Daywatch: Cook County housing authority workers say they struggle to pay bills
Good morning, Chicago.
Rachel Dubose had just bought a house and started a new full-time job at the Housing Authority of Cook County as a housing specialist, helping low-income county residents obtain and maintain their subsidized housing.
She made $40,000 a year at HACC in 2022.
Her bills piled up. While she never fell behind on her mortgage payments, her credit card debt was 'getting too out of control,' Dubose said. She started a part-time job at Walmart. Some days she would go straight from her job at HACC to Walmart until 10 p.m., having been up since 5 a.m. It 'took a toll,' she said.
Once Dubose got engaged, the dual income allowed her to stop working at Walmart. But still, after about two years, citing the high caseloads, low pay, nepotism and favoritism by managers and general 'terrible work environment,' she quit.
Dubose's struggles to pay her bills and negative experience working for HACC mirrors that of other HACC union employees who spoke with the Tribune. The employees are working without a contract and have been for about a year. The negotiations have required the parties, who will meet today, to bring in a federal mediator to try to help reach a deal, as the union says the agency won't agree to their current wage and health insurance proposals. Their demands include raising the salary floor to $40,000 for some workers.
Read the full story from the Tribune's Lizzie Kane.
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Jim Edgar, who led Illinois government through a period of fiscal austerity with great positive acclaim from voters during his two terms as governor, announced Monday that he has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
Jury selection began Monday in Lake County Court in the case of Robert Crimo III, who is charged in the mass shooting that killed seven people at the 2022 Independence Day parade in Highland Park.
At the conclusion of the day, attorneys had agreed on seven people who will eventually decide whether Crimo is guilty of first-degree murder and numerous counts of attempted murder in the attack that injured more than 40.
When two northwest suburban childhood hockey pals launched Spiteful Brewing in 2012 as a post-collegiate enterprise, the business overcame long odds to grow from a stovetop startup into an award-winning craft brewery and tap room in Bowmanville.
But after successfully navigating everything from the pandemic to a flat craft brewing market that has forced several Chicago competitors to close, Spiteful faces an imminent new challenge: tariffs.
President Donald Trump has claimed that other countries charge unfair import taxes that have come at the expense of domestic manufacturing and jobs. His near constant threats of tariffs have already raised concerns among businesses and consumers about an economic slowdown and accelerating inflation. But Trump claims that the import taxes would ultimately generate revenues to reduce the federal budget deficit and new jobs for workers.
'Our country will be extremely liquid and rich again,' Trump said.
Trump's tariff wars leave US small business with nowhere to hide
Terry Savage: Tariffs 101
Two small planes collided in midair over one of the runways on the outskirts of Tucson last week. One hit the ground and caught fire, sending up a plume of black smoke. The remains of two people were found in the charred wreckage. The other plane was able to land, with those occupants uninjured.
The collision was the latest aviation mishap to draw attention in recent weeks. The circumstances vary widely with each case, however, and experts who study aviation accidents say they don't see any connection between them.
Sammy Sosa is expected to return to Chicago Cubs camp as a guest instructor, continuing the reunification of the former star and the organization that shunned him for more than two decades.
Sosa's arrival at old Fitch Park in Mesa, Ariz., was always newsworthy — usually because he was the last player there, amid one controversy or another, writes Paul Sullivan. His spring training stories are legendary and too numerous to mention, but here are some of the Sosa sagas we can't forget.
Frank Pellico showed no signs that his final night tickling the keyboards as the Chicago Blackhawks' organist was plucking at his heartstrings.
'I'm more antsy,' he told the Tribune moments before Sunday's home game against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Shortly afterward, colleagues and fans streamed into the organ room to extend congratulations on his decision to retire after 33 years.
'Waitress' starred Chicago's own Jessie Mueller on Broadway and is now getting its first local production at the ambitious Paramount Theatre in Aurora with Michelle Lauto in the lead role. It's a delightful piece of material centered on the female experience and based on the 2007 Adrienne Shelly movie, writes Tribune theater critic Chris Jones.
The sweet, stuffed pastries known as paczki were once cooked as a way to get rid of any extra eggs, sugar and lard ahead of Lent. They've become a decadent tradition throughout Polish communities, and you should go out of your way to seek some out.
Fat Tuesday, the day before the start of Lent, is celebrated as Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Carnival in Brazil, but you don't need to travel to get a taste of the fun. Bars and restaurants throughout Chicago are offering food and drink specials such as king cake, seafood boils and hurricanes and hosting performances from samba dancers and brass bands.
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Newsweek
an hour ago
- Newsweek
Walmart's Post About Grilling Flooded With Negative Comments
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A recent Walmart social media post has been flooded with negative comments, following boycott calls from Trump supporters after Walmart heiress Christy Walton placed a full-page ad in The New York Times, urging Americans to engage in civic discourse. Newsweek has reached out to Walmart outside of regular working hours via an online contact form for comment. Why It Matters Walmart has faced mounting criticism over the past year and has been one of multiple companies targeted by an "economic blackout" movement, including Amazon and Target. One reason for the blackout was that companies were perceived to be rolling back on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives (DEI), following President Donald Trump's opposition to the initiatives. In an aerial view, the logo of a Walmart Supercenter is seen on May 15, 2025 in Austin, Texas. Walmart surpassed first-quarter earnings estimate, while falling short of quarterly sales. In an aerial view, the logo of a Walmart Supercenter is seen on May 15, 2025 in Austin, Texas. Walmart surpassed first-quarter earnings estimate, while falling short of quarterly To Know In a post on X shared on Wednesday, Walmart shared a lighthearted post, writing "tfw u [that feeling when you] buy a grill and have no idea how to use it." Social media users were quick to flood the comments section with negative comments. "Seriously? This c*** when the country hates you right now???" @Gumbly responded, while @DeeAnn13761 wrote "Boycott Walmart!" A number of the negative comments referenced the fallout over the No Kings ad. @maga2024cosmo wrote on X, "This post makes no sense. Oh and you lost a customer for life over this no king nonsense." The backlash to Walmart about the No Kings ad stems mostly from MAGA, something which could cause MAGA-leaning American consumers to step back from the retailer. The chain has faced criticism from left-leaning consumers already this year over DEI. The overall effect of this potential double impact on sales remains to be seen. The No Kings ad was paid for by Christy Walton, who is the billionaire philanthropist and widow of John T. Walton, son of Walmart founder Sam Walton. The ad read: "The honor, dignity and integrity of our country is not for sale. Show up, attend your town halls, be civil." The ad did not mention President Donald Trump by name, but statements including "WE honor our commitments and stand by our allies," "WE defend against aggression by dictators," "WE respect our neighbors and trading partners," indicated criticism of the Trump administration. A spokesperson for Walmart previously told Newsweek: "The advertisements from Christy Walton are in no way connected to or endorsed by Walmart. She does not serve on the board or play any role in decision-making at Walmart." The ad was shared by the account Libs of Chicago on X, who wrote "One of the ppl funding the socialist movement is Christy Ruth Walton who is a stake holder of @Walmart. Sort of ironic isn't it? A Walton married a socialist. If there was ever a time to boycott Walmart, it's now," in a post which has been viewed over 23,000 times as of reporting. What People Are Saying @davis33540 wrote on X: "I won't be back in any Walmart or Sam's. I am a Trump supporter as well as a supporter of the rule of law! Mr. Sam Walton would be ashamed of you." @GalleryStClair wrote on X: "Yeah, take your NO KINGS and shove it up your tailpipe. Do you even know who your customers are? Won't be shopping here anymore." What's Next The full affect of boycotts on and backlash against Walmart may be minimal, given its prevalence in American retail.
Chicago Tribune
3 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Pension change boon to Chicago police officers, firefighters, but additional hit to taxpayers
Last-minute changes approved by Illinois lawmakers in the waning days of the session will cost Chicago taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in their first year and billions over time by giving some police officers and firefighters more lucrative pensions. Lead sponsor Sen. Robert Martwick, a Chicago Democrat, told the Tribune the tweaks were a negotiated fix agreed to by Mayor Brandon Johnson and Gov. JB Pritzker that was promised to both bring parity between Chicago and downstate first responders and help bridge a shortfall in benefits for employees hired after 2010. Johnson's finance team estimated the initial cost would be $52 million in 2027. Budget watchdogs warned it will add billions to the city's pension liability, a figure that topped $37 billion by the end of 2023. 'It adds to the city's burdens at the worst possible moment, with no consideration of the city's actual capacity to meet those burdens,' said Joe Ferguson, the president of the Civic Federation. Chicago Chief Financial Officer Jill Jaworski's office is still 'conducting a comprehensive analysis' of the long-term cost of the legislation, her team said in an email, and would have updated figures in the coming weeks. 'Given the speed with which the amendment was introduced, any estimates at this stage would be preliminary and subject to change.' Downstate first responders received boosted benefits as part of the state's landmark consolidation of their pension investments in 2019. Chicago police officers and firefighters argued they deserved the same and were assured that lawmakers would make good later. Dave Sullivan, a lobbyist for the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, wrote in the union's monthly newsletter that several years ago Pritzker called 'personally to assure me that he would make Tier 2 parity … a reality,' and he looked forward to the governor's signature. Pritzker's office didn't respond to a question about whether there was such an agreement and said the bill was under review. Martwick said Johnson 'understood a promise was made. I give him credit' for living up to it. 'He continues to show — unlike so many of his predecessors — a willingness to solve the problem and consistency in terms of living up to those steps' to do so. Mayor Lori Lightfoot more vocally opposed pension sweeteners during her term, including a last-ditch attempt to convince Pritzker to veto firefighter pension legislation that was projected to add between $18 million and $30 million to the city's annual bill. Johnson, however, supported a similar bill for police in 2023, adding an estimated $60 million to the city's immediate pension tab and $1 billion to the police fund's total liability. Jaworski did file an opposition slip to Martwick's amendment in the Senate, testifying the change would cost an estimated $52 million in its first year and characterizing the proposal as 'an unfunded mandate,' her office said. The Johnson administration has been aware of the police and fire effort since at least two years ago, when the General Assembly considered similar legislation and delayed it at the request of the city, the bill's sponsors said. Simmering behind the city change is the failure of both city and state officials to come up with a fix for a projected shortfall in Tier II retirement benefits. Despite concerns that benefits for public employees at some point won't be equal to what Social Security would provide — a violation of a federal 'safe harbor' law — the legislature did not pass a comprehensive Tier II overhaul this session. And Chicago officials who face the same problem haven't published the findings of a pension working group convened two years ago. Martwick, a member of the working group, said this legislation does help partially address their shortfall. Separately, the state budget passed this session includes a $75 million set-aside to help pay for the first year of expected adjustments for state Tier II employees. The Chicago pension legislation makes three key benefit boosts. First, it increases the final salary cap used to determine pension benefits for police and fire retirees from $127,283 to $141,408. It also changes the rate at which that salary cap for police officers and firefighters rises every year. The current rate is either half of the rate of inflation or 3%, whichever is lower. The bill switches that calculation to the full rate of inflation or 3%, whichever is lower. The third tweak changes the time frame to determine that final average salary figure. Right now, police officers' benefits are based on the average of the highest salary from eight of the last 10 years of their career. 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'It's curious and it's troubling that something of this magnitude was able to fly by without there being more meaningful discussion of its near- and long-term impact,' Ferguson said, especially from Chicago legislators. Martwick filed the language as a gut-and-replace amendment in the last week of the spring legislative session. Lawmakers considered the legislation in a Senate committee a day later, and House lawmakers both discussed the matter in committee and passed the bill on the floor on the final day of the session. Moving massive bills in the final days of spring session is often the norm in Springfield, which also saw lawmakers publicly introduce and pass a $55 billion budget package within days of adjournment this year. 'It's important to underscore that the City was given very limited time to respond and was unable to conduct a fully validated, in-depth analysis before the hearing and the bill's passage — despite the fact that the legislation will have significant and lasting implications for the City,' a spokesperson for Jaworski said. Given the city knew the adjustment was a possibility years ago, Democratic Rep. Stephanie Kifowit said it was 'disingenuous' to suggest the bill came at the last minute. The Oswego lawmaker and bill sponsor pointed to video-gaming terminals as a potential funding source. State lawmakers repeatedly throughout the legislative session called for the city to use terminals to resolve its funding needs, but Chicago currently doesn't allow them. Critics fear terminals would cannibalize revenues at Bally's casino, which are already dedicated to public safety pensions. 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'I think (what's challenging) for the Republican caucus is if none of the senators representing the city of Chicago itself had a problem with it, I think a lot in the Republican caucus said, 'Well, if this is what all of the voices representing Chicago want to do, who are we to disagree with them?''
Forbes
3 hours ago
- Forbes
Inside The Global 2000: Trump's Tariffs Haven't Stopped The World's Growth… Yet
Donald Trump has used his first five months back in office to attack longtime allies like Canada, Mexico and the European Union, insisting the United States 'will no longer tolerate being ripped off.' His posture with trade partners has been more competitive than collaborative, imposing or threatening heavy-handed tariffs under the pretense that they're running up trade deficits to enrich themselves at Americans' expense. He's right that U.S. manufacturing jobs have sharply dropped since the turn of the century, gutting industrial cities across America's heartland that have in turn flocked to him in voting booths. But it's hard to make the case that globalization has been a zero-sum game. For the last 23 years, Forbes has compiled the Global 2000 list, ranking the world's 2,000 largest companies by revenue, profit, assets and market value, with equal weights for each of the four metrics. Twenty years ago, the 2,000 companies on the list combined to record $21.9 trillion in annual sales, $1.3 trillion in profit, $80.7 trillion in assets and $26.6 trillion in market value. Every half decade since, all of those numbers have steadily climbed, and this year's totals amount to records of $52.9 trillion in revenue, $4.9 trillion in profit, $242.2 trillion in assets and $91.3 trillion in market cap. Much of that astounding growth, including more than doubling in revenues has taken place in the U.S., where the S&P 500 index is up fivefold in the last two decades. It's home to Walmart, the company with the highest 12-month sales in the world, Alphabet, the world's most profitable company, and Apple, the most valuable company as of April 25, when the data used to rank the list was compiled. (Nvidia, No. 47 on our list, has since surpassed it, with a market value nearing $3.5 trillion). Now, leaders of many of the most prominent companies in the U.S. and around the world are fretting that a trade war could stunt that growth. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said on its earnings call in May that 'higher tariffs will result in higher prices.' JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon devoted the majority of his annual letter to his macroeconomic and geopolitical concerns before even beginning to discuss his own company. 'America will be first—but not if it is alone,' Dimon wrote in a reference to Trump's 'America First' slogan. 'If the Western world's military and economic alliances were to fragment, America itself would inevitably weaken over time.' Last week at Forbes' annual Iconoclast Summit in New York, one of the world's greatest investors, billionaire Ken Griffin said the use of tariffs 'comes at a dear price to the U.S. consumer' and said 'shame on the administration' for criticizing McMillon in response to his comment about higher prices. Dimon's cautionary tone shouldn't be ignored. JPMorgan has been the number one company on Forbes' Global 2000 for the past three years. His bank's stock is up 30% in the past year, while the top 100 American companies on the list have gained, on average, 10.5% in market value, underperforming the top 100 companies outside of the United States by three percentage points. In fact, since Trump took office, the S&P 500, which has swung wildly, has gained a mere 0.59%, versus nearly 20% gains for stocks in Europe and China. Over the past 10 years, the top 100 U.S. stocks on our list have an average cumulative return of 488% versus 143% average return for the top 100 stocks outside the United States. As America's largest bank, with $4.4 trillion in assets, JPMorgan is the only company to rank in the top 20 worldwide in each of the four categories considered for the list. Berkshire Hathaway, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Saudi Aramco and Amazon make up the rest of the top five of the overall Global 2000. Five of the top eight firms on the list are banks, even as the 'magnificent seven' tech companies make up most of the most valuable companies in the world by market cap. Tech giants are generally lighter on assets and don't get as much credit for that variable. Naturally, banking is the most represented industry, with 328 banks ranging from JPMorgan to $43 billion (assets) Keiyo Bank in Japan represented. Another 134 companies classified as diversified financials made the cut, including Goldman Sachs (No. 20), Charles Schwab (No. 124) and Blackstone (No. 418). Tech is comparatively underrepresented, with 186 entrants distributed between the software and services, hardware and semiconductors categories. Of the 100 largest companies by assets in the world, 88 are banks, insurers or other financial institutions, giving them a built-in advantage. Banking profits have also been increasing for years thanks to high net interest margins in an environment with rising rates. While there hasn't been much movement at the top of Forbes' Global 2000, there were plenty of significant moves deeper into the list. Artificial intelligence chipmaker extraordinaire Nvidia moved into the top 100 for the first time, shooting up 63 slots to 47th to continue a fast rise through the rankings since its Global 2000 debut in 2006. Disney (71st) and Pfizer (73rd) are also back in the top 100 thanks to a profit rebound after sliding to No. 155 and No. 436 last year, though Pfizer's stock, with its $130 billion market cap, remains 60% lower than its pandemic-era record high in late 2021. Moving in the other direction, BP tumbled 374 spots to No. 421 because its profit fell from $9.2 billion to a mere $399 million, hampered by falling oil prices and unexpected refinery outages. Intel similarly plunged from 107th to 488th after booking an astonishing net loss of $19 billion in the last 12 months. The floundering Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker has fallen well behind Nvidia in the AI arms race and has been unprofitable for five quarters in a row, reporting a $16.6 billion loss in last year's third quarter alone due to write-downs related to restructuring efforts that included laying off 15,000 employees and the depreciation of some manufacturing assets. In terms of overall numbers, the United States is still first by a wide margin, with 612 companies on the list headquartered here, a slight drop from 621 last year. China is next with 317 companies represented, including firms based in Hong Kong. In a slow year for IPOs, there aren't many notable newcomers to the list, but a handful include Smithfield Foods (No. 1,383), AI cloud computing firm CoreWeave (No. 1,799) and SiriusXM Holdings (No. 1,822), which spun off from Liberty Media last September. The highest-ranked new company to join the list is Irish firm Smurfit Westrock at 855th, a near 100-year old paper and packaging firm which formed as a result of a merger between Smurfit Kappa and Westrock last July. Bankers are hoping that Trump's promises of deregulation will lead to more mergers and IPOs, which could create more movement on next year's Global 2000, but if this year's chaotic policy announcements persist, profits for the whole list could come down as more cash gets siphoned into governments' coffers due to tariffs. The U.S. remains the world's most powerful economy, and it's up to Trump and Congress to decide whether what is effectively the tax revenue from government heavy-handedness on trade deals, is worth sacrificing the economic gains the United States and its allies have long benefited from due to globalization.
