Free Republic

Henry Graham, a 52-year-old man with a lengthy arrest record who killed a man with a single punch on the Magnificent Mile, was sentenced to nine years in prison on Friday, months after a judge found him guilty of involuntary manslaughter, saying state law barred him from being convicted of murder. The state’s “one punch” legal standard that spared Graham a murder conviction may surprise many, but it is well established in Illinois, where nearly a century of case law holds that a person cannot reasonably expect a single punch to kill someone. Therefore, in almost all cases, a person...

Barack Obama is facing a fresh humiliation at his 'eyesore' presidential center with workers slamming the project's bosses and moving to unionize just months after it opened. In a letter to colleagues this week, staff at the Chicago library said they were organizing a union due to the institute's 'increasing workloads' and benefit rollbacks. Workers have grown frustrated with leadership at Obama's foundation after their concerns were met with 'vague responses,' according to the letter, first shared by the Chicago Sun-Times. Issues with workloads and benefits have led to a 'high turnover rate' among employees, with many more 'continuing to...

FAIRVIEW HEIGHTS, Ill. – Two juveniles were arrested and their parent charged Friday after multiple fights at a fast-food restaurant in Fairview Heights. According to a spokesperson for the Fairview Heights Police Department, an officer was monitoring a crowd of approximately 250 teenagers who gathered at the Raising Cane’s and parking lots along Highway 159 after following local high school football games. An employee called the officer and reported a fight had started in the restaurant between two females. The officer arrived moments later but the females had left. The officer then saw a large fight closer to the Taco...

LONDON — A British Airways passenger jet from London to Chicago descended 28,000 feet in just seven minutes on Monday after declaring an emergency because of an unspecified “technical issue,” the airline said. The Boeing 777 took off at 12:15 p.m. local time (7:15 a.m. ET) but made the descent just 30 minutes later while flying over Ireland, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. It turned around and spent around four hours zig-zagging over the Bristol Channel, a waterway to the west of England, before landing back at London Heathrow Airport at 5 p.m. local time (noon ET). “The aircraft...

Washington — Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, who represented Illinois for two decades in Congress and was jailed for violating banking laws, has died, a coroner in Illinois said. He was 84. Both the longest-serving Republican House speaker and the highest-ranking elected U.S. official to serve a prison sentence, Hastert's stunning fall from grace came in 2016, when he was sentenced to 15 months in prison on charges related to his concealment of hush money payments made to cover up his sexual abuse of teenage boys during his time as a high school wrestling coach. Kendall County Coroner...

The Chicago Tea Party: Rick Santelli Visits the Chicago Board of Trade. Near pandemonium breaks out: Video at FA:********************EXCERPT**********************“How many of you people want to pay your neigbor’s (sic) mortgage? …Obama are you listening?” Orig Posted: 2/19/2009, 10:43:02 AM · by Ernest_at_the_Beach · 35 replies · 1,333+ views

A 48-year-old woman is charged with first-degree murder, accused of stabbing a 7-year-old girl to death on a South Side street Saturday morning. Shavon Gayden, 48, is scheduled for a detention hearing at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse on Monday, according to CPD. Additional details about what prosecutors believe happened on the sidewalk in the 8600 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue could emerge during the hearing. Court records show Gayden has also had an outstanding felony warrant for more than 18 months. One man knocked Gayden unconscious not far from where Eddimar was attacked, allowing police to take her into...

A 7-year-old girl was fatally stabbed in the back while walking along the sidewalk with her older sister on Saturday, Oct. 3 Bystanders detained the suspect, who was a stranger to the child, until police arrived “For a 7-year-old like that to be getting stabbed, I never thought it would come to this point,” a nearby resident said

President Trump celebrates Team USA’s win at the 2026 Presidents Cup (titled “President’s Golf Cup”) at Medinah Country Club in suburban Chicago/Illinois on September 27, 2026. youtube.com This is raw, unfiltered live coverage from the MAGNO NEWS channel (full video without added commentary). Trump served as honorary chairman (his second time in the role, after 2017). The U.S. team trailed the International team 10.5–7.5 heading into Sunday’s singles matches but staged a major comeback, winning nine of the 12 singles for a 17–13 (or similar) victory—their 11th consecutive Presidents Cup title. chicago.suntimes.com Key moments covered include:Trump’s arrival (with an Air...

A Chicago man who shot a Lyft driver during a carjacking attempt just days after completing a juvenile detention sentence for another carjacking has been sentenced to 15 years, court records show. Deandre Milons was arrested three weeks later after police caught him allegedly carjacking another driver. He received a 10-year sentence in that case. Milons was a Lyft passenger when he pulled out a gun and ordered the driver out of the car in the 7500 block of South Dorchester Avenue in Grand Crossing on July 10, 2024, prosecutors said. He allegedly racked the slide of the gun and...

A Chicago man who robbed a Red Line passenger while wearing an ankle monitor for another Red Line robbery he committed while also wearing an ankle monitor has been given six-year sentences for both crimes. But he caught a break because the judge ordered his sentences to be served concurrently even though he committed the crimes on top of each other. Shannon Stephens, 24, was arrested following the February 19 robbery of a 16-year-old boy on a Red Line train near Garfield, Chicago police said. Stephens and 20-year-old Markell Harper of Gary, Indiana, allegedly approached the boy wearing ski masks...

A veteran Chicago police dispatcher was pinned inside her wrecked car, with nine broken ribs and two fractured vertebrae, when a man climbed into the back seat and stole her driver’s license and credit cards, prosecutors say. The man’s girlfriend then got into the front seat and began patting the injured victim’s waistline, apparently looking for more valuables. Victoria Mesarina, a dispatcher with the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications for 26 years, was driving home in uniform when another vehicle slammed into the driver’s side of her car in the 3300 block of West Douglas Boulevard around 2:30...

A load of copper worth nearly $600,000 was recovered on Sept. 11 after investigators followed a trail from Illinois to Kentucky and Ohio, wrapping up the initial search only about eight hours after the theft was reported, according to Yahoo News. The case began when a shipment scheduled to travel from DeKalb, Illinois, to Rock Hill, South Carolina, never made it toward its intended destination. Authorities believe whoever collected the freight had presented themselves as an established trucking company, using genuine business information to make the pickup appear legitimate. The breakthrough came from location data tied to Schneider National equipment...

It's not every day that an American labor union gets investigated for possible ties to two of the world's most lethal terrorist organizations. But Chicago's Service Employees International Union Local 73 isn't an everyday union. Last September 24, FBI agents raided residences in Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan of more than a dozen radical activists in an effort to connect them to the Hamas (Gaza and the West Bank) and FARC (Colombia) guerrilla movements. Two of the occupants were SEIU Local 73 chief steward and executive board member Joe Iosbaker and former local board member-steward Tom Burke. Neither they nor anyone else has...

Illinois GOP's Real Problem Isn't Money. It Doesn't Want Trump's Candidate To Win With just over 40 days until Election Day for the midterms, the Illinois Republican Party has yet to provide a meaningful financial boost to the man carrying its banner for governor: Darren Bailey, whom President Donald Trump reaffirmed his support for this week. "I’ve already endorsed him. I’m all for Bailey," Trump said.

A would-be thief got more than he bargained for recently, when an alert gas station customer in Chicago with a concealed carry permit pulled out a gun and shot him. After the shooting, the thief hobbled away from the scene as quickly as possible. There would probably be a lot less crime if aspiring criminals were made to watch incidents like this one.

Last week, a relatively unknown 27-year-old researcher quit his job at Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI model.Then, he published his first post on X (formerly Twitter). In it, he warned that artificial intelligence could eventually kill humanity. The post exploded across social media. Within days, it racked up more than 150 million views. Major news organizations seized on the story. Politicians demanded action. And some of the biggest names in AI started debating whether development should slow down.Then, on Monday, Wall Street reacted. Investors started dumping many of the very companies powering the AI boom. But something doesn’t...

Although a recent report on financial red flags said Chicago is on a path toward insolvency, Wirepoints founder Mark Glennon says Chapter Nine bankruptcy might not work for the Windy City like it previously did in Detroit. Reason Foundation’s report on state and local government finances said Detroit’s financial condition at the end of fiscal year 2012 would trigger seven red flags, just like Chicago received in the organization’s report last month. In July 2013, Detroit became the largest city in U.S. history to file for bankruptcy. Glennon said Chicago, unlike Detroit, has sold most of its future sales tax...

FRANKFORT, Illinois (WBBM) -- A mother has been charged with murder after her 2-year-old child was killed inside a home in Frankfort, Ill. Police said Corie Walsh, 38, was charged with three counts of first-degree murder. Police said Walsh is in custody and was in the hospital for medical treatment. Friday afternoon she was transferred to the Will County Adult Detention Facility ahead of her detention hearing. Court documents have revealed unsettling and disturbing details about the toddler's death. Frankfort police said officers were called to the home in the 22700 block of Brook Stone Court around 4 p.m. Tuesday...

“Never forget where we came from. I will remember this for as long as I am alive. I thought I was going to get called back into service but I didn’t. God bless our troops and god bless all the hero’s from that day,” Alderman Mike Adkins of Quincy, Illinois posted in commemoration of the upcoming 25th anniversary of the Islamic terrorist attacks on America. One of his posted images included a billboard favoring President Trump’s immigration ban noting that “19 Muslim immigrants killed 2977 Americans” on September 11, 2001. The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which was named...