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CHICAGO — Thousands of Chicago teachers plan to walk off the job for one day on Friday, shutting down schools in the nation's third-largest district in what could be an early glimpse of a more prolonged strike still to come. Some 27,000 Chicago Teachers Union members have been working without a contract since June. They've overwhelmingly authorized an open-ended strike like the one that closed schools for more than a week in 2012, though that would still be weeks away. The union and its allies say Friday's action is an attempt to draw attention to their fight for a new...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel offered up a warning Monday to Donald Trump after the Republican presidential front-runner failed to denounce an implicit endorsement from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. "I think playing with dark forces [will] come back to haunt you," Emanuel said after casting his vote on the first day of in-person voting in Illinois. "This is not a joke." When asked whether Democrats should underestimate Trump, Emanuel gave what he called a larger statement on the issue. "Donald Trump, in 'The Apprentice' show, that was kind of a faux reality show, where you auditioned for a job,"...

As controversy swirls over high profile police killings in the city, hundreds of protesters blocked streets in downtown Chicago on Wednesday as part of a citywide walkout to demand Mayor Rahm Emanuel resign from his position. Hours earlier, Emanuel had publicly apologized for the 2014 police-involved shooting death of Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old black city resident, and pledged to fix the broken Chicago police practices.

CHICAGO - After Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel fired Garry McCarthy from his post as Chicago police chief amid the Laquan McDonald shooting fallout, protesters danced in the streets. However, CBS Chicago reports that while the protesters had gotten their wish with McCarthy's ouster, they said they wanted more, and have set their sights on Mayor Emanuel and Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez for their handling of the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald by Police Officer Jason Van Dyke. Van Dyke has been charged with murder for McDonald's death, and video of the shooting released last week shows him shooting...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Tuesday announced he has dismissed Chicago police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, citing a lack of public trust in the police leadership in the wake of the high-profile shooting that eventually led to a white officer being charged with first-degree murder in the death of a black teen shot 16 times in a Southwest Side street last year.

The indictment of former Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett closes a chapter in yet another sad tale of greedy, cheating city officials. Her lawyer says she has agreed to plead guilty when she appears in court, and I hope the judge throws the book at her. But ethical misconduct is only a part of BBB's legacy. The ex-CEO—along with the rest of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's crack team at the Board of Education—has left us with a whopper of a problem that could hit full force as soon as next month. I'm referring to the nearly $500 million hole in...

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has disclosed that his record property tax hike plan entails significant cuts for nearly 300,000 homeowners, leaving Chicago businesses predicting they will face hikes of up to 50 percent. The second-term mayor last week proposed a $544 million property tax increase, the city's biggest ever, to help fix one of the worst-funded city pension systems in America ... Emanuel's office, which has said one in four dollars of the tax hike would come from the city's central business district, did not contest the 50-percent figure. But a mayoral aide insisted Emanuel's plan is his best effort...

Education Secretary Arne Duncan grew up in Chicago and attended the private, prestigious University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. The pre-K-12 Lab Schools are progressive institutions ... resident Obama’s two daughters attended the school before moving to Washington in 2009, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s children are enrolled there now. And in the fall, Duncan’s children will be attending Lab, too, while his wife works there. .... his children will attend a progressive private school in Chicago, a school that does not follow key school reform policies that his Education Department has set for public schools. It does not, for example,...

NEW YORK – Bruce Wasserstein, the CEO of Lazard Ltd., has died, according to a Wall Street Journal report Wednesday, which cited sources familiar with the matter

Is Mayor Rahm Emanuel preparing to exempt some homeowners from his big new property tax? A series of fascinating signals is emanating from City Hall that suggest, to ease passage of his $500 million plan through the City Council, the mayor indeed is preparing a plan—being dubbed internally the "bungalow belt exemption"—to give a break to owners of middle-income residences. No figures are available as to exactly who would be covered. The Emanuel administration is in high message-control mode since word of the pending tax hike leaked out earlier in the week, with the mayor apparently trying to float ideas...

The pontiff has shortlisted Hollywood heavy-hitters for a special meeting at the Vatican this fall. The topic? Improving the church's portrayal in Western entertainment. Ari Emanuel might soon get a chance to hug it out with the pope. Sources say the William Morris Endeavor superagent and his co-CEO Patrick Whitesell are on a shortlist of media players whom reps for Pope Francis have approached for a special meeting at the Vatican this fall. The pontiff apparently is interested in discussing how the church is perceived by Western media influencers and ways to improve its portrayal in entertainment. The Vatican, which...

CHICAGO (CBS) — Mayor Rahm Emanuel says police are doing all they can to quell violence on the streets, but the problem requires having fewer guns on the streets and more moral values in the homes, reports WBBM Political Editor Craig Dellimore. Mayor Emanuel says he is both saddened and sickened by the rash of gun violence that claimed so many lives this weekend while police officers were on 12-hour shifts and the city’s summer jobs program is employing more people than ever.

Senior Obama administration officials, including the White House chief of staff, knew as early as 2009 that Hillary Rodham Clinton was using a private email address for her government correspondence, according to some 3,000 pages of correspondence released by the State Department late Tuesday night The chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, requested Clinton's email address on Sept. 5, 2009, according to one email. His request came three months after top Obama strategist David Axelrod asked the same question of one of Clinton's top aides

One suspect is in custody Suspect identified as Dylann Roof Nine dead after ‘hate crime’ attack on historic black church Pastor Clementa Pinckney named among the dead Share your accounts with GuardianWitness What we know so far

I can't post the tweet images in here, so you'd have to find those at the site. Prayers. "I hate that this is where we are in this country. I hate that a reprehensible, stomach-turning act like the Charleston shooting ever takes place. I hate the vitriolic responses to it on twitter. And I really, really hate that I have to write something, anything other than: My prayers are with the victim’s families, and America this morning. I also really hate that that statement in and of itself will generate controversy. There was a time in this country where we...

Every time an American community suffers a tragedy involving a firearm, the anti-gun crowd unveils itself in full tribal dress. Wednesday night, a 21-year-old sandy blonde-haired white man with blue jeans and Timberland boots walked into a historically black church in Charleston, S.C. and killed 9 people.  That’s a horrible, murderous act, made worse by the fact that the man is still at large. The New York Times reported S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley’s statement about the tragedy. "While we do not yet know all of the details, we do know that we’ll never understand what motivates anyone to enter one...

Wow, so Bob Woodward’s new book is making a lot of headlines to today and why shouldn’t it? It’s an amazing view into the White House and well, frankly scared the bejeesus out of me just knowing that this joker is in charge of our country and military. Where to begin? It starts with the front page story from the Washington Post which talks about Bob Woodward’s new book, Obama’s Wars. The book quite literally is a stark reality check for the American people on who their Commander-in-Chief is and how he thinks. The first bombshell that people are talking...

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Mayor Rahm Emanuel says he told film director Spike Lee that he's not happy the working title of Lee's upcoming motion picture is "Chiraq." The word suggests the city is as dangerous as the war zone in Iraq. "We had an honest, frank conversation," Emanuel said. Emanuel said he suggested the name would be offensive to the many good people who live in the Englewood neighborhood where the film takes place. The mayor says he thinks that the subject Lee told him his film would deal with - black-on-black violence - is an important topic that...

Could Mayor Rahm Emanuel be thinking about renaming Chicago’s airports, perhaps after President Barack Obama? Emanuel brought up the airports' names during a candidate forum Wednesday night at Chicago State University. The topic came up as the mayor fielded a question on why he quickly proposed, then abandoned efforts to name a new North Side high school after Obama and the South Side’s Stony Island Parkway after the late Arthur Brazier, a revered African-American civic leader who founded the Woodlawn Organization and was pastor of the Apostolic Church of God for 48 years. "We have to, in some way, whether...

A major union in Chicago, the SEIU has endorsed Jesus “Chuy” Garcia to defeat Rahm Emanuel in the upcoming runoff election for mayor. The general election is an anticlimax as only a democrat can win in Chicago, which explains why the city is in such rotten shape. The endorsement will come with about 2 million in campaign contributions and assures Garcia of additional ground troops as he tries to dethrone Emanuel. Many see this as a slap at the White House.