Free Republic

Governor Pritzker and Mayor Lightfoot: I write to you today to call your attention to and urge action on the devastating violence in Chicago. I have been horrified by the continued violence in this great American city. The American people (hardworking taxpayers) send you millions of dollars in Federal funding each year to support public safety in Chicago. In 2018 and 2019, Chicago benefited from $136 million in funding from the Urban Area Security Initiative Grant Program, and another $68 million was recently announced for Chicago from this important program. The Department of Justice awarded and is in the process...

The University of Chicago has determined an economics professor who came under scrutiny over tweets critical of the “defund the police” movement did not engage in “discriminatory conduct on the basis of race in a University classroom.” The statement Harald Uhlig, who has taught at UChicago since 2007, was temporarily removed as editor of the Journal of Political Economy, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago cut ties with him, and he came under investigation over alleged classroom “discriminatory behavior” a series of tweets earlier this month where he took aim at the growing movement to defund police departments following Geroge...

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker defended Sunday his cautious economic reopening plan, which leaves schools and many businesses shuttered until the novel coronavirus is all but defeated, saying the state will be unable to return to normal “until we’re able to eradicate it.” “The truth is coronavirus is still out there. It hasn’t gone anywhere,” Mr. Pritzker said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “So we all are going to have to change the way we do things until we’re able to eradicate it.”

Illinois could soon be the first state in history to have its bonds rated as “junk.” Last month, both Moody’s MCO and Standard & Poor’s downgraded Illinois debt to just one notch above junk status. Last week, the Illinois State Senate President Don Harmon (D-Chicago) wrote a letter to Congress requesting a $41.6 billion bailout. Critics balked. In many ways, Illinois may have already crossed the Rubicon. Our analysis at OpenTheBooks.com shows that an Illinois family of four now owes more in unfunded pension liabilities ($76,000) than they earn in household income ($63,585). In a state of 13 million residents,...

Law enforcement authorities in Illinois’ Cook County, which includes Chicago, are kept in the dark on the identities of the hundreds of inmates the county has released from its jails during the coronavirus crisis. The story: The cases are held in special coronavirus court hearings but prosecutors have refused to share information on the released prisoners both with The Cook County Sheriff’s Office, which runs the jail, and Chicago Police Department, according to The Washington Times. “The greatest fear people have is the fear of the unknown,” said, Kevin Graham, president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, in a...

CBS News posted the following tweet Sunday: CBS News ✔ @CBSNews In tears, a nurse says she quit her job after she was asked to work in a coronavirus ICU without a face mask: “America is not prepared, and nurses are not being protected” https://cbsn.ws/3bH5bya Embedded video It’s a harrowing, heartbreaking thought – that this nurse felt her only choice was to quite her job or to work in a situation that endangered her. But her story is now being questioned.

SOUTH BARRINGTON, Ill. — Nearly every voter I met here felt the need to remind me. “This is a Republican district, you know.” For Democrats, it was a reflection of their pride that this suburban Chicago district flipped from red to blue last year after more than 45 years as a reliable Republican stronghold. Conservatives, on the other hand, wanted to emphasize to me that Rep. Sean Casten is just too liberal for Illinois’ 6th Congressional District, and that voters here support President Donald Trump and his agenda. Many of those same Republicans — who lived for nearly five decades...

In his introduction of Biden, real estate mogul Neil Bluhm told his guests that rivals Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders “don’t represent the Democratic Party” that Bluhm supports. Sanders’ campaign fired back, “Mr Bluhm is right — the Democratic Party I represent is the party of the working class, not billionaires.” Former Vice President Joe Biden hit three private fundraisers in Chicago on Thursday, prompting some criticism from presidential rival Bernie Sanders over a statement made by one of his hosts — billionaire casino and real estate mogul Neil Bluhm — and highlighting what many see as a major divide...

Former Rep. Joe Walsh (Ill.), one of President Trump's Republican primary challengers, says conservative lawyer and frequent Trump critic George Conway is informally giving him campaign advice. "I am honored to have his advice. I speak with him often. He's a wonderful adviser," Walsh said of Conway in an interview with CNN. "As far as any formal role with our campaign, I would only be so lucky as to have somebody like George Conway involved." He didn't say whether Conway, who is married to White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, would join his campaign in an official capacity. Walsh has tried...

Former Republican Rep. Joe Walsh (Ill.) said Monday that President Trump "needs" someone to challenge him in the 2020 Republican primary. “I think this president needs a challenge," Walsh said when asked by CNN's Brooke Baldwin if he would support a challenger to Trump. Walsh, a conservative radio host and frequent critic of Trump, made the comment while discussing his former colleagues' reaction to special counsel Robert Mueller's report on his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The report was released to the public last week, and Walsh criticized congressional Republicans for staying quiet about what Walsh called...

A winning 2020 candidate needs three things: authenticity, credibility, and viability. Few could have predicted that President Donald Trump would be this good at surrendering the political advantage of a strong economy. Not only is he now underwater in the three states that pushed him to victory in 2016—he’s now unexpectedly vulnerable in places such as Texas, Florida, and Ohio as well. His popularity rises to 50 percent or higher in states that total a mere 102 electoral votes. Probably of more concern to his campaign: He’s fallen below 40 percent approval in states encompassing a 201-electoral-vote bloc. But Democrats...

On a day when an editorial in the venerable Chicago Tribune newspaper is making national news for pleading with Illinois lawmakers to clean up the state's fiscal mess, it's a good time for Florida to count its blessings. There but for the grace of God and a slew of successful conservative policies ... The Sunshine State barely avoided a great big fiscal rathole of its own on Election Day by rejecting progressive leadership and the prospect of turning a sound red state blue. Maybe not Illinois blue, but a Gillum victory likely would have started the Sunshine State down Insolvency...

As the Trump Dynasty stumbles into misrule and failure, how long before the first well-known journalist gets murdered? With the president designating the news media as “enemies of the people,” unstable personalities like pipe-bomb mailer Cesar Sayoc and the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter have been shaken loose from their moorings. Imitators surely will follow. Not that there’s anything new about it. Soreheads have been menacing journalists since the invention of newspapers. Recently, a man in Mountain Home, Arkansas, was charged with terroristic threatening after repeated phone calls targeting CNN’s Don Lemon. I wondered if he was the same idiot who used...

With thousands expected to attend President Donald Trump's visit to Southern Illinois, roads in and out of the airport may get congested and some near the airport will be closed during the visit. Here's a list of known routes that will be open. SHORTEST ROUTE FROM DOWNTOWN CARBONDALE 1. Take U.S. 51 north towards De Soto for 2.72 miles to Airport Rd. Turn left and head west for 1.81 miles to the Southern IL Airport. OPTIONAL ROUTES: 2. Take IL 13 west towards Murphysboro for 3.97 miles to Airport Rd. Turn right and head north for 2.23 miles to the...

Illinois Democrat Sean Casten, who found himself in hot water after his belief that President Donald Trump has a "tremendous amount in common" with terrorist Osama bin Laden was revealed by the Free Beacon, has also told voters there are "Nazis" in the White House. Casten, the Democratic nominee in Illinois' sixth district, responded to the initial report by saying he regretted the bin Laden comparison and his words were "poorly chosen," but new video obtained by the Free Beacon indicates this type of language was used often by him on the campaign trail. On two separate instances during his...

Duh....Who DAT there? Why it's ex-failed, POTUS, Barack Hussein Obama. We keep looking for his legacy...but, sadly, there is none. Only tons of negatives..."GALORE"!!! What there is lots of, very strongly, is the Obama Self-Adoration, Massive Egomaniac. In his recent speech to college students in Illinois, he used the word "I" 102 times in forty-seven minutes. What a guy...or, what a "ZERO". Your choice!!! Hey, Scumer & Pelois, I got news for you all. Obama ain't the savior of the Democrat Party. Obama cannot save himself...period. If you are looking for a "Blue Wave, Wonder Boy", Obama ain't him. He...

An Illinois candidate for congress is facing backlash after comparing President Donald Trump to al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden in a recording that was posted to an online news outlet. Sean Casten, who is running for Illinois’ 6th Congressional District, made the comments during the primary in February. The audio was posted on the Washington Free Beacon’s website on Thursday. In the audio clip, Casten can be heard saying, “I don’t mean to sound overly hyperbolic in this. Trump and Osama bin Laden have a tremendous amount in common because they both figured out how to use the bully pulpit...

A Chicago-based newspaper columnist predicted re-election for President Trump in 2020 after witnessing first-hand the enthusiastic support for the president among blue-collar workers. Neil Steinberg attended a recent appearance by the president at a U.S. Steel facility in Granite City, Illinois, outside St. Louis. He wrote about speaking to steel workers and seeing how Trump connected with the audience. "We need steel," Trump said. “We need steel plants. And to see an old, big monster plant like this re-opening — that is an honor. I look at the faces of you people; I could be one of you. I like...

A sneak peek at the Times’s news analysis from Nov. 4, 2020. Nov. 4, 2020 In the end, a bitterly fought election came down to the old political aphorism, popularized during Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 run against George H.W. Bush: “It’s the economy, stupid.” This time, however, it was the Republican incumbent, not his Democratic challenger, who benefited from that truism. Donald J. Trump has been decisively re-elected as president of the United States, winning every state he carried in 2016 and adding Nevada, even as he once again failed, albeit narrowly, to gain a majority of the popular vote....

President Trump targeted his 2016 election opponent during a manufacturing tour of the midwest Thursday afternoon. Trump attacked the number of women who voted for Hillary Clinton in a speech to the recently reopened Granite City Works Steel Coil Warehouse in Granite City, Illinois. The wide-ranging speech focused on trade and economic policies but Trump veered off to recall why some Americans voted for him in the underdog election. “They said manufacturing is obsolete,” Trump said of his Democrat opponents, “I said let’s figure this out. How do you make things if you don’t manufacture?” Trump then pressed his economic...