Tag: chicago

Beloved highschooler Lily Bova gunned down outside Chicago — and cops won’t say who did it

A 16-year-old girl was gunned down in a quiet Chicago suburb Saturday morning — and authorities have neither caught nor identified her suspected killer.

The victim, identified as high school sophomore Lilly Bova, was killed in the Cook County neighborhood of Glenview around 11 a.m., authorities said.

Sheriff’s deputies are searching for a person of interest but have revealed few details about who may have killed the well-liked teen.

“While we cannot share further details at this time, this was an isolated incident and does not appear to pose a risk to the general public,” the Cook County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement — without revealing further details about the murder that has shocked her loved ones in the peaceful, affluent village.

Bova was “bright, positive and mature beyond her years,” her school principal said in a message to students and parents viewed by Fox 32.

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Chicago moves toward reparations with bus tours and town halls as $150M deficit looms

Chicago took its first step after establishing a reparations task force two years ago.

Now, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson plans to hold a public engagement forum called Repair Chicago to “gather lived experiences of harm of Black Chicagoans” in an effort to provide reparations for Black residents.

“Your experience is evidence, and we’ve placed it at the center of our work,” Johnson said. “By engaging directly with residents, we are grounding this work in the voices and lived realities of the people it is meant to serve.”

The first event took place Tuesday, and two more events are scheduled through April.

Johnson’s office announced the Repair Chicago effort would involve “bus tours, panel discussions, town halls and hearings,” helping the task force members gather input for the administration’s reparations study. 

“The community engagement process will gather input from Chicagoans across the city to better understand Black Chicagoans’ experiences across generations and how systemic racism has shaped their lives, opportunities and well-being,” Johnson said.

The move comes two years after Johnson named his chief equity officer, Carla Kupe, to lead the reparations task force with $500,000 in funding. 

In 2024, Johnson signed an executive order establishing a reparations task force of 40 members that addresses “historical harms committed against Black Chicagoans and their ancestors through the form of reparations.”

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Chicago Democrat Closes Her Office After Backlash for Saying Student Murdered by Illegal Alien Was in ‘Wrong Place at Wrong Time’

Last week , when a college student in Chicago named Sheridan Gorman was murdered by an illegal immigrant, a Democrat Chicago Alderwoman named Maria Hadden blamed the victim, suggesting that Gorman was in the wrong place at the wrong time, or that she might have startled the shooter.

You can see the video of her comments here.

The backlash to the alderwoman was so severe that she has closed her office for the time being.

FOX News reports:

Chicago alderwoman closes office after ‘wrong place at the wrong time’ comment on slain student fuels backlash

A Chicago alderwoman closed her office for the rest of the week in response to backlash over comments that a slain college student was in the “wrong place at the wrong time,” citing safety concerns.

Sheridan Gorman, 18, was killed March 19 around 1 a.m. when she was on a pier in the city’s Rogers Park area, just north of Loyola University Chicago, where the freshman attended college.

The suspect in Gorman’s murder, 25-year-old Jose Medina-Medina, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, was apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol May 9, 2023, then released into the U.S. under the Biden administration, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

After the shooting, Alderwoman Maria Hadden suggested in an interview with Fox 32 Chicago that Gorman was in the “wrong place at the wrong time,” adding that she might have “startled” the individual accused of killing her.

In a Facebook story posted on Wednesday, Hadden announced her office would be closed for the rest of the week due to safety concerns.

“My team and I are taking these precautions to ensure our safety and ability to maintain the level of service that you expect of us. I am still working as usual and will be out and about in our ward this week,” she wrote.

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Here’s Why the Venezuelan Illegal Immigrant Who Killed a College Student Missed His Court Appearance

Over the weekend, Venezuelan illegal immigrant Jose Medina-Medina was arrested for murdering 18-year-old Loyola University student Sheridan Gorman. Gorman, 18, was walking with friends in Chicago when Medina-Medina shot her in the head. He was released at the border by the Biden administration back in 2013.

Medina-Medina missed his court appearance yesterday because he was hospitalized with tuberculosis.

Here’s more:

Sheridan Gorman spent the early morning hours on Thursday with friends, watching the skyline on the Loyola Beach Pier, prosecutors said, when she noticed someone hiding.

As the group started to run away, Jose Medina, 25, fired a gun, prosecutors alleged Monday, hitting the 18-year-old Loyola University Chicago student in the back while her friends took cover in a grassy area of the beach.

Though a full detention hearing was postponed because Medina is hospitalized with tuberculosis, Cook County prosecutors gave a brief account of the shooting that plunged the Rogers Park university into mourning and generated international headlines when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced it had lodged a detainer request asking Illinois officials not to release Medina, who is a Venezuelan national.

Medina is facing charges of murder, among other felonies, in the slaying of Gorman, who was a first-year student from Yorktown Heights, New York. He is scheduled to appear in court on Friday where his public defender will detail any mitigating circumstances.

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VICTIM BLAMING: Democrat Chicago Alderwoman Says Loyola Student Shot by Illegal Was in ‘Wrong Place, Wrong Time’

An 18-year-old Loyola University student named Sheridan Gorman was shot and killed in Chicago over the weekend by an illegal immigrant.

Maria Hadden, a Democrat alderwoman from the city has put out a video in which she says that Gorman may have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time and that she and her friends might have startled the shooter.

This is, by far, the worst reaction to this situation possible. It’s truly stunning.

The Daily Caller reported:

A Chicago alderwoman appeared to blame an 18-year-old woman for her own fatal shooting last week, allegedly at the hands of an illegal alien.

Chicago police announced Sunday that Jose Medina-Medina had been arrested for the murder of Sheridan Gorman, a freshman at Loyola University. Chicago Alderwoman Maria Hadden speculated that Gorman was in the “wrong place at the wrong time.”

“From, from what, from what I’ve been told so far, right, from what police know, from, from speaking to the students who were with her, it seems she might have, that as they were just out, you know, people go out to the beach all the time, right?” Hadden, whose campaign website touts her status as the “first Black, queer woman elected to Chicago City Council,” said during a Thursday report by Fox 32 Chicago.

“And they go out on the pier, they walk around, so the, the kids were out doing normal, normal things people do in the neighborhood. And it sounds like this might have been a wrong place, wrong time, running into a person who had a gun, they might have unintentionally startled this person, I think.”

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Financial Expert Sounds Alarm on the City of Chicago – Facing Budget Gap of More Than a Billion Dollars

The city of Chicago is facing a serious financial crisis, and while their budget problems are not a secret, at least one financial expert is trying to sound the alarm.

The city is looking at a budget gap of more than a billion dollars. That is as serious as it gets.

Chicago already spends a massive amount of its budget un debt and unfunded liabilities like pensions, but it’s only going to get worse and Mayor Brandon Johnson doesn’t seem to know how to even approach fixing this.

FOX News reports:

Chicago’s teetering debt is stark warning left-wing mayor is fueling ‘pay later’ doom cycle: expert

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and his administration are presiding over a city in serious financial straits.

Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, is facing a corporate fund budget gap of more than $1 billion, while its 2025 fiscal year is projected to close with a roughly $150 million deficit with about two-fifths of the budget going toward debt service and pension costs.

Johnson said in April the city was “at a crossroads” and had to “essentially do more with less,” while simultaneously slamming the Trump administration for reportedly threatening federal funding, calling it a “different scenario we weren’t under before.”

Austin Berg, executive director of pro-taxpayer research group Illinois Policy Institute, said markets are looking at the true numbers and are “really concerned” about Chicago…

“The solution set is always the same: Stop making bad decisions, and you have to put a structure in place to make better decisions,” Berg said.

“So, the bad decisions are things like taking one-time revenues from federal COVID spending and putting it into operations. The bad decisions are borrowing for operations, which this latest bond issue just did. That’s a huge no-no and a red flag for investors.”

This is what decades of one party rule gets you.

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AIPAC suffers loss in congressional race, millions of dollars squandered helping Chicago mayor’s ally

Several super PACs linked to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee reportedly poured over $20 million into multiple House primary races in Illinois in hopes of advancing favored candidates or at the very least kneecapping candidates critical of Israel.

Some of the groups’ investments paid off.

For instance, Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller — a beneficiary of nearly $4.5 million in ad spending from the AIPAC-linked group Affordable Chicago Now — defeated former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. in the Democrat primary for the state’s 2nd Congressional District.

In the Democrat primary for the 8th Congressional District, former Rep. Melissa Bean, another beneficiary of spending by an AIPAC-aligned group, also came out on top, beating Junaid Ahmed, a leftist whom AIPAC faulted for centering “his campaign on attacking Israel.”

However, Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin, a candidate who ran in the 7th District Democrat primary to replace retiring incumbent Rep. Danny Davis, turned out to be a bad investment.

With 90% of the votes in, the Associated Press called the race for state Rep. La Shawn Ford, a Democrat with a history of tax fraud who secured 23.9% of the total vote. Conyears-Ervin, one of only handful of candidates who said in a WBEZ-FM survey that she did not oppose sending U.S. military aid to Israel, trailed behind with 20.5% of the vote.

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Identity Politics over Public Safety on the Chicago Transit Authority

Chicago’s transit chaos shows the cost of a grievance-driven politics: when enforcement is always racist, everyone else just gets less safe.

The Legacy of Jesse Jackson Makes All of Us Less Safe

If you ride the trains or buses in Chicago with any regularity, you don’t worry about microaggressions.

You worry about being maced, mugged, or shoved onto the tracks—or, in one grotesque recent case, set on fire.

That’s the lived experience of Chicagoans navigating the Chicago Transit Authority and Metra. Not academic theory. Not seminar-room sociology. Reality.

So naturally, when a modest pilot program is introduced allowing the transit agencies to suspend individuals who assault conductors, spit on drivers, punch random riders, or otherwise turn public transportation into a Thunderdome audition, what does the Chicago Tribune decide is the story?

Not whether the program works.

Not whether it can be enforced.

Not whether it deters crime.

No.

The story, apparently, is that it’s racist.

Because roughly 90 percent of the approximately 40 individuals suspended under the program are black or Hispanic.

Forty people. In a city of nearly three million. On a transit system carrying hundreds of thousands daily.

That’s the scandal.

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Will This Make Chicago Safe?

An ultimatum issued by the Trump administration has pushed the Chicago Transit Authority to unveil a beefed-up security plan, threatening to yank federal funding unless the agency tackles the rampant crime plaguing its trains and buses.

This move comes after a string of brutal attacks exposed the failures of soft-on-crime policies in the Windy City.

The CTA submitted its Revised Security Enhancement Plan to the Federal Transit Administration, detailing a “75 percent increase in monthly system policing hours, aggressive crime reduction targets, and expanded social service support,” according to an official agency statement.

Elements include more patrols from Chicago Police and Cook County Sheriff’s deputies, expanded mental health outreach to connect individuals with housing and services, and tighter collaboration with prosecutors for tougher handling of transit-related crimes.

“The plan is CTA’s formal response to an FTA Special Directive issued in December,” the agency noted, highlighting early signs that recent strategies are curbing crime.

This overhaul follows the FTA’s rejection of an earlier CTA submission, with the Trump administration giving the agency until March 19 to deliver or risk losing up to $50 million in funds.

The push stems from high-profile horrors like the November 18 attack where Lawrence Reed, a career criminal with 72 prior arrests, allegedly doused a young woman with gasoline and set her ablaze on a Blue Line train. 

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Chicago Teacher Union Wants to Close Schools on May 1st to Protest Trump

The Chicago Teacher Union is calling for school to be cancelled on May 1st so that teachers, staffers, and even students can spend the day protesting Trump. Someone might want to clue these teachers in to the fact that this is not their job. Not even close.

Students in Chicago can barely read or do math at grade level. Maybe that is because their teachers care more about organizing protests than they do about teaching their students.

Maybe they could save the protests for the summer months when they’re not even working.

FOX News reports:

Chicago Teachers Union calls for school shutdown on May Day to protest Trump

The Chicago Teachers Union is advocating for a day off for teachers and students on May 1, for the national May Day movement.

May Day is also known as International Worker’s Day, which celebrates workers and advocates for labor rights.

On Wednesday, the union approved a resolution to designate May 1 as the day of “Civic Action and Defense of Public Education,” and seeking support for this from Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Chicago’s Board of Education.

“If we still want to have democracy in the midterms this November, public schools that provide our students with quality education, and unions to defend workers’ rights, then it is up to every Chicagoan to stand up for what we believe in and show the authoritarian billionaire in Washington that when he breaks every rule, we will not go along with business as usual,” CTU Vice President Jackson Potter said in a statement.

The union claimed in the resolution that public education is under attack by “MAGA politicians,” seemingly referring to supporters of President Donald Trump.

The resolution says “public education is facing an unprecedented national assault driven by MAGA politicians, billionaire donors, and corporate interests who seek to privatize our schools, censor educators, ban books, dismantle civil rights protections, criminalize and separate immigrant families, and weaken workers’ unions.”

None of that matters at all. These people were hired to do a specific job and this ain’t it.

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