. The extra positions “will allow us to build on that progress, modernize our capabilities and improve our effectiveness in the courtroom on behalf of the victims of crime.”
“It will take time, diligence, and persistence to fully restore this office, but we are moving in the right direction,” the statement said.
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s plans to sweep roughly $1 billion from the city’s tax increment financing districts would deliver an additional $19.9 million windfall to the county. If that money comes through, commissioners voted to spend $5.8 million on help for renters in court, $4.1 million on homeless services and $10 million on food access. Another half a million dollars from Stroger Hospital’s budget will go to hosting community mental health forums for young people in suburban districts.
Gov. JB Pritzker and First Lady MK Pritzker met with Pope Leo XIV in Rome on Wednesday, where they discussed the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and the two formally invited the pope to visit Chicago, the governor’s office said.
“It was an honor for MK and me to meet with @Pontifex – a son of Illinois – to express the pride and reverence of the people of this great state,” Pritzker wrote on social media. “Pope Leo XIV’s message of hope, compassion, unity, and peace resonates with Illinoisans of all faiths and traditions.”
Leo, who was born Robert Prevost in Chicago and grew up in south suburban Dolton, discussed with Pritzker their shared concerns about the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement practices in Chicago, and pride in the people of Chicago for “speaking up,” Pritzker spokesperson Matt Hill said early Wednesday.
Cardinal Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, helped arrange the meeting, Hill said. Anne Caprara, the governor’s chief of staff, also attended, according to Pritzker’s office.
Earlier this week, the pope backed U.S. bishops who condemned the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and urged Americans to treat migrants humanely, the Associated Press reported.
The Trump administration’s enforcement actions, which have been winding down in the Chicago area in recent days, received widespread criticism from neighborhood residents, local officials and local federal judges.
The administration has said the mass deportation was part of an effort to rid the nation of the “worst of the worst” of undocumented people in the country who both have a criminal record and lack proper documentation. But even as the Trump administration has highlighted some individuals who fit that description, records suggest that has rarely been the case.
Of 614 people whom the Trump administration identified as having been arrested in the Chicago area, just 16 had criminal histories that present a “high public safety risk,” according to a list of immigration arrests produced last week as part of an ongoing lawsuit.
Federal immigration agents in recent days have directed their attention to target Charlotte, N.C., following the operation in Chicago.
The meeting between Leo and the Pritzkers lasted about 40 minutes, according to the governor’s office.
The Pritzkers presented the pope with art and a letter from a woman incarcerated at Logan Correctional Center; a book about Abraham Lincoln; a pack of Burning Bush Brewery’s “Da Pope”-themed ale; and a copy of MK Pritzker’s own book about the Illinois governor’s mansion, the governor’s office said.
The governor, in an interview with NBC 5, said the pope was “optimistic” about returning back to visit Chicago.
“I expressed to him just how proud we are that he is a product of Chicago and that he’s perhaps more popular than Michael Jordan,” Pritzker said in the interview.
The Texas National Guard has departed Illinois, ending a futile 41-day deployment in which its soldiers spent less than 24 hours working in support of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation mission.
The troops, who had been living at a U.S. Army Reserve training center in southwest suburban Elwood, left the facility around 1 p.m. Monday, according to a memorandum obtained by the Tribune. Additionally, any military personnel not permanently assigned to the Elwood facility would leave the site by Friday, the memo stated.
In the memo, which was sent to local government officials on Monday, an official with Homeland Operations, 88th Readiness Division in Fort Sheridan, wrote that the “status of forces at the Joliet Local Training Area (JLTA), Elwood” had changed.
As of 1 p.m., “all Soldiers that were utilizing the JLTA for living accommodations have departed the property. All established support requirements with your agencies beyond your normal scope of duties may cease at this time. There will still be a small element providing access control while contracted entities remove their equipment,” the memorandum stated. “Currently there is no definitive timetable for when the contractor will complete this action, however the Task Force Commander has directed that Friday will be the last day for any Military Personnel not permanently assigned to the Elwood Reserve center to be on site.”
The departure marks yet another sign that Operation Midway Blitz — the name given to Trump’s immigration crackdown — is winding down.
Last week, the Tribune reported Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino, the top official on the ground leading the Trump administration’s efforts, was soon departing Chicago for another assignment, and most of the agents under this command were redeploying elsewhere. On Friday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security closed its command center at Naval Station Great Lakes in North Chicago, ending a more than two-month stay there.
About 200 Texas National Guard members arrived in the Chicago area last month over the repeated objections of Illinois officials, who rejected Trump’s pledge to deploy the military domestically in response to heated protests here. The California National Guard also had troops temporarily assigned to the area.
The Guard members, however, spent only one day protecting a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Broadview before a federal judge blocked their deployment. The judge, however, allowed the out-of-state troops to remain at the Elwood training center, where they lived in mobile bunks and could be seen practicing drills during the day.
A week after arriving, the Texas National Guard sent home seven soldiers whose fitness levels seemingly “did not meet mission requirements” for their deployment. The decision came after some soldiers were ridiculed on social media for their physical appearance upon their arrival in Illinois. Widely circulated media photographs showed heavier guardsmen at the Elwood base, prompting critics to question how the troops fit in with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s insistence that all military members must meet height and weight standards.
The troops’ stay was otherwise uneventful, as underscored by the memorandum sent to local government agencies Monday.
“I would like to thank all of you on behalf of the United States Army Reserve Homeland Operations Division for your support over the last 2 months in helping make the living area safe by providing emergency response functions and services, traffic mitigation, and decontamination coordination,” wrote Joseph Arne, an emergency management specialist with Homeland Operations. “There wasn’t ever a moment where the Task Force was concerned for Soldier safety knowing your organizations were on stand-by.”
It’s unclear how the troop departures will affect the ongoing legal battle between Illinois and the Trump administration, as the issue is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.
While considering a motion to stay a lower court’s order blocking the deployment, the Supreme Court last month asked both sides — the Trump administration and the state of Illinois — to submit supplemental briefs dealing with a provision in federal law that Trump says allows him to dispatch National Guard troops in cases where there is an invasion, a rebellion or a time when the president “is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”
The key issue the high court sought briefings on was whether the term “regular forces” means “the regular forces of the United States military,” and if so, how that fits into existing law involving the president’s power to order up the National Guard.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The forecasts are eye-popping: utilities saying they’ll need two or three times more electricity within a few years to power massive new data centers that are feeding a fast-growing AI economy.
But the challenges — some say the impossibility — of building new power plants to meet that demand so quickly has set off alarm bells for lawmakers, policymakers and regulators who wonder if those utility forecasts can be trusted.
One burning question is whether the forecasts are based on data center projects that may never get built — eliciting concern that regular ratepayers could be stuck with the bill to build unnecessary power plants and grid infrastructure at a cost of billions of dollars.
Meanwhile, consumer advocates are finding that ratepayers in some areas — such as the mid-Atlantic electricity grid, which encompasses all or parts of 13 states stretching from New Jersey to Illinois, as well as Washington, D.C. — are already underwriting the cost to supply power to data centers, some of them built, some not.
“There’s speculation in there,” said Joe Bowring, who heads Monitoring Analytics, the independent market watchdog in the mid-Atlantic grid territory. “Nobody really knows. Nobody has been looking carefully enough at the forecast to know what’s speculative, what’s double-counting, what’s real, what’s not.”
Suspicions about skyrocketing demand
There is no standard practice across grids or for utilities to vet such massive projects, and figuring out a solution has become a hot topic, utilities and grid operators say.
Uncertainty around forecasts is typically traced to a couple of things.
One concerns developers seeking a grid connection, but whose plans aren’t set in stone or lack the heft — clients, financing or otherwise — to bring the project to completion, industry and regulatory officials say.
Another is data center developers submitting grid connection requests in various separate utility territories, PJM Interconnection, which operates the mid-Atlantic grid, and Texas lawmakers have found.
Often, developers, for competitive reasons, won’t tell utilities if or where they’ve submitted other requests for electricity, PJM said. That means a single project could inflate the energy forecasts of multiple utilities.
The effort to improve forecasts got a high-profile boost in September, when a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission member asked the nation’s grid operators for information on how they determine that a project is not only viable, but will use the electricity it says it needs.
“Better data, better decision-making, better and faster decisions mean we can get all these projects, all this infrastructure built,” the commissioner, David Rosner, said in an interview.
The Edison Electric Institute, a trade association of for-profit electric utilities, said it welcomed efforts to improve demand forecasting.
Real, speculative, or ‘somewhere in between’
The Data Center Coalition, which represents tech giants like Google and Meta and data center developers, has urged regulators to request more information from utilities on their forecasts and to develop a set of best practices to determine the commercial viability of a data center project.
The coalition’s vice president of energy, Aaron Tinjum, said improving the accuracy and transparency of forecasts is a “fundamental first step of really meeting this moment” of energy growth.
“Wherever we go, the question is, ‘Is the (energy) growth real? How can we be so sure?’” Tinjum said. “And we really view commercial readiness verification as one of those important kind of low-hanging opportunities for us to be adopting at this moment.”
Igal Feibush, the CEO of Pennsylvania Data Center Partners, a data center developer, said utilities are in a “fire drill” as they try to vet a deluge of data center projects all seeking electricity.
The vast majority, he said, will fall off because many project backers are new to the concept and don’t know what it takes to get a data center built.
States also are trying to do more to find out what’s in utility forecasts and weed out speculative or duplicative projects.
In Texas, which is attracting large data center projects, lawmakers still haunted by a blackout during a deadly 2021 winter storm were shocked when told in 2024 by the grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, that its peak demand could nearly double by 2030.
They found that state utility regulators lacked the tools to determine whether that was realistic.
Texas state Sen. Phil King told a hearing earlier this year that the grid operator, utility regulators and utilities weren’t sure if the power requests “are real or just speculative or somewhere in between.”
Lawmakers passed legislation sponsored by King, now law, that requires data center developers to disclose whether they have requests for electricity elsewhere in Texas and to set standards for developers to show that they have a substantial financial commitment to a site.
Electricity bills are rising, too
PPL Electric Utilities, which delivers power to 1.5 million customers across central and eastern Pennsylvania, projects that data centers will more than triple its peak electricity demand by 2030.
Vincent Sorgi, president and CEO of PPL Corp., told analysts on an earnings call this month that the data center projects “are real, they are coming fast and furious” and that the “near-term risk of overbuilding generation simply does not exist.”
The data center projects counted in the forecast are backed by contracts with financial commitments often reaching tens of millions of dollars, PPL said.
Still, PPL’s projections helped spur a state lawmaker, Rep. Danilo Burgos, to introduce a bill to bolster the authority of state utility regulators to inspect how utilities assemble their energy demand forecasts.
Ratepayers in Burgos’ Philadelphia district just absorbed an increase in their electricity bills — attributed by the utility, PECO, to the rising cost of wholesale electricity in the mid-Atlantic grid driven primarily by data center demand.
That’s why ratepayers need more protection to ensure they are benefiting from the higher cost, Burgos said.
“Once they make their buck, whatever company,” Burgos said, “you don’t see no empathy towards the ratepayers.”
Flight reductions at 40 major U.S. airports will remain at 6% instead of rising to 10% by the end of the week because more air traffic controllers are coming to work, officials said Wednesday.
The flight cuts were implemented last week as more air traffic controllers were calling out of work, citing stress and the need to take on second jobs — leaving more control towers and facilities short-staffed. Air traffic controllers missed two paychecks during the impasse.
The Department of Transportation said the flight reduction decision was made on recommendations from the Federal Aviation Administration’s safety team, after a “rapid decline” in controller callouts.
The 6% limit will stay in place while officials assess whether the air traffic system can safely return to normal operations, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said, although he did not provide a timeline Wednesday.
“If the FAA safety team determines the trend lines are moving in the right direction, we’ll put forward a path to resume normal operations,” Duffy said in a statement.
Duffy and FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said Wednesday that safety remains their top priority and that all decisions will be guided by data.
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Delta struck an optimistic note about how much longer flight reductions would continue, saying in a statement the airline looked forward to bringing its “operation back to full capacity over the next few days.”
Since the restrictions took effect last Friday, more than 10,100 flights have been canceled, according to the flight tracking site FlightAware. The FAA originally planned to ramp up flight cuts from 4% to 10% at the 40 airports.
The FAA said that worrisome safety data showed flight reductions were needed to ease pressure on the aviation system and help manage worsening staffing shortages at its air traffic control facilities as flight disruptions began to pile up.
Duffy has declined to share the specific safety data that prompted the flight cuts. But at a news conference Tuesday at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, he cited reports of planes getting too close in the air, more runway incursions and pilot concerns about controllers’ responses.
The FAA’s list of 40 airports spans more than two dozen states and includes large hubs such as New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Chicago. The order requires all commercial airlines to make cuts at those airports.
Airlines for America, the trade group of U.S. airlines, posted on social media that it was grateful for the funding bill. It said reopening the government would allow U.S. airlines to restore operations ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday which is in about two weeks.
How long it will take for the aviation system to stabilize is unclear. The flight restrictions upended airline operations in just a matter of days. Many planes were rerouted and aren’t where they’re supposed to be. Airlines for America said earlier Wednesday that there would be residual effects for days.
Eric Chaffee, a Case Western Reserve professor who studies risk management, says airlines face complex hurdles, including rebuilding flight schedules that were planned months in advance.
Airline and hotel trade groups had earlier Wednesday urged the House to act quickly to end the shutdown, warning of potential holiday travel chaos.
Flight cuts disrupted other flights and crews, leading to more cancelations than the FAA required at first. The impact was worsened by unexpected controller shortages over the weekend and severe weather.
The CEO of the U.S. Travel Association said essential federal workers like air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration workers must be paid if “Congress ever goes down this foolish path again” and there is a shutdown.
“America cannot afford another self-inflicted crisis that threatens the systems millions rely on every day,” Geoff Freeman said in a statement.
_____
Associated Press writer Audrey McAvoy contributed to this report.
A crowd estimated in the dozens gathered outside Village Hall in Morton Grove Wednesday – ahead of the Village Board meeting – for a rally where demonstrators hoped to urge town leaders to adopt anti-ICE resolutions.
Demonstrators chanted and hoisted signs during the nearly hourlong rally, pushing for legislation that activists say would help protect residents – and others in the village – against federal immigration enforcement agents, including from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol.
Morton Grove Village President Janine Witko said at the Nov. 12, 2025 Village Board meeting that the town adopting anti-federal immigration agent rules would not change much in the north suburb. (Brian O’Mahoney/for Pioneer Press)
Organizers say such “ICE-free zone” resolutions, as they are commonly known, call for explicitly prohibiting federal immigration agents from using public land and facilities as part of their immigration enforcement efforts in municipalities, including Morton Grove.
“I feel your frustration. I feel your anger. And I understand that protesting against inhumane immigration policies can feel futile. Sometimes, it can seem like our objections to this invasion are just a drop in the bucket,” Bushra Amiwala, a member of the Skokie School District 73.5 Board of Education and candidate for Congress, said to the rally goers. “But they’re not.”
Amiwala took part in the Morton Grove rally after participating in a similar effort earlier this month in her hometown of Skokie, where that Village Board was also urged to adopt an anti-ICE ordinance. She is among the candidates running to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky in the 7th Congressional District.
“When you take seemingly small actions like giving out ICE whistles, sharing (Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights) hotline resources and telling your local authorities to do more, it matters. It does make a difference,” she said during the Morton Grove rally.
Representatives from Indivisible Skokie-Morton Grove-Lincolnwood said the activist organization coordinated the demonstration. After the showing before the start of the meeting, rally participants moved inside Village Hall for the board meeting where some spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting.
Bushra Amiwala, candidate for 7th Congressional District representative and Skokie School District 73,5 board member speaks during a demonstration Nov. 12, 2025 outside the Morton Grove Village Hall. (Brian O’Mahoney for Pioneer Press)
Amiwala told Pioneer Press she would not address the Morton Grove board – as she had done in Skokie – because she is not a resident.
During the rally, the crowd also sang, and there were some impromptu speeches, including Amawali’s. One person called out “silence is violence,” and another person added, “the mayor is complicit,” referring to Morton Grove mayor Janine Witko.
Municipalities across Chicagoland, including in Evanston, Oak Park and Aurora, have adopted ICE-free resolutions. And in Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an ICE-free zone executive order in October.
However, Witko said her town adopting anything like that would be a pointless gesture.
“What is being asked of us tonight … would not change the reality of the situation,” Witko said during the board meeting. “The village does not have authority, as you know, over the federal agents or their operations. … Placing signs and making proclamations would be purely symbolic.”
Morton Grove and neighboring Lincolnwood are among the villages to publicly post that the towns would follow state law when it comes to municipal police and other employees getting involved with federal immigration enforcement. The Illinois TRUST Act prohibits local law enforcement from participating in immigration enforcement activities, the posts explain.
Witko repeated that Wednesday night, adding that village staff do not ask anyone their legal status in order to provide village services. Witko said that as far as she knows, immigration agents have not used village property for anything.
There were, however, reports of people detained in and near Morton Grove the week of Halloween. Officials told Pioneer Press that local police were not given advanced notice of the agents’ presence in town, and Morton Grove police did not assist.
Witko said defiance against the immigration enforcement agents could only invite more attention. The mayor said Evanston, which now has an ICE-free resolution in place, has not seen a decrease in federal attention.
But, members of the public addressing the Morton Grove board Wednesday night argued that even if only symbolic, taking a stance matters. People need something, they opined.
“As if symbolism is something pejorative. It’s not. There’s a flag right there, that’s a symbol. And that’s something that carries a lot of meaning. I hope it carries meaning to everyone in this room,” said civil rights attorney Marci Sahinoglu.
Sahinoglu lives in Skokie, and told that a neighbor of hers was arrested at Menards hardware store in Morton Grove. She said she drove the man’s wife to the parking lot to pick up his truck because the man was taken to El Paso, Texas.
“Symbolism matters,” Sahinoglu said. “What this village does, symbolic or not, matters.”
Another speaker said that if the village does nothing, that, too, is something.
“Your silence is a stance,” said Haley Aichholzer. “It’s a prime example of moral hypocrisy.”
Bob Burkhart also called the issue a moral one. He told the board he is no longer able to garden and maintain his lawn or shovel snow on his sidewalk. He depends on a crew to do the work for him.
The men who did that work for him are believed to have been taken into federal immigration custody, he said.
“We couldn’t believe this happened to our person, our hardworking guys,” Burkhart told village trustees. “You know what their offense was? Being Mexican. That seems to be very high on our nation’s priority these days; hating Mexicans.”
An elderly man, Burkhart said he and his wife aren’t sure what they’re going to do when the snow comes.
“For us having landscape service isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity,” he said. “We’re able to stay in our home. I cannot take care of the lawn. I can’t plant flowers, I can water them. We can’t take care of the snow. What’s the village going to do? What are we going to do?”
Jesse Wright is a freelancer. Pioneer Press staff contributed.
CHICAGO (AP) — The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has been receiving around-the-clock care at home, has been hospitalized with a rare neurological disorder, according to his Chicago-based organization.
The civil rights leader was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease over a decade ago. But his Rainbow/PUSH organization said late Wednesday that the 84-year-old was under observation for progressive supranuclear palsy, or PSP, a neurodegenerative disorder he has been “managing for more than a decade” and received a diagnosis for in April.
“The family appreciates all prayers at this time,” the statement said.
It is not clear if Jackson has both Parkinson’s and PSP, which have similar symptoms, or solely the PSP that was confirmed this year. A Rainbow/PUSH spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for clarity on Thursday.
The elder Jackson has been using a wheelchair and continued going into the office regularly until months ago, family members said.
In recent months, his relatives, including sons U.S. Rep. Jonathan Jackson and Jesse Jackson Jr., a former Illinois congressman seeking reelection, have been providing 24-hour care in shifts.
The reverend has struggled to keep his eyes open and is unable to speak. But he has found ways to communicate with family and friends who visit, his son Jesse Jackson Jr. told The Associated Press last month.
“He’ll squeeze your hand,” he said.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
“My great fear, of course, is that with the release of that information, which I think will be devastating for Trump, he’s going to do everything in his power to distract,” Pritzker told The Associated Press in a wide-ranging interview on Wednesday. “What does that mean? I mean, he might take us to war with Venezuela just to get a distraction in the news and take it out of the headlines.”
Pritzker, widely seen as among the top potential Democratic presidential contenders in 2028, also directed some of his sharpest criticism at members of his own party. He said the decision by seven Democratic senators and one independent to side with Republicans in a Senate vote to end the government shutdown was an “enormous mistake” that played right into Trump’s hands.
“I’ve been on team fight from the very beginning,” Pritzker said. “And I don’t appreciate when we’ve got Democrats who are caving in and doing basically what the Trump administration wants.”
Pritzker did not join calls for Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer to step aside, which has come from some Democrats who think he should have fought harder. “I’m not sure this is the one thing that people should focus on to put them over the edge about it,” the governor said.
He was instead more critical of the group of Democratic senators who voted for the deal, which included Sen. Dick Durbin, his own state’s senior senator.
“We were winning,” said Pritzker, pointing to resounding Democratic wins in elections across the country last week. “I do not understand why people caved when we were on the verge of getting real change.”
Since Trump’s reelection, Pritzker — an heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune — has been among the president’s fiercest Democratic critics. On Wednesday, he described Trump as “a narcissist” and said he believed the president “has dementia.”
Pritzker’s comments about Trump’s use of the politics of distraction came as newly released documents reignited scrutiny of Trump’s relationship with Epstein. In a 2019 email to a journalist, Epstein wrote that Trump “knew about the girls,” but what he knew — and whether it pertained to the sex offender’s crimes — is unclear. The White House accused Democrats of selectively leaking the emails to smear the president.
But few governors have witnessed Trump’s use of force as directly as Pritzker, who has seen federal agents descend on Chicago and its suburbs in recent months as part of “ Operation Midway Blitz.” More than 3,300 people suspected of immigration violations have been arrested since September, with some raids involving helicopters, tear gas and nighttime operations.
“This is part of the militarization of our American cities that Donald Trump is engaging in,” Pritzker said. “And it’s dangerous. It shouldn’t happen, but he’s got a purpose behind it. And it’s to affect our elections in 2026.”
Pritzker said the large immigration crackdown seen in Chicago would soon expand to other states, saying that he had spoken recently to North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein after reports that the administration might send federal forces into Charlotte.
“I’m hoping that the pushback will finally lead them to ratchet down their efforts,” said Pritzker.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
