Free Republic

The headmaster of Chicago’s tony Latin School will resign less than two weeks after it was revealed that students were rehearsing Nazi marching themes for the second year in a row. Dr. Thomas Hagerman revealed his plans to leave his job in a Jan. 14 email to the Latin School community which cited health issues as the reason for his exit. “This decision comes after a great deal of thoughtful deliberation. I have been repeatedly reminded about the importance of attending more intentionally to my health and overall sustainability,” Hagerman wrote*** The surprise resignation comes two weeks after middle schoolers...

A Democrat judge has released a Chicago man with 57 prior arrests after he pleaded guilty to using a metal bar to smash a man’s jaw in a sneak attack.

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has been forced to delete a post urging the 'ultra-wealthy' to fully fund city schools after it was mocked online for misspelling 'governor.' On Tuesday, the CTU posted a flyer across X, Facebook and TikTok calling on the public to push state leaders to tax billionaires, months after a report found the district is $1.6 billion short of necessary funding, according to Chicago Public Media. A damning report revealed that last year, over half of Chicago students couldn't read at grade level, and nearly three-quarters failed to reach math proficiency on state tests, according to...

The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed Rep. Mike Bost’s lawsuit challenging his home state of Illinois’ mail-in ballot policy to move forward, issuing an opinion that could have major implications for future elections. In a 7–2 decision, the high court determined that Bost (R-Ill.) and the others who joined his suit have standing to sue despite lower courts concluding that they hadn’t provided evidence of harm. “Candidates have a concrete and particularized interest in the rules that govern the counting of votes in their elections, regardless of whether those rules harm their electoral prospects or increase the cost of their...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The killing of a Minnesota woman by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer is reverberating across Capitol Hill where Democrats, and certain Republicans, are vowing an assertive response as President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation operations spark protests nationwide.Lawmakers are demanding a range of actions, from a full investigation into Renee Good’s shooting death and policy changes over law enforcement raids to the defunding of ICE operations and the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, in what is fast becoming an inflection point.“The situation that took place in Minnesota is a complete and total disgrace,” House Democratic...

Illinois leaders and lawmakers spoke out on Friday about the Trump administration's move to withhold billions of dollars in federal childcare funds for Illinois and four other states run by Democrats. The move will freeze nearly $2.4 billion for the Child Care Development Fund, and billions more in funding for other social service programs in Illinois, Minnesota, New York, California, and Colorado. However, on Friday, a federal judge in New York issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration from freezing those funds for now. The order will last for 14 days, while the court considers a request for...

Faith leaders gather outside Trump Tower and call on county officials to roll back tax assessments and request lawmakers in Springfield to enact caps on the amount property taxes can be raised year over year. --SNIP-- Residential property tax bills are rising fastest in predominantly Black neighborhoods on the South and West sides because the county’s tax burden is being shifted away from the economic center of the city, according to a Cook County treasurer’s office report last month and a Sun-Times analysis of five years of tax bills. Other neighborhoods, such as Pilsen, have seen similar increases and th

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...

GOP lawmakers are fleeing for the exit in droves, with many pointing to a Congress they argue has grown too dysfunctional and a demanding schedule that leaves little time for their families. More than 50 lawmakers in both parties have announced decisions to leave their seats, scrambling the calculus on both sides of the aisle ahead of next year’s high-stakes midterms. The wave of exits could be particularly ominous for Republicans in charge of the House and Senate. The number exiting is nearly on par with 2018, a dismal midterm year for the GOP. Some lawmakers frustrated with inaction on...

Illinois just gained another data point for its reputation for public corruption. New revelations found that nearly 400 state employees improperly obtained federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans intended to keep small businesses afloat during the pandemic. PPP was created as part of the CARES Act to provide federally backed, forgivable loans to small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was signed into law on March 27, 2020. According to the Illinois Office of the Executive Inspector General, investigators found “reasonable cause” in 378 PPP-fraud cases involving state workers through June 2025 — about three-quarters of all cases reviewed, the...

The U.S. Department of Justice sued Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Attorney General Kwame Raoul over the state’s new law aimed at limiting immigration enforcement in courthouses. The law, signed by Pritzker this month, bars immigration enforcement from courthouses and opens the door for easier legal action against federal agents over alleged civil rights infractions. It follows the Trump administration’s sweeping deportation campaign that has targeted the state, specifically the Chicago area, for months. The lawsuit claims that the law is unconstitutional and states have no regulatory authority over federal actions, such as immigration enforcement.

"Guns don't kill, people do." True or false, truth or lie, "people" do use their thoughts and words to help push their decisions to invalidate, as non-persons, other classes of "biological-organisms"-with-23-paired-chromosomes-which-are-totally-indistinguishable-from-humans; and whether or not to sentence the "non-persons" to termination because they want their land or money, or because if those 23-chromosome things are allowed to live it will curtail their ability to "do it" with whomever and whatever their supreme will dictates (what Ralph Nader called "gonadal politics"). So, yesterday, Jonathan Turley ("Democratic Despotism: The American Left Moves from Censored to Compelled Speech") noted: In Illinois, Democrats have...

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rebuffed the Trump administration over its plan to deploy National Guard troops in Illinois over the strenuous objections of local officials. The court in an unsigned order turned away an emergency request made by the administration, which said the troops are needed to protect federal agents involved in immigration enforcement in the Chicago area. In doing so, the court at least provisionally rejected the Trump administration’s view that the situation on the ground is so chaotic that it justifies invoking a federal law that allows the president to call National Guard troops into federal service...

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Friday signed legislation allowing physician-assisted suicide for certain terminally ill patients, making Illinois the 12th state to enact such a law. The measure, known as the End of Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act, or Deb's Law, lets doctors prescribe a lethal dose of drugs that eligible patients may self-administer. Springfield's State Journal-Register reported that the law takes effect in September. Under the statute, adults must have a terminal illness expected to result in death within six months, as confirmed by two physicians. Patients must have the mental capacity to make medical decisions, be...

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...

Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley are advocating for a bill that would stop President Trump from replacing immigration judges with what the senators call “inexperienced attorneys.”The bill is led by Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and co-sponsored by Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) alongside Senators Wyden and Merkley.

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...

Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, the ranking member on the Senate's aviation subcommittee, is demanding the Transportation Department expand its $10,000 bonus to all air traffic controllers and FAA technicians who worked without pay during the government shutdown. The department said it would give the bonuses only to those who did not miss a day of work during the 44-day shutdown. "Excluding 96 percent of the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Air Traffic Controller and Technician workforce from this bonus is unfair, divisive and disrespectful to the over 20,000 dedicated Federal employees who worked under extremely stressful conditions to ensure...

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat, said Sunday that President Trump "essentially just declared war on a major city in his own nation" referring to his recent remarks about Chicago. But she outlined that "we don't have any indications" that the administration is getting ready to send troops into the nation's third-largest city, despite signals in recent weeks that he is preparing to do so. "This is not normal," Duckworth said of Mr. Trump's statements on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan." "This is not acceptable behavior." In a Truth Social post on Saturday, Mr. Trump shared a screenshot that...