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Braun has previously given Indiana roughly “65-35” odds of landing the team and has repeatedly highlighted the advantages of Indiana’s business-friendly environment compared to Illinois’ high-tax, high-regulation climate. Losing the Bears would represent far more than a symbolic defeat for Illinois. It would mean losing thousands of potential construction jobs, long-term economic activity, tourism revenue, and one of the state’s most iconic institutions. It would also send a powerful message to businesses nationwide about the direction of Illinois under Democratic leadership. The potential departure would fit a troubling pattern. Since Pritzker took office, Illinois has seen more than 500,000 residents...

STATEMENT FROM CHICAGO BEARS CHAIRMAN GEORGE H. MCCASKEY AND PRESIDENT & CEO KEVIN WARREN Yesterday, the Chicago Bears Board of Directors met and voted to advance our stadium development project in Hammond, Indiana, with the exact site to be selected. We believe a world-class stadium project in Hammond will transform the region, connecting Northwest Indiana to the South Side of Chicago through the Loop and across neighborhoods and suburbs stretching north of the city. It will bring Chicagoland together and deliver new opportunities to its residents and businesses.

The Bears took a significant step toward leaving Illinois on Friday. The Bears' board of directors voted Thursday to advance their stadium development in Hammond, Indiana, with the exact site still to be determined. This is this first time that the Bears' board has voted on any stadium site. The Bears' plans to leave the state they've called home since their inception for Indiana come just days after the end of Illinois' spring legislative session. "We believe a world-class stadium project in Hammond will transform the region, connecting Northwest Indiana and the South Side of Chicago through the Loop and...

Roughly 8% of the more than 3,000 people enrolled in the often-criticized electronic monitoring system in Cook County are missing, according to the chief judge. In other words: 243 people are missing. “Transparency is not optional — it is a core obligation of this office,” Chief Judge Charles Beach II said in a statement. “The public has a right to know how this program operates, what the data shows and what we are doing every day to make it stronger." Cook County State's Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke, a frequent critic of electronic monitoring, issued a statement Wednesday saying she welcomes...

🚨 THIS CANT HAPPEN! Cook County, Illinois just admitted they LOST TRACK of 243 criminals on ankle monitors, including 21 MURDERERS and 13 attempted murderers. One of them was out on monitoring when he shot and killed a police officer and injured another during an armed robbery last month. The Cook County State’s Attorney actually said the quiet part out loud: “Current safeguards fall short, especially when electronic monitoring is available for those charged with heinous crimes.” No kidding.

A top Chicago Democrat mocked an Asian police officer's penis size after being arrested for driving under the influence and tried to pressure an emergency room doctor who treated her to not testify, a court heard. Samantha Steele, 47, who represents Chicago's District 2 covering most of the North Side and northern suburbs, was charged with misdemeanor DUI after her November 2024 arrest. Her trial began Monday. Bodycam video shown in a Richard J. Daley Center courtroom captured Steele refusing a field sobriety test and then being arrested after stepping out of her car, according to the Chicago Tribune. She...

The Cook County judge who released a repeat violent felon with four pending felony cases on electronic monitoring last December, the same felon prosecutors now say escaped that monitoring and shot two Chicago police officers, killing one over the weekend, acknowledged during the hearing that the defendant likely would have faced “a minimum $1 million bail” under the state’s old cash bail system. But Judge John Lyke said that era was over. alley’s public defender, Lauren Widdowson, countered that he had changed while in custody. “He’s completed eight courses,” she said. “Particularly, he has completed the Rewired Program, Anger Management,...

Six progressive, anti-Israel candidates running for Congress in Illinois, all of whom AIPAC reportedly sees as potential members of the “Squad,” lost their primaries in the 2nd, 7th, 8th and 9th Districts on Tuesday. Most drew endorsements from the Democratic Socialists of America, members of the “Squad” in Congress or a combination of the two. Marc Rod, of Jewish Insider, wrote on March 16, the day before the primaries, that “a source close to AIPAC says the group’s main goal in Chicago is stopping who it sees as six potential Squad members: Robert Peters, Kina Collins, Junaid Ahmed, Yasmeen Bankole,...

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...

A federal judge in Chicago just made a decision that’s raising eyebrows — and not just among immigration officers.In a move that’s already stirring debate nationwide, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings ruled that ICE agents — yes, federal officers — can be arrested if they take migrants into custody at Cook County courthouses without a proper warrant. Let that sink in for a second. (snip) So, who’s actually in charge here — federal law enforcement… or local judges?And if ICE agents can be arrested for doing their jobs, what kind of message does that send to those who aren’t even...

CHICAGO (AP) — Cook County’s top judge has signed an order barring ICE from arresting people at courthouses. Cook County includes Chicago, which has seen a federal immigration crackdown in recent months. Detaining residents outside court has been a common tactic for federal agents, who have been stationed outside county courthouses for weeks, making arrests and drawing crowds of protesters. The order, which was signed Tuesday night and took effect Wednesday, bars the civil arrest of any “party, witness, or potential witness” while going to court proceedings. It includes arrests made inside courthouses and in parking lots, surrounding sidewalks and...

Chicago’s Democrat Mayor Brandon Johnson suggested on Tuesday that the Chicago Police should arrest ICE agents and other federal officers who he claims are breaking his new executive order aimed at hampering immigration enforcement. On Monday, Johnson signed a dubious executive order creating “ICE-Free Zones” to ban federal agents from using city-owned properties as staging areas for immigration enforcement. Johnson’s proclamation comes as President Donald Trump suggested that the anti-ICE actions by Chicago’s leaders are akin to an insurrection against the federal government. Now, the mayor is claiming that violations of his orders are a “crime” and those who break...

“Jails and incarceration and law enforcement is a sickness that has not led to safe communities,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson declared during a fiery press conference Tuesday, adding that he intends to “eradicate” that sickness. Johnson made the remarks after a reporter asked him about his administration’s public safety plan. “I get so sick and tired of people believing that the only thing that Black and Brown and poor people get to get in this city are badges,” he continued. “No. It’s a sickness and we’re gonna eradicate it.” Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd), who recently announced a campaign to unseat...

The truth is that Mayor Pin Head and Gov. Fat Boy don’t really care about black and brown people who are the true victims of violent crimes. They care about the Chicago Teachers Union. They care about shielding Democrat boss Toni Preckwinkle, the Cook County Board President and Cook County Democrat chairman. Boss Toni is a hard leftist protected by the corrupt corporate legacy media. She is without a doubt the architect of Chicago’s anarchy of crime. The Democrats are now the pro-criminal party. They are eager to defund police and clear out the county jail that Boss Toni considers...

The last time Jim Ryan ran for governor of Illinois, he offered voters a clear choice between a man who never took a dime in public life and Rod Blagojevich. And though many would like to forget it, they chose Blagojevich. "The infrastructure of the Illinois Republican Party has never really been for me," Ryan said over breakfast the other day as we talked about that 2002 campaign and his current run in the crowded GOP primary for governor. "I'm not a deal-maker. And senior Republicans knew my reputation. They knew I wouldn't be flexible." Seven years ago, Ryan, then...

The woman found not guilty by reason of insanity after running over a Chicago police officer with his own squad car is now asking the court to let her start anew—by changing her name. Whitley Temple, who was acquitted last year of attempting to murder Officer Ed Poppish during a bizarre 2022 West Side encounter, filed a petition on July 11 to legally change her first name to “Michelle,” according to Cook County court records. Temple fled the scene in the patrol car, briefly stopped at a gas station, then continued onto the Eisenhower Expressway, reaching speeds of 97 mph...

A man has been charged with punching at least four people and knocking them to the ground on the same day earlier this week in the Loop, South Loop and Lakeview neighborhoods. Joshua Rowell, 36, is charged with two counts of aggravated battery in Cook County Circuit Court, and one count of forcible assault on a federal judicial employee in federal court in Chicago. According to a Chicago Police Department arrest report, Rowell was arrested shortly before 5 p.m. on Tuesday in the South Loop, after he attacked a 20-year-old woman on the street in the 900 block of South...

CWBChicago has obtained surveillance footage of a shooting that left one teenager dead and another gravely wounded near the Douglass Park swimming pool on Thursday evening. Marjay Dotson, 15, died from a gunshot wound to his back, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office. A 14-year-old boy, identified to the media by family members as Jeremy Herred, has undergone surgery for a gunshot wound to his neck. On Saturday evening, Chicago police announced that murder charges had been filed against 55-year-old Charles Leto of Lakeview. CPD and fire department personnel responded to the park at 1401 South Sacramento at...

Mayor Brandon Johnson urged Chicagoans to “rise up in this moment” against President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort, even as he acknowledged Wednesday that the deployment of the military to help carry out immigration raids in Los Angeles could happen here. Johnson refused to say precisely what he would do if mass demonstrations in Chicago — perhaps as soon as Saturday’s “No Kings Day of Defiance” protests — provoke an L.A.-style federal response. The mayor would only say that he is concerned enough to have spoken directly with Gov. JB Pritzker and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle about the...