Daywatch: Trump cuts may end oversight of Illinois special ed school
Good morning, Chicago.
A short video taken inside an Illinois school captured troubling behavior: A teacher gripping a 6-year-old boy with autism by the ankle and dragging him down the hallway on his back.
The early April incident would've been upsetting in any school, but it happened at the Garrison School, part of a special education district where at one time students were arrested at the highest rate of any district in the country. The teacher was charged with battery weeks later after pressure from the student's parents.
It's been about eight months since the U.S. Department of Education directed Garrison to change the way it responded to the behavior of students with disabilities. The department said it would monitor the Four Rivers Special Education District, which operates Garrison, following a ProPublica and Chicago Tribune investigation in 2022 that found the school frequently involved police and used controversial disciplinary methods.
But the department's Office for Civil Rights regional office in Chicago, which was responsible for Illinois and five other states, was one of seven abolished by President Donald Trump's administration in March; the offices were closed and their entire staff was fired.
And here are the top stories you need to know to start your day, including why the U.S. Department of Justice opened an investigation into Mayor Brandon Johnson, how Chicago is settling the parking meter lawsuit and a new book that tells stories behind the Malnati pizza empire.
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The archbishop of Chicago doesn't know when the Holy Father will return to his hometown for a visit – an appearance many have been clamoring for as the city celebrates its new homegrown pontiff. Vice President JD Vance invited the pope to visit the United States during a private meeting Monday and the pontiff could be heard responding 'at some point' in video provided by Vatican media.
'We need to give him some breathing space here,' Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich said, with a little laugh. 'He's got a lot of things on his plate right now. He has to make that decision.'
Only one pope has ever traveled to Chicago: In 1979, Pope John Paul II's three-hour Mass in Grant Park attracted anywhere from 500,000 to 1.5 million attendees.
Chicago White Sox honor Pope Leo XIV with new Rate Field artwork
Vintage Chicago Tribune: Pope John Paul II's visit in 1979
U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood announced that she will not enter the Democratic primary race to succeed retiring Dick Durbin in the U.S. Senate.
The four-term congresswoman from west suburban Naperville was the youngest Black woman ever elected to Congress in 2018 and has been viewed as a rising star in the party.
Who will fill Dick Durbin's US Senate seat in Illinois? Here are the candidates.
The U.S. Department of Justice began an investigation into Mayor Brandon Johnson yesterday over allegations of race-based discrimination, citing his recent remarks at a Woodlawn church in which he emphasized how many Black people he's hired in his administration.
ComEd customers may be feeling the heat this summer after a spike in electricity supply charges goes into effect in June, just in time for air conditioning season.
Chicagoans who overwhelmingly loathe the Daley meter lease may indeed be hard-pressed to feel victorious over paying to hire 10 more people to ticket them for not staying current on their payments to the company for the privilege of parking on public streets.
Former Portage Mayor James Snyder and his legal team have until Friday to object to prosecutor's filing to proceed to sentencing on the IRS charge conviction and drop a third trial on the bribery charge.
If a response isn't filed by Friday, Judge Gretchen Lund wrote that she would request probation office officials to file a revised presentence report and set a date for sentencing.
The New Lenox Crossroads Sports Complex set to open this summer is also getting a new name. The village signed a three-year naming rights agreement with Wintrust Financial Corporation, rebranding the $70 million facility as the Wintrust Crossroads Sports Complex.
Former Detroit Red Wings head coach Jeff Blashill has emerged as a top contender for the Chicago Blackhawks, according to reports.
Blashill, 51, has a wide-ranging background. He has been a head coach and assistant in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association, United States Hockey League, American Hockey League and with USA Hockey in addition to the NHL.
The Philadelphia Eagles' famous tush push play has been a topic of conversation for years, reaching a new level when owners agreed to consider a proposal from the Green Bay Packers to ban the short-yardage scheme that has helped the Eagles win one Super Bowl and reach another.
'I kind of love that mix of excitement and fear, like on a roller coaster,' says Lydia Cash. Those warring emotions permeate Cash's latest body of work, including the singles 'We Can Never Go Back' and 'A Whole Summer of Loving You,' which were both released earlier this year. Confident and lyrically naked, Cash (yes, of that Cash family) peels back the layers of her own life — including the end of an eight-year relationship and marriage — to share rich, evocative Americana-inspired rock music. New and old fans can hear her latest tracks during a solo set at the Empty Bottle on May 23.
Parachute HiFi, the creative Korean American restaurant and cocktail bar in Avondale, retains its original Michelin-starred DNA, but has been reimagined beautifully with casual cuisine and amplified style by James Beard award-winning chefs, owners and spouses Johnny Clark and Beverly Kim for the world we live in right now.
Kim describes the newest incarnation of Parachute, which just celebrated its 11th anniversary this month, more specifically as a listening bar. These bars trace their lineage back a hundred years or so to jazz kissa cafe culture in Japan, where listening to jazz records through high-fidelity equipment brings music to the forefront.
'Deep Dish: Inside the First 50 Years of Lou Malnati's Pizza' is a surprising book in that it has a welcome lack of recipes but also because it is self-aware and, frankly, occasionally chilling, writes Rick Kogan.
As Marc Malnati's younger brother, Rick, puts it in a short preface, 'This is not a story about great pizza, although we do serve the best pizza in the world. This is the story about how a somewhat dysfunctional family led to the growth of a more functional family.'
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Vox
5 minutes ago
- Vox
The Supreme Court's blessedly narrow decision about religion in the workplace, explained
is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. He received a JD from Duke University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court. In 2018, shortly before Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation shifted the Supreme Court drastically to the right, Democratic Justice Elena Kagan laid out her strategy to keep her Court from becoming too ideological or too partisan. The secret, she said, is to take 'big questions and make them small.' Since then, Kagan and her Democratic colleagues have had mixed success persuading their colleagues to decide cases narrowly when they could hand right-wing litigants a sweeping victory. The Court has largely transformed its approach to religion, for example, though it does occasionally hand down religion cases that end less with a bang than with a whimper. SCOTUS, Explained Get the latest developments on the US Supreme Court from senior correspondent Ian Millhiser. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Catholic Charities v. Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission will likely be remembered as such a whimper. The opinion is unanimous, and it is authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of Kagan's few fellow Democratic justices. The case could have ended in a sweeping decision that severely undermined the rights of many workers. Instead, Sotomayor's opinion focuses on a very narrow distinction between how Wisconsin law treats some religious groups as compared to others. Catholic Charities involved a Wisconsin law that exempts some nonprofits from paying unemployment taxes. This exemption applies only to employers that operate 'primarily for religious purposes.' Wisconsin's state supreme court determined that a 'religious purpose' includes activities like holding worship services or providing religious education, but it does not include secular services like feeding the poor, even if those secular activities are motivated by religion. Related The Supreme Court is leading a Christian conservative revolution The upshot is that Catholic Charities — an organization that is run by the Catholic Church but focuses primarily on secular charitable work — was not exempt from paying unemployment taxes. Sotomayor's decision reverses the state supreme court, so Catholic Charities will now receive an exemption. The Court largely avoids a fight over when businesses with a religious identity can ignore the law In a previous era, the Court was very cautious about permitting religious organizations to claim exemptions, in part because doing so would give some businesses 'an advantage over their competitors.' Such exemptions could also potentially permit employers with a religious identity to exploit their workers. In Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation v. Secretary of Labor (1985), for example, the Court considered a religious cult that operated a wide range of commercial businesses. These businesses paid no cash salaries or wages, although they did claim to give workers food, clothing, and shelter. The cult sought an exemption from minimum wage laws and similar workplace protections, but the Court disagreed. A too-broad decision in Catholic Charities could have potentially undermined decisions like Alamo Foundation, by giving some employers a broad right to ignore laws protecting their workers. But Sotomayor's opinion reads like it was crafted to hand Catholic Charities the narrowest possible victory. Under the state supreme court's decision in Catholic Charities, Sotomayor writes, a church-run nonprofit that does entirely secular charity work may not receive an exemption from paying unemployment taxes. But a virtually identical nonprofit that does the exact same work but also engages in 'proselytization' or limits its services to members of the same faith would receive an exemption. This distinction, Sotomayor says, violates the Supreme Court's long-standing rule that the government 'may not 'officially prefe[r]' one religious denomination over another.' The state may potentially require all charities to pay unemployment taxes. But it cannot treat religious charities that seek to convert people, or that limit their services to members of one faith, differently from religious charities that do not do this. In Sotomayor's words, an organization's 'eligibility for the exemption ultimately turns on inherently religious choices (namely, whether to proselytize or serve only co-religionists).' The crux of Sotomayor's opinion is that the decision whether to try to convert people, or whether to serve non-Catholics, is an inherently 'theological' choice. And states cannot treat different religious organizations differently because of their theological choices. Unfortunately, Sotomayor's opinion, which is a brief 15 pages, does not really define the term 'theological.' So it is likely that future courts will have to wrestle with whether other laws that treat some organizations differently do so because of theological differences or for some other reason. It's not hard to imagine a cult like the one in Alamo Foundation claiming that it has a theological objection to paying the minimum wage. But the Catholic Charities opinion also does not explicitly undermine decisions like Alamo Foundation. Nor does it embrace a more sweeping approach proposed by dissenting justices in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, who argued that nonprofits whose 'motivations are religious' may claim an exemption — regardless of what that nonprofit actually does.
Newsweek
7 minutes ago
- Newsweek
AOC Scrambles New York City Mayoral Race With Endorsement
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. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made her endorsement in New York City's mayoral race as more progressive Democrats in the city work to consolidate support against front-running former Governor Andrew Cuomo. Why It Matters Ocasio-Cortez remains popular with younger, more progressive voters in New York City, so her support could convince some of those voters to head to the polls for the June 24 primary. Whoever prevails in the primary would become the favorite to win in November, as the city remains a Democratic stronghold. What To Know The progressive congresswoman announced in The New York Times that she is ranking Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, who has polled second behind Cuomo and emerged as a favorite among many left-leaning voters, first in the Democratic primary. New York City uses ranked choice voting in their local elections. She said she will be ranking New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams second, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander third, former Comptroller Scott Stringer fourth and state Senator Zellnor Myrie fifth in her endorsement, the Times reported. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York speaks during a rally in Denver on March 21, 2025. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York speaks during a rally in Denver on March 21, 2025. JASON CONNOLLY/AFP via Getty Images "Assemblymember Mamdani has demonstrated a real ability on the ground to put together a coalition of working-class New Yorkers that is strongest to lead the pack," Ocasio-Cortez told the newspaper. "In the final stretch of the race, we need to get very real about that." Newsweek reached out to the Mamdani and Cuomo campaigns, as well as Ocasio-Cortez's office, for comment via email. Cuomo has established a polling lead over other candidates and is viewed as the leader with less than a month until the primary, as progressives seek to rally behind other candidates to prevent him from becoming the party's nominee because of his more moderate policy positions. A recent Emerson College poll found Cuomo and Mamdani as the top two Democratic candidates. On the first round of voting, 35 percent of respondents said they'd vote for Cuomo, while 23 percent would back Mamdani. By the final round, however, Cuomo had support from 54 percent of respondents, while Mamdani had 46 percent. The poll surveyed 1,000 registered voters from May 23-26 with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Cuomo resigned as governor in 2021 after a report from Attorney General Letitia James' office alleged that he sexually harassed multiple female employees and created a toxic working environment, allegations Cuomo has denied. In May, he accused the Trump administration of "election interference" after The New York Times reported it launched a criminal investigation into whether Cuomo lied to Congress about his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Mamdani has engaged more progressive voters with a more left-leaning platform, emphasizing issues like a rent freeze to deal with rising rent and housing in the city and the establishment of a network of city-owned grocery stores intended to combat rising grocery costs for New Yorkers. Ocasio-Cortez's endorsement comes just one day after the Democratic candidates faced off in their first debate, during which each sought to portray themselves as the strongest to lead the city of more than 8 million people. "I am Donald Trump's worst nightmare, as a progressive Muslim immigrant who actually fights for the things that I believe in and the difference between myself and Andrew Cuomo," Mamdani said during the debate. What People Are Saying New York City mayoral candidate and Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, in a post on X, formerly Twitter: "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a once-in-a-generation leader who has led the fight for working people in Congress. In 2018, she shocked the world and transformed our politics. On June 24, with @AOC's support and this movement behind us, we will do the same." Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told The New York Times: "Even if the entire left coalesced around any one candidate, an ideological coalition is still insufficient for us to win. We have to have a true working-class coalition." What Happens Next The New York City mayoral primary is set for Tuesday June 24. The winner will face off against a Republican, as well as Mayor Eric Adams, who is seeking reelection as an independent, in November.
Fox News
8 minutes ago
- Fox News
Ex-Biden adviser calls Jean-Pierre ‘kinda dumb,' deletes tweet, says she's not a ‘genius-level Black woman'
As criticism mounts from within Biden's world against former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and her new book, one ex-aide lambasted the now-Independent ombudswoman as "kinda dumb" — a tweet he deleted but later stood by. Timothy Wu, now a Columbia Law professor, was former President Joe Biden's "architect" of antitrust policy whose faculty bio claims he also coined the progressive term "net neutrality" in 2002. In a now-deleted tweet, Wu wrote: "from a [White House] staff perspective, the real problem with Karine Jean-Pierre was that she was kinda dumb." "[She had n]o interest in understanding harder topics. Just gave random incoherent answers on policy," Wu added in the trashed tweet. The X account "I work with my word" replied to the original tweet, calling it "pretty racist," and the tweet was later deleted, but the reply remained. Below the reply, Wu added a new line of commentary, saying the Biden White House was "full of genius-level Black women. [Jean-Pierre] was not one of them." In response to another X user asking Wu whether Trump White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt understands executive policy, the professor said a good ombudsperson will "meet with policy staff and try and understand what the administration is doing and why." Fox News Digital reached out to Wu via his Columbia faculty office, where he has taught since 2006. The former Biden adviser was also a Democratic primary candidate for New York's lieutenant governorship in 2014, and also worked in the Obama administration and at the Federal Trade Commission. Jean-Pierre announced Wednesday that she left the Democratic Party and has become an Independent while revealing her upcoming book: "Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines." She was mocked and criticized by several people in Biden's orbit besides Wu, including one who said, "I wouldn't ignore what Karine has to say, but it's not an account in which much weight will be invested — just like her briefings." "At noon on that day [that Biden left office], I became a private citizen who, like all Americans and many of our allies around the world, had to contend with what was to come next for our country. I determined that the danger we face as a country requires freeing ourselves of boxes. We need to be willing to exercise the ability to think creatively and plan strategically," Jean-Pierre said of her new Independent streak.
