Free Republic

Lori Lightfoot, the first Black woman and the first openly gay person ever to serve as mayor of Chicago, on Tuesday became a one-term mayor. Mayor Lori Lightfoot finished third in Tuesday’s election with 16.89% of the vote, behind former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas at 33.95% and Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson with 20.32%.

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...

CHICAGO - No one has a clear opening to win the Chicago mayor’s race this week - not even the person who won the job just four years ago. Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a Democrat, faces eight challengers in Tuesday’s contest and neither money, advertising nor polling are clear indicators of the outcome in a race almost entirely about crime. The only thing that seems certain among political insiders, alderpeople, members of the congressional delegation, pollsters and the mayor herself, is that Lightfoot won’t crack the 50 percent needed to avoid a two-person runoff on April 4. “I’m very confident that...

Democratic Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot suggested Thursday that street vendors stop using cash in order to quell Chicago’s crime spike.

Chicago, Illinois, Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) now says it is “immoral” and “unpatriotic” for Gov. Greg Abbott (R) to bus migrants from Texas to the sanctuary city. Last week, Abbott started busing border crossers to the sanctuary city of Chicago after sending thousands over the last few months to the sanctuary cities of New York City, New York, and Washington, D.C. Initially, Lightfoot balked at the migrant buses by calling them “racist and xenophobic.” While visiting a shelter last week, Lightfoot called Abbott’s buses “immoral, unpatriotic” and claimed the operation “defies the values of who we are as Americans.” “We...

Operation Lone Star is moving on to Chicago, where a busload of illegal aliens arrived on Thursday after being released by the Biden administration in Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas) has been busing a small fraction of the illegal aliens who have arrived in Texas following their release by the government with a slip of paper with a court date — usually two or three years from today. So far, there have been about 7,900 sent to Washington, D.C. with another couple of thousand sent to New York City. Thursday’s busloads were the first sent to Chicago. Mayor Lori Lightfoot...

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has sparked controversy due to a program designed to bus asylum-seekers to northern "sanctuary cities," and on Wednesday he said one of those transports arrived in the city of Chicago. Abbott’s office announced that the asylum-seekers were dropped off at Chicago’s Union Station, saying that Chicago will join Washington, D.C. and New York as a location for his administration’s “drop off policy.” “President Biden’s inaction at our southern border continues putting the lives of Texans – and Americans – at risk and is overwhelming our communities,” Abbott said in a statement. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot says...

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has accused a conservative super PAC of darkening her skin in a television ad meant to slam Illinois' Democrat Governor J.B. Pritzker, calling the commercial a 'cheap trick' to scare people into voting for their candidate. The 30-second ad - which warns in big, white lettering that 'Chicago violence is coming to the suburbs' and shows gun battles on the city's streets - touts Republican Darren Bailey as the solution to the city's current crime woes, and uses comments uttered by Lightfoot in a recent speech to seal this sentiment home. The ad opens with Lightfoot,...

Under pressure to address skyrocketing street crime last summer, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a $1 million reward program for people who report illegal guns. “I want you to know that I recognize that people are scared. People all over the city. This is the topic of conversation,” Lightfoot said as she announced the fund’s creation in July 2021. “Gun violence is holding us back from realizing our individual potential and our potential and greatness as a city.” In the year since Lightfoot announced the initiative, however, the city has only paid out $10,395 to tipsters, according to the police...

What if we’re stuck with Lori Lightfoot? Not just for another year, but for another term. Would it really be so bad? Let’s think this through. Like you, I was hoping one of the usual suspects - Paul Vallas, Mike Quigley - would come charging into the mayor’s race, someone significant we could get excited about. And no, Willie Wilson tossing away fistfuls of cash doesn’t count. But each potential savior took a long look at our churning municipal disaster, then fled. Another kick to prostrate Chicago: a city so broken nobody even wants to run it. Except Lightfoot, though...

A reporter has told Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot that she has a cheek to talk of running for re-election given soaring crime in the Windy City. The journalist, named only as Rob, took Lightfoot to task during a question and answer session Wednesday, saying: 'Real Chicagoans are asking me, how can you possibly even consider running for re-election for mayor of the city of the Chicago after all the harm you've caused?' Lightfoot kept her cool but was clearly rattled by the ambush, and responded: 'I disagree with you fundamentally and I don't think I need to address and dignify...

A Chicago city employee went to cash her paycheck at the bank last week but it wouldn’t clear. She tried to deposit it the day after it was issued but it bounced.Lori Lightfoot is too busy pushing vaccine mandates on Chicagoans than facing the surging crime rate or paying her employees.

Chicago police are considering closing streets in the city's downtown area, along with other potential strategies, in an effort to avoid a repeat of weekend mayhem that resulted in the arrests of more than 20 people last Saturday, ABC Chicago reported on Tuesday. Citing an internal police memo that was given to police commanders on Tuesday and obtained by the ABC affiliate's investigative team, the affiliate reported that downtown streets near Michigan Ave. and lakefront parks could be closed. Police sources told the affiliate, however, that no plans had been announced and that such closures were meant to be used...

Anyone who’s ever quit a job has probably dreamed of writing a delicious “kiss my *ss” email to the companywide distribution list and hitting “send” just before they walk out the door for the last time. But a veteran Chicago police leader pretty much did it for real, although he opted to withhold actual names in favor of not-so-subtle hints about who he was writing about. The author of the red-hot communique is Melvin Roman, who was unceremoniously dumped as commander of the police district that includes Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s home after “someone” became displeased with protests that closed down...

“Shooting unarmed citizens is fundamentally wrong,” wrote Gov. JB Pritzker in his statement on the Rittenhouse verdict, which is pasted below. Moment in the video when Rittenhouse shot rioter aiming a pistol at him. That’s a lie. Pritzker should retract the statement and apologize. One had a pistol pointed at Rittenhouse at the moment Rittenhouse fired, captured in video. More fundamentally, Pritzker knows full well that it is entirely appropriate and lawful to use a gun in self-defense when facing imminent bodily harm of any kind, which the jury rightly concluded was shown by the evidence respecting each of the...

CHICAGO (WLS) -- COVID-19 vaccination efforts in Chicago and across Illinois took center stage Wednesday afternoon as Congress looks for ways to get more shots in arms. With the vaccine now being available for kids age 5 to 11, and with COVID cases ticking upward as we approach the holidays, there is renewed effort to get more people vaccinated. "Nationwide more than 20% of all adults and children over the age of 12 have not yet received even one dose of vaccine," said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Northwest suburbs. Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Dr. Ngozi Ezike testified Wednesday before a congressional...

At least 10 people were killed and 42 others — including a 4-year-old boy — were wounded by gunfire in Chicago over the weekend. More than half of the gunshot victims were wounded on the South Side, while nearly a quarter of the victims were shot on the West Side. It was the deadliest weekend in Chicago since the last weekend in September, when 10 were killed and 58 wounded in citywide attacks.

The ruling Monday is a major victory for the police unions which sued the city over vaccine requirements. A Cook County judge on Monday suspended the city of Chicago’s policy requiring that all of its police officers be vaccinated against COVID-19 by the end of the year. The ruling is a major victory for police unions, who have held that the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate violates their collective bargaining agreements. Judge Raymond Mitchell ruled Monday that the mandate should be halted for police officers until those complaints can be settled in arbitration. Mitchell’s ruling does not impact other city workers,...

Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) attributed the recent uptick in violence in the United States’ major cities such as hers to the coronavirus pandemic. Lightfoot claimed there was “no question” there was a “COVID-related impact on the public safety system.” She also emphasized the need to fight the root causes of violence in cities like Chicago, which she said was poverty, lack of jobs and lack of hope.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot escalated a feud with the Chicago police union president John Catanzara as up to half of the city's police officers threaten to not comply with a Covid-19 vaccine mandate. "We believe that the [Fraternal Order of Police] leadership is trying to foment an illegal work stoppage or strike," she said. "We're not having that, the contract is clear... the police unions are not authorized to strike." "What we've seen from the Fraternal Order of Police leadership is a lot of misinformation, and frankly flat out lies, in order to induce an insurrection, and we're not having...