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Cost to taxpayers for Obama Center keep piling up Illinois taxpayers may be on the hook for millions in unpaid contractor fees for the Obama Presidential Center as the foundation's promised $420 million "safety net" fund to prevent a taxpayer bailout has yet to materialize and many black-owned contractors are being left unpaid. Meanwhile, multiple contractors are now saying that the Obama Center hasn't paid them for millions of dollars for their work. And some are wondering if taxpayers will be forced to pay up, according to Fox News. Some of these subcontractors say they are locked in payment disputes...

Later this month, the Obama Presidential Center will open on the South Side of Chicago. In a preview for the press, NPR and other media toured the building and grounds showcasing the Obama presidency. It isn't a presidential library. It's a campus, with basketball courts, gardens, ball fields, a playground for kids, a Chicago public library branch and an eight- story museum that towers over it all.

The Obama Presidential Center was billed as a lasting legacy to former President Barack Obama, and its construction was touted as an ambitious model built with aggressive goals for minority-owned and local businesses. But now, some of the very subcontractors who helped build the 19.3-acre campus on Chicago’s South Side say they are facing financial ruin as they race to recover millions of dollars they claim remain unpaid ahead of the center's grand opening Friday. Overall construction costs were reported to be $830 million in 2021, and have likely climbed past the $1 billion mark. A Fox News Digital investigation...

Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder and U2's Bono and the Edge are among the music stars who will perform on Thursday at the grand opening of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, where the former president spent years working as a community organizer and politician. "We are bringing together some of today's most prominent voices and global icons for the Obama Presidential Center Grand Opening Ceremony," the Obama Foundation announced in a Wednesday social media post, which you can see below. "The festivities will livestream globally at 11 a.m. CT, Thursday, June 18 — don’t miss it!" Other performers helping...

A 21-year-old leftist college student is in custody after admitting to burning a cross in Chicago’s Grant Park, saying it was a protest against the Trump administration — an act that sparked outrage from Democrats who initially called it the “seeds of racism and fascism.” The incident first flared up on June 9. A disturbing video showed a wooden cross burning at Grant Park in Chicago. Firefighters extinguished the flames and police released photos of a “person of interest” fleeing the scene, per ABC 7. With no suspect in custody, Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a potential presidential contender, rushed...

UPDATE: Chicago police confirmed to NBC Chicago Tuesday morning that a person of interest in connection with the cross found burning in Grant Park was in custody. Our latest story can be found here. Our original story continues below. It was a startling and offensive scene. A burning cross in Grant Park last Tuesday - the century-old flaming symbol of racism and hatred. For nearly a week, Chicago police and the FBI have been trying to identify the man who was suspected of setting up the cross and torching it. NBC 5 Investigates has identified a 21-year-old college senior who...

A 21-year-old University of Illinois Chicago senior says he is the person who set fire to a cross in Grant Park last week, though he insists he had no idea that burning crosses are a symbol of the Ku Klux Klan. Merlin Lu told NBC 5 in an interview Monday that his target was not a racial group, but rather supporters of President Donald Trump, whom he described as “MAGA Christian nationalist supporters.” His chosen method of protest: placing a red baseball cap atop a cross, the central symbol of Christianity, and setting it ablaze. “I don’t want to wait...

African American Contractors Association president Omar Shareef said that a total of seven separate subcontractors have contacted him for help with pursuing missing payments in the past several months. Some of the contractors are owed seven figures. They’re willing to settle for less, as long as they can keep their businesses running.

Members of a federal task force shot two people when an undercover firearms purchase went sideways in suburban Country Club Hills on Tuesday, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. A total of five people are now in custody. The shooting occurred around 5:30 p.m. near the intersection of 189th Street and Loretto Lane. In a statement, ATF said an ATF special agent and a task force officer, identified by other agencies as a Chicago police officer, fired their weapons after undercover agents were confronted during what authorities described as an attempted armed robbery. “On Tuesday, at...

Chicago police say a man sexually assaulted a woman as she walked through the Loop on Friday afternoon, but the attack took an unexpected turn when another woman allegedly stabbed the assailant in the eye before officers arrived. A second man who intervened in the confrontation was also cut during the chaos, according to police. Crime scene tape surrounded the entrance to theWit Hotel at 201 North State Street, where the attack unfolded shortly after 4 p.m., according to witnesses. Police said a 24-year-old woman was walking on the sidewalk when a 31-year-old man sexually assaulted her. The suspect then...

CHICAGO - About 100 people gathered at Horner Park Wednesday evening to protest a federal immigration arrest that took place a day earlier in Albany Park. The demonstration comes after witnesses reported seeing federal agents chase a man through traffic near Lawrence and Kedzie before taking him into custody. Witnesses also said agents used a Taser during the arrest and that one of the federal vehicles collided with a woman’s car while attempting to stop the man. The Department of Homeland Security identified the man as 26-year-old Domer Jesus Martinez-Sifontes, a Venezuelan national who allegedly entered the United States illegally...

Adam Hamawy’s past relationship with terrorist mastermind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman has loomed over his rapid rise in the race to succeed retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ). Their relationship spanned a 1991 road trip the two took together to Detroit, Hamawy’s service as the sheikh’s translator for a press conference in which Abdel-Rahman denied any role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and Hamawy’s testimony on the sheikh’s behalf at his 1995 trial, where the Islamist leader was convicted of plotting to carry out a campaign of terrorist attacks in New York City. But just one year before Hamawy...

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker had a "minor complication" from a recent procedure and was taken to a Springfield hospital earlier this week, a spokesperson for the governor confirmed to NBC Chicago Friday. The complication stemmed from an earlier urology procedure, with Pritzker going to a Springfield hospital overnight Wednesday and into Thursday morning.

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...

A federal jury in the Northern District of Illinois has convicted an Illinois woman of unemployment insurance fraud for participating in a scheme that submitted nearly 700 fraudulent claims and caused more than $11 million in fraudulent COVID-19 relief benefits to be dispersed. Hiam Hmaidan, 54, of Orland Park, was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and five counts of mail fraud, the Justice Department announced. She is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 2 and faces up to 20 years in prison. According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Hmaidan operated the fraud...

Amid an active war, Pope Leo XIV has bestowed the Vatican's highest diplomatic honor on the Islamic Republic's envoy. Critics say it validates a regime that murders Christians, kills protesters by the thousands, and fires missiles at Western allies. In a move that has ignited controversy across religious, political, and human rights circles, Pope Leo XIV has decorated Iran's ambassador to the Vatican with the most prestigious diplomatic honor the Holy See can confer. Pope Leo XIV has awarded the Grand Cross of the Pontifical Order of Pius IX, the highest active diplomatic distinction of the Vatican, to the ambassador...

The Trump administration is cracking down hard on radical gender policies in public schools. The Department of Justice has launched full investigations into 36 Illinois school districts accused of helping children “change genders” without telling their parents and pushing sexual orientation and gender ideology without proper opt-out notifications.While blue-state bureaucrats treat families as obstacles, the DOJ is stepping in to enforce basic accountability and Supreme Court precedent. The review is also looking at whether the district’s violated parents right to opt their child out of lessons on gender and s*xuality.”🚨 BREAKING: The Trump administration launches investigations into DOZENS of Illinois...

Last month, the Arab-American Business and Professional Association (ABPA) unveiled the first of its "Welcome to Little Palestine" signs in Bridgeview, a suburb 15 miles southwest of Chicago. The sign was erected at 83rd Street and Harlem Avenue, welcoming visitors to an area stretching from 79th Street to 113th Street that ABPA calls one of the largest Palestinian-American communities in the United States. A second sign followed at Westfield Plaza on 87th Street. ABPA president Rush Darwish declared at that unveiling: "This unveiling is more than a sign -- it is a declaration of who we are."The designation came after...

Police accused a semi-truck driver from New Jersey of causing eight accidents on a Chicago highway before attempting to strangle another driver on April 28 in an alleged instance of road rage. Police alleged that the suspect was driving “recklessly,” which resulted in a string of collisions on I-57 northbound, according to an Illinois State Police (ISP) news release. The suspect, 25-year-old truck driver Hassan A. Moutassim of Jersey City, New Jersey, reportedly removed a driver from another crashed vehicle and allegedly started “battering the driver, including an attempt to strangle the victim,” the press release stated. The alleged victim...

As I recover from foot surgery in Chicago, my break from the Walk Across America has given me time to do more than reflect. I’ve seen so many things on my walk so far through small towns, big cities, ghettos, suburbs, open-air drug markets, posh farmers markets and even the occasional country market. Throughout it all, I’ve seen Americans of so many stripes, and they’re all moving forward, moving with a sense of purpose in their work and in their belief in God. And when I returned home to the South Side of Chicago, I was struck by the stillness...