Renderings released Wednesday showcase the Chicago Bears’ plan for a new stadium and grounds. Provided More sports team stadium drama could be on the horizon as the Chicago White Sox are said, as of this writing, to be preparing to announce a significant private investment in a new South Loop ballpark. The ballclub has already demanded a share of the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority’s bonding authority, which the Chicago Bears claimed for itself in its entirety this past week for its own stadium plan (to the tune of $900 million). The city’s women’s soccer team, the Red Stars, is als ..read more

Election judges process and count March 19 primary election mail-in ballots for the Chicago Board of Elections at the Cook County Administration Building in the Loop. Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times While rallying his political troops last summer in Springfield heading into the primary campaign season, Illinois Republican Party chairman Don Tracy highlighted some of his top priorities to help the party regain a foothold in the Democratic-dominated state. “We’ve got to embrace early voting and voting by mail,” Tracy said at the Illinois Republican Party State Central Committee & County Chairme ..read more

Renderings of the proposed Bears stadium, released Wednesday, included this vision of what Soldier Field would look like if it were deconstructed, with the colonnades preserved and the playing surface converted to parkland and baseball/softball diamonds. But this part of the project would not be completed until after the new stadium — and would require hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers. Chicago Bears In laying out their dream for a new $3.5 billion domed lakefront stadium, Bears President Kevin Warren and Mayor Brandon Johnson repeatedly invoked the name of Daniel Burnham. T ..read more

Gov. J.B. Pritzker (center), Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch (left) and Illinois Senate President Don Harmon (right) are not quite sold on the new Bears stadium proposal. Blue Room Stream Chicago Bears President Kevin Warren’s glitzy new lakefront stadium proposal was met with a resounding no by the state’s top Democrats on Wednesday. At least for now. Noticeably absent from the Bears unveiling, Gov. J.B. Pritzker echoed previous public statements and again brushed aside the latest proposal — which includes more than $2 billion in private funds from the Bears but still requi ..read more

Stephen Mitchell, chair of the Local School Council at Bronzeville Classical elementary school, and a member of the LSC Advisory Board, stands in the meeting room of an LSC Advisory Board special meeting at the CPS Garfield Park office on Tuesday, April 23, 2024. Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times For decades, LaSalle Language Academy on the North Side has offered students from across Chicago daily classes in Spanish, Mandarin and other languages, along with the unique opportunity to go to a public school with kids from different backgrounds and neighborhoods in a segregated city. But now ..read more

Oberweis Dairy headquarters in North Aurora. The company is known for its ice cream and glass-bottled milk. Google Maps Two Chicago area suitors have emerged to buy Oberweis Dairy — a week after the company, known for its ice cream stores, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and plans to lay off 127 workers. Brian Boomsma, owner of the family-owned dairy and egg business Dutch Farms in Pullman, made a stalking horse bid to buy all operating assets of Oberweis, according to Oberweis President Adam Kraber. A stalking horse bidder makes the first offer in bankruptcy proceedings, sett ..read more

Maria Alvarez, Karina Gonzalez’s cousin, speaks at the State of Illinois Building in support of Karina’s Bill, to allow police to seize guns from a home when a domestic violence survivor obtains an order of protection. Zubaer Khan/Sun-Times The warning signs of looming violence are too often crystal clear: threats, firearms in the house, an outcry to police. Lives can be saved and bloodshed avoided when our justice system can react swiftly to such red flags. Too often, our existing laws don’t allow for that. Over the last year, we have seen a list of devastating and preventable homicides ..read more

The Chicago Teachers Union’s abrasive tactics aren’t sitting well with lawmakers in Springfield. Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times Just eight of 78 Illinois House Democrats openly sided last week with the once-indomitable Chicago Teachers Union. The CTU hotly opposed a bill to halt all public school closures and prevent disproportionate budget cuts and changes to admissions criteria at Chicago’s selective-enrollment schools, until a fully elected Chicago school board is seated in 2027. The final roll call was a lopsided 92-8. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, whose popularity has plummeted along with ..read more

A crowd carries signs at a rally outside the 10th District police station to demand that police do more to solve unsolved murders, May 10, 2022. Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times Twenty-five years ago, my dad, Don Schemel, was shot and killed on his way to pick me up from work. He was three blocks away when he stopped his truck to wait for a train to cross the tracks. While he waited, someone parked their car behind his truck, got out and shot him five times — three times in the head and twice in the arm. I made it to the hospital in time for him to die, on the table next to me, covered ..read more

Minyon Moore, chair of the Democratic National Convention Committee, discusses the 2024 Democratic National Convention during a news conference at the Hilton Chicago, Thursday. Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times Top state Democratic Party leaders on Thursday vowed “Blue Wall” unity ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago despite party fissures over the war in Gaza and the ongoing migrant crisis — and polls that show President Joe Biden still must gain ground to win key battleground states. Democrats are deeply focused on Wisconsin and Michigan to help bolster Biden’s re-election chanc ..read more