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... Like in the Chicago area, the New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco metro areas — among the most expensive to live in the U.S. — saw decreases due to people moving out. Though they recorded more births than deaths in 2021, that increase was not enough to offset the migration out of the area. ... “There is clearly a dispersion, but I think it’s a blip,” William Frey, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s metropolitan policy program, Brookings Metro, told The Associated Press. “We’re at one of the lowest levels of immigration in a long, long time, and...

The mayors of New York City and Chicago met Friday to exchange ideas on tackling crime, which continues to skyrocket in both cities - a trend that began during the worst days of the COVID pandemic and continues to dog both cities. New York's Eric Adams and Chicago's Lori Lightfoot, both Democrats, have in recent weeks sparred with their cities' top prosecutors and accused them of pushing for lenient policies that don't hold criminals accountable. Crime in NYC is up by over 45 percent compared to this time last year as Adams battles a growing crisis at Rikers Island -...

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot will give city workers who didn’t get their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine by Sunday a chance to get the shot before placing them on no-pay status, she said Monday. Lightfoot implemented a rule requiring city workers get vaccinated by March 13 or lose pay. Asked Monday how the city would enforce its policies, Lightfoot said supervisors would call workers in to verify that they aren’t vaccinated and give them an opportunity to comply. They will then be given an order to get vaccinated and if they don’t, she said, then they’ll be placed on...

Kim Foxx, the Cook County prosecutor who nearly let disgraced actor Jussie Smollett walk scot-free, now says his criminal conviction and subsequent sentencing was an example of “mob justice.” In early 2019, the Empire actor claimed he fell victim to a hate crime on a cold winter’s night in Chicago at the hands of two men who derided him with homophobic slurs while yelling “this is MAGA country” as they tied a noose around his neck. Many in the media took Smollett’s story at face value until evidence revealed that he had hired two brothers from Nigeria to stage the...

The guilty verdicts in the Jussie Smollett fake hate crime trial underscore just how radical Chicago State’s Attorney Kim Foxx has proven to be. She campaigned for office in 2015 advocating a radical brand of “criminal justice reform,” including no bail policies for almost every defendant and reduced sentencing, and during the riots last summer, her office adopted a “presumption of dismissal” for certain low-level charges. Then came the Jussie Smollett case and the inexplicable dropping of charges against the actor, despite other prosecutors in her office claiming they had a “slam dunk” of a case. Former Chicago Mayor Rahm...

CHICAGO - Once one of Lori Lightfoot's closest political allies, Chicago City Council Ald. Sue Sadlowski Garza (10th Ward) now says the mayor doesn't deserve a second term. "I'm tired of not getting phone calls returned," Sadlowski Garza said. "I’m tired of letting the inmates run the asylum." Garza's description of dysfunction in the mayor's office echoes other former Lightfoot allies and insiders. The mayor has previously dismissed complaints about her allegedly abrasive management style. She’s responded to such critics by suggesting they target her only because she is Black and a lesbian. Garza explained in some details when podcaster...

CHICAGO — A former attorney for the City of Chicago is suing Mayor Lori Lightfoot for defamation after she allegedly berated a group of lawyers during a heated meeting over the removal of the Christopher Columbus Statue. The statue was removed in July 2020 following unrest over the murder of George Floyd. Under Lightfoot’s orders, crews used a large crane to remove the statue from its pedestal in Grant Park following a week after protesters trying to topple the monument clashed with police. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday by former Chicago Park District counsel general George Smyrniotis, says Lightfoot blocked a...

A former Chicago Park District Attorney is seeking damages from Mayor Lori Lightfoot after an obscene, insulting rant against the attorney and the Chicago Italian-American community came to light. The Park District was responsible for the statue of Christopher Columbus in Arrigo Park that Lightfoot had ordered removed during protests in 2020. They were negotiating with the Joint Civic Committee of Italian-Americans to have the Columbus statue displayed during the annual Columbus Day parade. The statue wasn’t displayed in the Chicago parade but did make an appearance at a suburban event. Ron Onesti, president of that Italian-American group, was in...

My mask is not coming off. COVID-19 has faded, and people who continue to wear masks in public spaces are just neurotic, my husband says. “You look goofy,” he admonishes me. On Monday, the most onerous COVID-related mandates will fall away. Customers in public spaces will no longer be required to mask up or produce proof of vaccination at restaurants, bars and gyms in Chicago and throughout Illinois. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention loosened its mask guidelines for public indoor spaces on Friday. I am thrilled the Omicron surge is fading and eager to return to “normal,” whatever...

It is usually Republicans who blast the media for what they consider biased or unfair coverage of their policies, but increasingly we are hearing Democrats engaging in the same behavior, apparently frustrated their agenda is not being embraced by some of their fellow Democrats and the public. Last week, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who has yet to stem rising crime as he promised to do, criticized reporters for what he regards as their negative coverage of his administration. To be fair, he was just sworn in on Jan. 1, 2022, but there are few signs that the policies...

Angered by mounting parking ticket fines, a Chicago man repeatedly went to Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s home over the past month while armed and then fired shots from his truck about a mile from her residence on Wednesday morning, according to prosecutors and police records. Lightfoot “became alarmed and distraught” when she learned of the man’s repeated visits to her home on Monday, Assistant State’s Attorney James Murphy said. Joseph Igartua, 37, was ordered held without bail on felony charges of reckless discharge of a firearm and stalking by Judge Maryam Ahmad. Igartua drove to Lightfoot’s home last Saturday and walked...

A top Chicago police official’s car was stopped on the West Side during a drug arrest earlier this month, a police spokesman confirmed Wednesday. A Lexus registered to Yolanda Talley, chief of internal affairs, was pulled over Feb. 1 in the 500 block of North St. Louis Avenue and officers arrested Kenneth Miles, 34, on drug charges, according to an arrest report and police sources. Talley wasn’t in the car. Her niece was driving the Lexus, said Don Terry, a spokesman for the police department. According to a police report, officers in a gang investigations squad were targeting drug sales...

Determined to reduce childhood obesity, Mayor Lori Lightfoot moved Wednesday to stop Chicago restaurants from automatically serving kids meals with sugary, high-calorie drinks. At a City Council meeting, Lightfoot introduced an ordinance that would prohibit Chicago restaurants from serving or marketing pop and other sugary drinks as the “default beverage” with kids meals. Parents would still be able to request sugary drinks for their children. Instead, the “default” beverages on kids meals would be: • Water or sparkling water or flavored water with “no added natural or artificial sweeteners” • Nonfat or 1% dairy milk containing “no more than 130...

At a City Council meeting, Lightfoot introduced an ordinance that would prohibit Chicago restaurants from serving or marketing pop and other sugary drinks as the “default beverage” with kids meals. Parents would still be able to request sugary drinks for their children.Why can't parents have that SAME SAY for the VAXX????

Liberals never learn. Their solution to societal problems continues to be to spend—or to use their euphemism, "invest"—yet more money—or to use another of their euphemisms, "resources." And thus it was that on his MSNBC show this morning, Jonathan Capehart gave Democrat Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot a platform to talk about her latest spending spree ostensibly intended to solve the city's crime wave. As Lightfoot put it: "We can't just arrest our way out of the crime problem, we have to INVEST our way out of this [crime] problem." Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Countless news reports during the past year have bemoaned the increasing hostility people are expressing towards each other in their everyday interactions. We have seen this lack of civility and respect come to a boil locally as well, especially towards Black women. This past week, Chicago Teacher’s Union President Jesse Sharkey said Mayor Lori Lightfoot was “relentlessly stupid” in her positions during negotiations of the dispute between the Chicago Public Schools and CTU. We see this at the national level too. No vice president in American history has endured more ferocious criticism than Vice President Kamala Harris. President Biden has...

With violent crime soaring over the last two years, Americans want a solution. Over and over, resident Joe Biden and gun control advocates frame violent crime as a gun problem. Relying on public health researchers, articles such as this one in the Atlantic and in local news stories this week point to increasing gun sales as the cause. But reported gun crimes fell in 2020, so the writers ignore the obvious explanation for rising crime, that law enforcement isn’t being allowed to do its job. Gun sales increased dramatically in 2020 before receding some in 2021. Background checks on gun...

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot allegedly called the owner of a high-end exotic car dealership an "idiot" during a heated meeting after the store was targeted in an armed smash-and-grab robbery, according to a report. Lightfoot allegedly "got into a fight and walked out" of Gold Coast Exotic Motor Cars during a meeting with store owner Joe Perillo, according to sources who spoke to CWB Chicago. One of the sources told the outlet the mayor called Perillo an "idiot" as she left the showroom, though Perillo told Fox News he did not hear her call him that. "I’m not aware that...

A Cook County judge and her 3-year-old son were carjacked at gunpoint late Thursday night in Humboldt Park. Police said, around 11:30 p.m. Thursday, a 52-year-old woman was pulling into a garage of a home in the 1500 block of North Campbell Avenue, with her 3-year-old son in the back seat, when two men approached.

A West Side man who tried to shoot someone in another car by firing out his rear passenger window while driving managed to shoot and kill his own backseat passenger instead, prosecutors said this week. Quincy Cole, 27, is charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of his passenger, 19-year-old Roderick James, on December 6, 2020. Cole was on bail for a pending felony arson case at the time of the killing. CPD records show that police wanted to charge him with murder in the pending case, but prosecutors only approved arson charges. The alleged murder of James makes Cole...