Free Republic

The Chicago Teachers Union on Saturday promoted a protest of the Trump administration's action in Venezuela hosted by a who's who of far-left organisations, including a group that openly supports socialism. Activists from the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition, along with activists from the Party for Socialism and Liberation, organised just hours after news that Venezuela's socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro had been captured by U.S. special forces in a daring mission during the dead of night. By Saturday afternoon, protesters in cities across the nation came together with signs and promotional material made specially for...

Cancer doctors have grown accustomed to good news. Over the past three decades, lung cancer deaths have plummeted by 40%. Breast cancer mortality has dropped 44%. Prostate cancer deaths have fallen by half. Colon cancer, once a leading killer, now claims 50% fewer lives than in 1990. These victories represent billions in research funding, surgical innovations, targeted therapies, and nationwide screening campaigns—the sum total of modern medicine’s war on cancer. Yet one malignancy refuses to follow the script. Pancreatic cancer—the silent executioner lurking behind the stomach, wrapped around vital blood vessels, often symptomless until the final act—is not only resisting...

Last month, activists packed the Chicago Teachers Union Center for the annual conference of the National Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression (NAARPR). Attendees gathered to discuss fighting ICE and confronting the Trump administration. Despite NAARPR’s relative obscurity—it was founded in 1973 to agitate for the release of Angela Davis and has since become a catch-all activist organization—the group’s conference featured several high-profile speakers, including Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson, who claimed to have inherited a “white supremacist system.” The event was hosted by the Chicago Teachers Union, one of Johnson’s most aggressive backers. Johnson’s appearance, along with that of several...

Chicago had a loud, and profane, reaction when Jimi Hendrix invited them on tour. It was 1969 and the band, then known as Chicago Transit Authority, was turning heads with a style that infused a dynamic horn section with rock. In a recent appearance on the Broken Record podcast, co-founding members Lee Loughnane and Jimmy Pankow recalled crossing paths with Hendrix. “We were at the Whisky a Go-Go on the Sunset Strip,” Pankow remembered. “We were opening for Albert King. And we were in the dressing room waiting to go back on. There was a knock on the door. And...

Over the last year, these online witches have been credited with saving weddings, securing jobs, influencing basketball games and sparking outrage after Charlie Kirk’s death.Katie Begley needed “some good juju” this summer. Begley, a New York-based content creator and fitness instructor, was waiting to hear back about several big work opportunities, including a potential Little Caesars commercial with Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley. So she turned to a figure praised online for offering low-stakes help for the price of a latte: an Etsy witch. “It can’t hurt. I love witches. I love magic. I love all of that,” Begley,...

Before I started writing at PJ Media, I spent about 15 years as an architectural designer. I never really loved the work, mostly because I never worked at a firm that tackled the kind of big, ambitious projects that really excited me. But even if I had, there's one project I would've hated regardless: the Obama Presidential Center. And trust me, it’s not just because it's Obama's vanity project. The building is hideous. The Obama Presidential Center is a 225-foot-tall gray monstrosity rising on Chicago's South Side, and it looks more like a prison than a museum. The project has...

🚨 HOLY CRAP! President Trump could now deploy the MARINES to Chicago after Democrats brought the case up to SCOTUS "The unintended consequence here might be POTUS has to call the 82nd Airborne, or the Marines, or the 101st Airborne Division, like President Eisenhower did after Brown v Board." "Trump might have to do that first to protect federal buildings and ICE agents. THEN, if they fail, he can then call out the National Guard." HUGE BACKFIRE! DO IT!

The odd design of former President Barack Obama’s new presidential center is supposed to evoke unity and not Darth Vader, according to an Obama Foundation official, who explained the bizarre look of the austere building. The $830 million monolith — slated to open in Chicago next year — has drawn comparisons to the “Death Star” on social media, and some locals have described it as a “concrete tomb” and a “monstrosity.” “The shape of the building was actually meant to mimic four hands coming together to show the importance of our collective action,” Obama Foundation Deputy Director Kim Patterson told...

A potential veto of Chicago’s 2026 budget by Mayor Brandon Johnson could trigger the Windy City's first-ever municipal shutdown. Johnson reportedly rebuked the budget passed by council over the weekend, which lacks the mayor’s favored per-employee "head tax" on corporations, as "morally bankrupt." If Johnson were to veto the budget, it would place the onus back on city council to rehash a plan that could get signed before Dec. 30 – or plunge the city into shutdown. City Council lacks any Republican representation – with a Democratic majority of 48 plus two independents, so the situation represents a clash within...

An amateur sleuth and self-taught cryptography expert is convinced he’s cracked the notorious unsolved Zodiac and Black Dahlia murders — and that the killer is the same man. Alex Baber — a 50-year-old West Virginian with autism — used AI programs and his codebreaking prowess to whittle down the Zodiac killer’s infamous 1970 clue he sent to newspapers and identify a single suspect with an overwhelming connection across all the murders: a late Chicagoan named Marvin Margolis. “It’s my autism. Once I start on something, I have to see it through. The deeper I go, the harder I push. My...

The other day R. Bruce Dold, the great Pulitzer Prize winning editor of the Chicago Tribune, died. And our friend Cory Franklin wrote a beautiful column about Bruce. At the church there were many people there, people I knew, former colleagues at the Tribune who loved and respected Bruce. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were not there for Bruce alone, but that we also were mourning journalism itself. At least Chicago journalism, the Chicago newspapers. I’m not trying to redo Dr. Franklin’s great work about Bruce, but I did add an editor’s note explaining that while he...

The team said they are not asking for state taxpayer dollars, but are still seeking a commitment to local infrastructure and reasonable property tax certainty.

Pope Leo XIV is expected to name Bishop Ronald Hicks of Joliet, Illinois, to succeed retiring 75 year old Timothy Cardinal Dolan as archbishop of New York, sources briefed on the transition say. About Bishop Hicks Pope Leo is from Illinois, and he has tapped a fellow Illinois native to lead the archdiocese of New York. Hicks, 58, and Pope Leo have much in common. They were both born and raised in suburban Chicago, with Hicks being born in Harvey and raised in South Holland. Both men also speak fluent Spanish after spending years ministering to the poor in South...

CHICAGO, Dec 13 (Reuters) - The windowless newsroom of The Phoenix, the Loyola University Chicago newspaper, hums like an old refrigerator. A coffee pot burbles in the corner as juniors Julia Pentasuglio and Ella Daugherty lean over a glowing laptop, updating a Google map. Each red pin marks a sighting of federal immigration agents near campus and the surrounding neighborhoods. Nearby, editor-in-chief Lilli Malone scrolls through reports from Rogers Park, a neighborhood along Chicago's lakefront where 80 languages mix. There were new pins from seven sightings that day alone - reports of vans barreling down side streets, masked immigration officers...

Warning - a very hard article to read. But not as hard as the actual violence or the perversion of law that allowed this to happen. Progressives made the Blue Line attack possible. It's time to end their stranglehold over Chicago You don’t hate the Neo Machine enough.No matter how much you despise the Godfather of the crimes against Chicago humanity, JB Pritzker, aka Governor “Let ‘em leave” Pritzker.No matter how much you loathe Brandon “Mayor 6.6” Johnson…...No matter how much you detest his bosses: Boss Toni Preckwinkle and the instruments of her evil, late, unlamented apprentices: “State’s Attorney” who...

CHICAGO (WLS) -- A federal appeals court is blocking the release of hundreds of people detained by immigration agents during "Operation Midway Blitz" in the Chicago area, at least for now. The case centers around whether the government violated a consent decree banning warrantless arrests in certain cases. The appeals court said each detainee's case should be evaluated individually. A federal judge has ordered the release of hundreds of migrants arrested in the Chicago area, including some arrested under the Department of Homeland Security's "Operation Midway Blitz," by Nov. 21 after finding their arrests could have violated a 2022 consent...

A 35-year-old woman who uses a wheelchair was sexually assaulted at a CTA station in the Loop on Thursday morning, according to a Chicago police report. The woman was at the Jackson Red Line station when a man assaulted her around 2:57 a.m. She sought help from a CTA canine security officer and was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital for treatment. CPD said she was in good condition.

Officer Krystal Rivera’s family says in the wrongful death suit that Officer Carlos Baker was struggling to accept her decision to end their romantic relationship when he shot her in her back in Chatham on June 5. The mother of Chicago police Officer Krystal Rivera filed a wrongful death lawsuit Wednesday in which she says her daughter’s partner, Officer Carlos Baker, was struggling to accept her decision to end their romantic relationship when he fatally shot her during a foot chase on June 5. The lawsuit, filed in Cook County court against Baker and the Chicago Police Department, says the...

I’ve spent my life covering Chicago politics and Chicago political corruption. So, I guess you could say that I’ve seen some things: Many years ago, when I was first starting out in the newspapering business, the vaunted Chicago press corps—the corporate legacy media–was bowing and sniveling before a black “reform” mayor (not named Johnson) for fear of being branded as racists. This was just as the mayor’s top aide wearing a bad wig, collected rent in a city limousine from impoverished women living in his slum buildings full of rats. Or later, when Chicago politicians were terrified into silence when...

A former Cook County judge who stole large sums of money from an elderly friend who served as a Tuskegee Airman received a probationary sentence on Friday. Patricia Martin, 66, received four years of probation after pleading guilty to theft of $100,000 to $500,000, according to court records. The judge also ordered her to pay $122,763.73 in restitution and comply with standard probation conditions that include random drug testing. Martin once served as presiding judge of the Child Protection Division and retired in 2020. Prosecutors initially accused her of stealing nearly $250,000 from then-95-year-old Oscar Wilkerson, a longtime friend whose...