Free Republic

“The mayor is incompetent, and the governor is … a big, fat slob,” he said with a comically-timed pregnant pause. “He ought to invite us and say, ‘Please make Chicago safe.’ We’re gonna lose a great city if we don’t do it quickly,” Trump warned. Minutes later in his remarks, Trump was in full comedian-in-chief mode, mercilessly trolling Pritzker while mocking Chicago’s soft-on-crime policies. “I looked at the various cases, granting mercy, discovering the terrible trauma that everyone’s going through, and I had a little bit of a Pritzker joke. I was going to talk about Pritzker in size, but...

A man with a 30-year criminal record, reportedly at least 72 arrests, and around 15 convictions, lit a 26-year-old woman on fire on a train in Chicago Monday night. She is fighting for her life in critical condition. Mayor Brandon Johnson on Thursday called it an “isolated incident.” The “isolated incident” highlights everything that is wrong with progressive politics and Democrat leadership in all too many of our cities: let the criminals run free, forget about the victims, and vilify the police. But it only got worse for the Windy City Friday night, as the rampant violence and death the...

*** These are the hideous progressive sounds of Chicago political corruption: The jails are opened as the Cook County Democrats congratulate themselves …. And there is another sound that defines it. “Burn alive B****!” That is what a career violent predator with more than 50 arrests–at least 10 of them for violent felonies–is alleged to have shouted the other night in Chicago after dousing a female ... with gasoline on the Blue Line CTA train and setting her on fire. She is reportedly in critical condition. *** Lawrence Reed, 50, was out on pre-trial release for allegedly knocking a psychiatric...

Voices across Chicago and the nation expressed alarm on Saturday after two shootings in the Loop following the city’s annual Christmas tree lighting left a 14-year-old boy dead and eight other people, nearly all juveniles, wounded. Officials said officers arrested 18 people and recovered five firearms during what authorities described as widespread mayhem in the downtown area after the ceremony. Video circulating on social media showed a group of young people beating and robbing an apparent teenage victim in the Loop during Friday’s mayhem. As the boy curled up on the ground, someone pulled off his winter coat. Moments later,...

'Come and get me,' Illinois Governor JB Pritzker taunted Donald Trump last month. And it now appears Trump's Justice Department is doing just as he asked – launching a new criminal investigation that threatens to embroil the billionaire governor, the Daily Mail can exclusively reveal. Pritzker is a potential 2028 presidential contender. He is worth an estimated $3.9 billion, according to Forbes, with much of his wealth coming from his inherited stake in the Hyatt Hotels fortune. The case revolves around Pritzker's alleged links to his wife's friend, Jenny Thornley, who volunteered on his first gubernatorial campaign in 2018 and...

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced that efforts to nab illegal alien sex offenders have resulted in the apprehension of 230 foreigners accused of a variety of crimes including child molestation, sexual assault, drug offenses and murder. "This operation was called Operation Criminal Return," Noem said. "But I call it Operation Dirtbag because the specific targeted individuals are sex offenders, many of whose victims were children. These individuals should have never been in our country to begin with. These individuals will be gone off of our streets and kids will be safer." Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) objected, saying "Noem...

Last Wednesday, Nov. 5th I closed on my new home in Southeast Tennessee.Last Friday, Nov. 7th movers arrived at my now former home in Orland Park, IL and loaded up the moving truck. I was so anxious to get out of HELLINOIS, I'd already boxed up everything that wasn't furniture into moving boxes and made the job as easy as possible for the movers. Loading up the 26' moving truck took about three hours and the movers were darn' impressed at how easy it was for them.Saturday mid-day, the moving truck arrived at my new home in Southeast Tennessee (Loudon...

Republican Chicagoans believe the conflicts between ICE and the protesters are a consequence of the city's sanctuary policies. "ICE is trying to get the worst of the worst out of the city to keep them safer. They're getting a lot of really bad people out of our community: sex offenders, drug cartel pushers. I've seen crime go down because of this." "If the city cooperated with the Feds. ICE wouldn't have to go out into the streets and make arrests." Democrats who opposed ICE's actions are no different from the Confederates who tried to separate from the federal government during...

Illinois continues to hemorrhage wealthy residents. Since 2000, the state has lost roughly 1.6 million people — third most in the nation, behind only California and New York. Chicago’s population, even with the recent influx of migrants, is now at its lowest level in nearly a century. Illinois and Chicago’s sanctuary policies, routinely framed in moral terms, now function as political instruments — devised to offset population declines and protect Democratic dominance in state and city government. Yet these policies fail to replace the lost income. A 2025 Pew Research Center report estimates Illinois hosts approximately 550,000 illegal migrants, sixth...

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D), a fierce defender of sanctuary policies, is getting called out as an illegal alien is accused of killing a local elected Republican official and his wife last week. A 34-year-old illegal alien Edwin Pacheco-Meza of Honduras was driving a van on Oct. 24 when he crossed the center lane and struck 71-year-old Michael Clayton and his wife — killing them instantly. Clayton was a Republican who served on the Coles County Board. Pacheco-Meza, who crossed the southern border as an unknown got-away, was in his vehicle with illegal Juan Morales-Martinez of Guatemala, who crossed the...

Gov. JB Pritzker told President Donald Trump and his Republican allies to “f--- right off” during a speech last month before Illinois’ largest teachers union. Video of Pritzker’s F-bomb started gaining traction on social media Sunday, two weeks after the Democratic governor and potential 2028 presidential contender got a standing ovation for his profane takedown of Trump administration education policies. “President Trump and his bootlickers have torn down the U.S. Dept. of Education from the inside. Instead of helping to improve math and reading scores like you all are doing and supporting our educators, they’re making it harder for students...

With the potential Democratic Party field made up of weak candidates like Pritzker, Newsom, Harris etc, JD looks very good to win in 2028.

Gov. JB Pritzker's (D-Ill) claim that crime is down in his state and the City of Chicago is based largely on reclassifying felonies to misdemeanors. The Governor boasted "this essentially cost-free method of improving our safety record is something we should have thought of doing a long time ago. Prosecutors have always had the authority to decide whether to reduce the cost of prosecuting offenders by offering them a deal to plead to a misdemeanor and get a lesser sentence or probation rather than being tried for a felony. We also save on incarceration expenses with the lighter sentences." US...

The property manager of a troubled South Shore apartment building raided last month by immigration agents helps run a political fund that made campaign contributions to more than a dozen members of the Chicago City Council this year. The recipients include now-former Ald. Walter Burnett (27th), Mayor Brandon Johnson’s choice to run the Chicago Housing Authority. One of Burnett’s campaign funds accepted a $500 contribution this year from the Neighborhood Building Owners Alliance PAC. The political action committee’s leaders include Corey Oliver of Strength in Management LLC, which oversees the complex at 7500 S. South Shore Drive that was targeted...

In early September, Kellen McMiller took part in a roundtable discussion with Gov. JB Pritzker at an event for anti-violence workers on the South Side. McMiller, 35, even posed for a photo with the governor in his neon yellow peacekeeper vest. The photo would later appear in a press release touting how violence prevention programs are helping drive down violent crime in Chicago. Just six days later, McMiller was allegedly involved in a smash-and-grab downtown that killed a man on his way to work. McMiller was one of a dozen offenders who authorities say robbed a Louis Vuitton store of...

The Democrat-led state of Illinois spent more to give free health care to illegal migrants than the total it spent on its citizens in programs for foster kids, the elderly, its roadways, and the arts — combined. The 2025 budget, passed in June of 2024, totaled $53.1 billion in spending, inducing more than one billion dollars in new taxes. But despite the huge rise in taxes, Gov. JB Pritzker also signed onto a total of $629 million toward taxpayer-funded health care for illegal migrants called the Health Benefits for Immigrant Adults (HBIA). The mounting number of programs for illegal aliens...

My daughter’s death exposes how Illinois’s criminal justice and sanctuary policies failed her. President Donald Trump is in an ongoing struggle with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, with Pritzker seeking to slander or stymie every effort Trump makes to restore law and order in the streets of Chicago and in Illinois more broadly. That struggle for law and order is personal for me. My daughter died after allegedly being left unresponsive in the home of an illegal alien from Mexico, and Illinois’ politicians put him right back on the streets. On Feb. 19, 2025, my daughter Megan, a vibrant 37-year-old and...

Rest assured that Gov. JB Pritzker’s $1.4 million gambling win last year didn’t snatch away state tax revenue from any Illinois casino. The billionaire Democrat’s surprise windfall came from Las Vegas blackjack tables, Pritzker said Thursday, a day after his hot streak was revealed in 2024 income tax returns released by his political campaign. “I was incredibly lucky,” a smiling Pritzker said while being quizzed by reporters on his jackpot during an otherwise somber Loop press conference about the potential deployment of troops in Chicago. “You have to be to end up ahead, frankly, going to a casino anywhere.” Fortune...

One of President Trump’s biggest political adversaries stunned the political world after revealing that he won an unusual amount of money gambling in Las Vegas last year. As The New York Times reported, Illinois Democratic Governor JB Pritzker released his 2024 tax returns on Wednesday as rumors circulate about him as a 2028 presidential candidate.The returns revealed that Pritzker and his wife reported $10.7 million in adjusted gross income. But the biggest shock was the fact that he won $1.4 million playing blackjack in Las Vegas in just one trip. Such an amount is surprising, especially considering Pritzker is not...

An Illinois police officer living in the United States illegally has been arrested by immigration authorities, the Department of Homeland Security announced Thursday. Radule Bojovic, an illegal immigrant from Montenegro who was working as a sworn police officer with the Hanover Park Police Department, was taken into custody during Operation Midway Blitz, which targets illegal immigrants living in Illinois because of the state's sanctuary policies, federal officials said. Fox News Digital has reached out to the police department and the office of Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a frequent critic of President Donald Trump and his immigration policies. "J.B. Pritzker doesn’t...