Free Republic

Dozens of plastic bags containing “repulsive” antisemitic flyers and possible “rat poison” were found scattered around a Chicago neighborhood Monday — in the third disturbing incident this year. A resident came across the hateful leaflets in the Lincoln Park area Monday morning and reached out to their local official. “This is not the first time our ward has seen incidents like this. To the people who are spreading these flyers, I have a clear message: you are committing acts of hate,” Timmy Knudsen, alderman for Chicago’s 43rd Ward, said in a statement.

Monday marked the five-year anniversary of Joe Biden’s online condemnation of a “hate crime” that never happened. On Jan. 29, 2019, “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett, who is black and gay, made national headlines with claims a pair of white supremacist Trump supporters violently attacked him. The actor said his assailants screamed, “This is MAGA country!” in the apparently far-right city of Chicago. “I will never be the man this did not happen to,” Smollett told ABC News in an interview with Robin Roberts two weeks later. By December 2021, Smollett was convicted on five out of six charges over staging...

CHICAGO — A newly acquired video shows four people, at least two armed with machine guns, unleashing a torrent of gunfire in Chicago on Wednesday evening. The shots left a 14-year-old boy dead and at least three others injured. Later, a 16-year-old boy fired a gun at Chicago police officers as they investigated the shooting. He was charged yesterday with six counts of attempted murder of peace officers. The video, provided to CWBChicago by a source, shows four people walking across a vacant lot in the 4200 block of South Wells around 8:20 p.m. on June 1.

Former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is taking on a new role in education, less than a month after she left office. Beginning this fall, Lightfoot will teach a course at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health tentatively titled "Health Policy and Leadership," according to an announcement from the school. Lightfoot, who left office on May 15 after losing re-election, will serve as the Richard L. and Ronay A. Menschel Senior Leadership Fellow at the school beginning at the end of August. The Menschel program, according to the school, "offers a rare opportunity for those who have recently served...

Lori Lightfoot is the first Chicago mayor in 40 years to lose re-election. She will now assume a teaching role at Menschel Senior Leadership Fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Ironically, Lightfoot will teach a course titled “Health Policy, and Leadership.” While there are worse choices to educate students about leadership, we can’t think of one off hand. Nonetheless, Michelle A. Williams, Dean of Faculty at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, considers Lightfoot an impressive addition: “I’m delighted to welcome Mayor Lightfoot to Harvard Chan School as a Menschel Senior Leadership Fellow. As mayor,...

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Exit, Lori Lightfoot; enter, Brandon Johnson — and the song remains the same. Or does it?It’s hard to imagine conditions in Chicago getting more desperate than under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, but new Mayor Brandon Johnson — in office less than a week, as I write — is already doing his damnedest to make everyday life and business survival in one of the country’s most iconic cities even worse.But imagine, we must.As reported by The New York Post, the iconic Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) opened in 1898, only 27 years after the infamous Great Chicago Fire. Proud Chicagoans heralded the...

Michael Jordan mostly kept himself out of controversy at the height of his fame with the Chicago Bulls during the 1990s but it was a comment about selling sneakers that drew the most ire. Jordan’s comment, “Republicans buy sneakers too,” resurfaced Sunday night in an episode of ESPN’s “The Last Dance” documentary. Jordan admitted that the remark, which was made during the 1990 U.S. Senate race in North Carolina between Democrat challenger Harvey Gantt and incumbent Republican Jesse Helms was "said in jest.”

Michael Jordan's enormous house in Chicago is still on the market after 10 years. Jordan has tried to sweeten the pot by cutting the price nearly in half and throwing in a complete set of Air Jordans with the purchase of the house. And yet, it remains unsold and he pays more than $100,000 in annual property taxes. The house was originally listed for $29 million and has every bell and whistle you can think of. Some "over-improvements" and the house's location are making it hard to sell the property.

An 18-year-old has reportedly been arrested for breaking into NBA legend Michael Jordan's $15million mansion in Chicago. The 60-year-old Jordan was not in the property at the time, according to TMZ, but the teenager was found inside the building after neighbors alerted the police in the afternoon of Tuesday, April 4. The teenager has been named as Raiden Hagerdorn by local media and has been charged criminal trespass and two counts of criminal damage to property. Jordan has not lived at the property since 2012. He has been trying to sell it for 13 years, initially putting it up for...

The Chicago Bears first started playing at Soldier Field in 1971, but the iconic stadium’s days could be numbered as recent news has accelerated the possibility of a new stadium being built in the near future. According to a report from the Chicago Sun-Times, the Bears’ franchise has submitted paperwork with the Village of Arlington Heights to begin the demolition of the Arlington International Racecourse. The 326-acre property has been described as a crown jewel of the area’s horse racing community. The Bears, who just finished an eventful NFL Draft, stressed that the request does not guarantee they will demolish...

It is sick out there and getting sicker. Chicagoans are living in a war zone. Over half the population has witnessed a shooting by age 40. The average age of the witnesses is 14. The average age for being shot is 17. Of those young people who were surveyed, 7% of blacks, 7% of Hispanics, and 3% of whites were themselves shot. This indicates that while so-called “black-on-black” crime may be at a higher level, a pathological percentage of young people are being subjected to the hail of bullets that has become a way of life in the Windy City....

Early in the morning hours of a polar vortex in January 2019, FOX's "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett claimed two White supremacist Trump supporters attacked him near his Chicago apartment in a racially-motivated hate crime that would soon incite outrage from activists and the media. It's the "hate crime" that dominated headlines, but facts proved none of it was true. In December 2021, the now-40-year-old actor and singer was convicted of five felony counts of disorderly conduct. One year ago, he was sentenced in March 2022 to 150 days in county jail. Brothers Abimbola "Bola" and Olabinjo "Ola" Osundairo, Smollett's accomplices...

CHICAGO, IL — After suffering a humiliating defeat in Chicago's mayoral election, Lori Lightfoot blamed her stunning loss on "those tricksy hobbitses." "They stole it from us!!" wailed Ms. Lightfoot. "Nasty, tricksy little hobbitses!!" The campaign watched the disastrous results come in from a dimly lit sushi restaurant, where the enraged Ms. Lightfoot gorged herself on juicy-sweet raw fish. "Gone!! It's gone, precious!!" cried Ms. Lightfoot to supporters. "Filthy, sneaky hobbitses!! Wicked, tricky, false! Curse them! CURSE THEM!!!" Long considered the electoral frontrunner, Ms. Lightfoot saw her lead evaporate as supporters became steadily more concerned about being murdered. "I...

Back in our early days in the U.S., circa 1964-66, we lived in Wisconsin and traveled to Chicago to visit a Cuban store there. It was a quick drive on I-94 and the sights of Lake Shore Drive and O'Hare Airport were spectacular. My parents always complimented how clean and orderly everything was. I guess that there was something good about Mayor Richard Daley after all. On Tuesday night, Mayor Lightfoot was rejected by the voters. She came in 3rd place and will start packing her bags for a post-political life. My guess is that she'll end up at MSNBC...

CHICAGO — Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot lost her bid for re-election Tuesday, ending her historic run as the city’s first Black woman and first openly gay person to serve in the position. The Democratic incumbent failed to gain enough votes in the nine-person race to move on to an April 4 runoff election, according to projections by The Associated Press. Paul Vallas, a former CEO of Chicago schools, will face Brandon Johnson, a Cook County commissioner endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union. Ideologically, the choice between Vallas and Johnson is stark. Vallas ran as a moderate law-and-order candidate, while Johnson...

UPDATE: Chicago Mayoral Election: Paul Vallas: 134,844 Brandon Johnson: 74,992 Lori Lightfoot: 58,807 73 % in.

CHICAGO — Paul Vallas is poised to advance to the April runoff for mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson is in the lead for the second runoff slot to take him on — and incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot appears headed for defeat, according to preliminary results in the first round of voting. With 84 percent of precincts reporting, Vallas had secured about 35 percent of the vote, followed by Johnson with 20 percent and Lightfoot with 16 percent.

The first leg of the Chicago mayoral contest will close on Tuesday, Feb. 28, as the nine-candidate field is whittled down to two. The top two finishers will face each other in a runoff election scheduled for April 4, and the battle royale to see which of those two candidates will be the next mayor has degenerated into a real slugfest. There are four major candidates: incumbent mayor Lori Lightfoot, progressive U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García, Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, and Paul Vallas, a former head of schools in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New Orleans. Vallas claims to be the...

Chicago voters will be casting ballots for mayor, members of the City Council and, for the first time in city history, members of police district councils on Tuesday. Early voting —both in person and by mail — has been ongoing for weeks. But if you haven’t made your choices yet, we have organized our coverage to help you make up your mind. We have scores of stories about the mayoral race and the nine candidates running for mayor, including incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot. We also have tackled the biggest of the 50 aldermanic races, as well as a primer on...