Toni Preckwinkle on Monday was unanimously re-elected chairwoman of the Cook County Democratic Party, a post she has held since 2018. Sun-Times file As she easily breezed to another two-year term as the head of the Cook County Democratic Party, Toni Preckwinkle touted the dominance the party has held in local elections, but also foreshadowed the work to be done to unify the party behind Democratic President Joe Biden ahead of the national convention in Chicago. Preckwinkle on Monday was unanimously re-elected chairwoman of the Democratic Party, a post she has held since 2018. She had no ..read more

A voter at Isabelle C. O’Keeffe School in South Shore feeds her ballot into a voting machine on Election Day in April. Pat Nabong/Sun-Times The March 19 election will go down in Illinois history as having the lowest voter turnout for a presidential primary since at least 1960. Chicago may have avoided surpassing 2012's bleak low-turnout record of 24.6%, eking out a final turnout of 25.8%. But statewide, just 1,518,856 of the 7,965,287 registered voters in Illinois cast ballots in the March 19 primary. That resulted in a statewide voter turnout of 19.07%, the Illinois State Board of Elect ..read more

Majid Matariyeh, a Palestinian American, walks through Federal Plaza in The Loop, Wednesday, April 17, 2024. | Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Time Tensions in the Middle East are high, with Iran and Israel trading drone strikes in recent days. Looking ahead, University of Chicago student Hassan D. doesn't worry so much about direct violence. He worries about his family in Iran facing increased retaliatory sanctions . "It doesn't scare me that much that there will be a war on Iran that will put my family at risk of, let's say, being hit with missiles...," sa ..read more

The Illinois State Capitol Building. 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 his Statehouse influence, ought to take this as a warning no ..read more

Mayor Brandon Johnson presides at Friday’s Chicago City Council meeting. Jim Vondruska/Sun-Times The City Council on Friday authorized a massive $1.25 billion borrowing plan for economic development and housing projects, handing Mayor Brandon Johnson a key victory in his plan to wean the city off a longstanding reliance on tax increment financing districts. The plan was approved by a 32-17 vote over opponents who called for tighter council oversight of future projects. It cleared the Finance Committee earlier in the week after Johnson allies fended off efforts by Ald. Bill Conway (34th ..read more

Mayor Brandon Johnson meets migrants staying at the 12th Police District station last year. Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times (file) City Council members on Friday approved $70 million in surplus spending that, with assistance from the county and state, is expected to cover expenses through the end of the year to care for the influx of asylum seekers sent to Chicago from the southern U.S. border. By a vote of 30-18, council members backed the latest round of funding for a crisis that has highlighted racial divisions in the city, raising questions about committing money to new Latino arrivals wit ..read more

William Dukes Jr. Cook County sheriff’s office Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office won’t takes sides in a man’s request to obtain a certificate of innocence in the 1993 killings of a Cicero woman and her granddaughter — while he awaits trial in the 2022 rape of a woman on the North Side. "At this time, the state is not going to be intervening on this matter,” Assistant State’s Attorney Angela Tisdale said in court Friday about the request by William Dukes Jr., for which a hearing is scheduled May 31. A certificate of innocence could allow Dukes, who spent more than 15 years in ..read more

The offices of Monroe Capital, 311 S. Wacker Dr. Pat Nabong / Sun-Times A Chicago investment firm lent millions to a South Florida real estate company that's now being sued by Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul for enticing struggling homeowners to sign 40-year contracts he says were designed to grab their homes' equity. MV Realty, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year, deceptively targeted people who had equity in their homes but needed cash, locking them into decades-long contracts that carried hidden fees and limited their ability to refinance or sell, Raoul sa ..read more

Juan Teague, owner of Juan and Only, inside one of the company’s conference rooms at the Prudential Building. The firm is one of five companies selected as a hospitality vendor for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August. Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times If planning a party for friends or family seems like a lot of work, imagine throwing a bash for more than 10,000 guests. Five event production companies, nearly all based in Chicago, will do just that this summer: plan the huge official parties for the Democratic National Convention, taking place Aug. 19-22. Last month ..read more

The CTA’s Kimball Brown Line L station yard is where dozens of workers in the transit agency’s “Second Chance” program clean train cars overnight in low-paying internships that many hope will lead to permanent, full-time jobs. But that doesn’t usually happen. Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere / Sun-Times Celebrating the “Second Chance” program he helped create, CTA President Dorval Carter lauded it recently as a way to give “individuals with barriers to employment the opportunity to really turn their lives around and provide them with really good CTA, union-paying jobs.” But the Chicago Transit Au ..read more