Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky won't seek another term in Congress
CHICAGO (WGN) — Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky on Monday announced that she would not seek another term.
She has served the state's 9th Congressional District, which covers parts of Cook and McHenry counties, since 1999.
The 80-year-old's announcement at her annual Ultimate Women's Power Lunch was quickly followed by an official statement from her congressional office.
'It is now time for me to pass the baton,' a portion of her statement read. 'We are so fortunate in the 9th District that there are dozens of talented leaders, advocates, and organizers who know our community and who are ready to lead the charge as we fight back against the extreme MAGA agenda and President Donald Trump's shameful policies.'
Schakowsky touted the Affordable Care Act, consumer protection bills, and efforts to block the privatization of Social Security among her legislative wins.
Schakowsky, who serves as a Chief Deputy Whip and Ranking Member of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade, already faced a challenge for the Democratic nomination. Progressive influencer Kat Abughazaleh announced in March her intention to seek the nomination.
In a statement, Abughazaleh thanked Schakowsky for her 'decades of exceptional public service.'
'While I don't agree with any politician completely, I applaud Rep. Schakowsky's track record on key issues from Social Security to Palestinian human rights,' she said in a statement that accompanied a video message.
Chicagoan Justin Ford, who describes himself as a father, union organizer, public health official and neighbor, announced his campaign last week.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Yahoo
10 minutes ago
- Yahoo
America Actually Does Do Military Parades. But Not Like This One.
It's been a generation since Washington last hosted a military parade. Literally. In 1991, when President George H.W. Bush staged a parade to celebrate victory in the first Gulf War, it was the weekend of my high school graduation. This month, as Donald Trump presides over a parade honoring the Army's 250th anniversary, my child is graduating amid identical D.C. concerns over road closures, visiting throngs, and chewed-up public streets. That's about where the similarities end. While Bush's parade drew a smattering of criticism — including tut-tutting about expenses and the sense that some attendees were more excited about the Patriot missiles than the actual troops — it was generally uncontroversial, even popular, despite Washington's heavily Democratic population. 'I don't remember any of the negativity that you're having right now,' said Jack Evans, a Democrat who represented downtown Washington on the city council at the time. 'People were excited. We'd won the war. It was all done.'That was then. This year, amidst political polarization, fear of terrorism, and general chaos, the vibes are different. On Wednesday, Matt McCool, the Special Agent in Charge of the Secret Service, outlined some of the precautions around the parade, which has been classified as a National Special Security Event, enabling local cops and federal agencies to work closely together on security. 'You will see 18-and-a-half miles of the anti-scale fencing, 17 miles of bike rack concrete barriers, 175 magnetometers and officers from federal, state and local agencies standing post,' McCool said, standing alongside a half-dozen uniformed law enforcement bigwigs at the city's emergency-management office. 'You may also notice multiple drones operating in the area.' Local police leaders say their departments are on full activation. Part of this is standard 21st century security theater. The parade coincides with an all-day festival on the National Mall where visitors can walk around a lot of pricey military hardware, making the crowd-management particularly complicated. McCool said agencies weren't aware of any specific threats or efforts to disrupt the celebration. But Trump himself fanned the sense of tension this week when he said that protests would be met with 'very heavy force.'No wonder the criticism is a lot more pointed than the mild stuff that greeted Bush. This weekend's parade has been blasted as a sign of incipient authoritarianism, a Soviet-style spectacle, and a blatant case of politicizing the military. 'A dictator-style military parade,' said California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff, all 'just to stroke his own ego,' according to Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth, herself an Army veteran. It doesn't help that it's all taking place amidst the controversial deployment of troops to Los Angeles — and in the wake of Trump's norm-busting speech at Fort Bragg on Wednesday, when he got troops cheering political refrains and booing former President Joe Biden, in apparent violation of Army regulations. And it especially doesn't help that the $45 million parade happens to take place on the president's birthday. A counter-protest group has dubbed it 'No Kings Day.' But, remarkably, they've organized protests everywhere but the nation's capital, which reduces the odds of a showdown with Trump. In a statement, the organizers said it was meant to 'draw a clear contrast between our people-powered movement and the costly, wasteful, and un-American birthday parade in Washington.' For their part, the military brass say they just want to celebrate the Army — and use its anniversary as a chance to invest in recruiting. 'The Army just touches so many different things,' Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said at a private event in Washington this week. 'The idea is that we get this one moment in time for so many Americans to see that. I think our marketing budget is $750 million. This marketing, this investment, is to tell upcoming young Americans, and Americans who are a little stuck in their life, about this alternative lifestyle of excellence that the Army offers them. To us, that will give us an incredible return on the investment.'As for the comparison to the over-the-top parades of hardware in North Korea or the former Soviet Union, Army Chief of Staff Randy George said it's unfair. 'I think if anybody sees this on TV, interacts with our troops, they will see that we're from every part of this country, doing every kind of thing,' he said. 'Yes, they have a parade and we have a parade. That's probably the only comparison that I would make.' He noted that the soldiers take part in local parades all the time, but just haven't done a big national one in ages. In other words: Why all the agita over a military tribute? It's not like Washington hasn't spent any time honoring our military in the intervening 34 years. During the endless foreign conflicts starting in 2001, we had fighter jet flyovers at football games, 'salute the troops' road races on suburban streets and color guards at Beltway banquets. Performative gestures of troop-respect are almost a Washington cliche nowadays among pols, media types, and socialites. Yet a city built for mass gatherings never threw a parade — which, according to a leading historian of the subject, reflects an important tradition in American culture, and might explain some of the polarization around this weekend. David Glassberg, a University of Massachusetts historian who studies American pageantry, says the country doesn't have the tradition of set-piece national military parades like China, Russia, or even France. 'The whole thing with Trump and the reviewing stand, I can't remember anything like that' in peacetime, Glassberg said. 'It's not something Americans have incorporated into their image. The idea that you're going to display weapons or tear up the streets with tanks, it's really rare.' The one exception: Parades, like in 1991, that celebrated soldiers' return following a victory — something we haven't seen a lot of lately. Glassberg said there were epic welcome-home parades after World War I and the Civil War. Since America didn't have much of a standing Army until the mid-20th century, those events were also extra poignant because many troops were going back to civilian life. 'This was really their last chance, marching in that parade,' he told me. The notion of a president hosting a peacetime parade was sufficiently unusual that, when Trump unsuccessfully embraced the idea during his first term, stalwart supporters voiced skepticism. South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham called such spectacles 'a sign of weakness' in dubious foreign regimes, adding that he wasn't 'interested in Russian-style hardware display.' 'Confidence is silent. Insecurities are loud,' Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy said back then. 'You don't have to show it off, like Russia does, and North Korea, and China.' In fact, big commemorative parades in general have faded in American life, not just in Washington. Manhattan used to host ticker-tape parades for all kinds of people, from visiting statesmen to returning astronauts to, yes, the Fourth Infantry Division when it came home from Korea. But in the 21st century nearly all of the infrequent honorees have been championship-winning New York sports teams. Inevitably, the unusualness of a peacetime parade is going to make people wonder why it's happening — something that, for skeptics of Trump, is going to lead them to a place of dark worries about militarism and striking is that so many of the political critics of the campaign seem to take it as a given that the optics of Saturday's spectacle will be politically good for Trump. It's why Democrats (and Republicans like Sen. Rand Paul) are griping about the price, and others are accusing him of inappropriately using soldiers as props. But given the historic oddness of big Washington parades, there's also a not-zero chance that the spectacle could seem alien and even troubling to viewers, a PR dud. Consider: An elderly leader, watching line after line of soldiers and hardware roll past, taking in their salutes, a potentate surrounded by courtiers. For most Americans, this kind of spectacle usually evokes military strongmen or politburo dinosaurs, and mostly involves countries we don't want to live in. It's not a great look. 'I think a lot of news media is going to be pointing that image out, running pictures of Kim Jong Un and Stalin and all that kind of stuff,' Glassberg said. All the same, he said Democrats could maybe learn a thing or two from the instinct behind Trump's embrace of the parade, if not from the event itself: Sometimes, it's politically useful to publicly celebrate things you like — people and triumphs that the broader public might also embrace. 'There's a whole language of commemoration that Dems are just in the wrong key about,' he said. 'They don't get it.' And even if the day is a smashing political success for Trump, it's not exactly certain that it heralds some permanent shift in either his standing or the politics of the military. After all, the popular president who hosted the joyous 1991 parade was turfed out of office less than 18 months later.


Fox News
20 minutes ago
- Fox News
Mother of murdered jogger slams Rep. Crockett for dismissing migrant crime victims
A mother whose daughter was murdered by an undocumented migrant is speaking out against the recent unrest in Los Angeles and pushing back on political rhetoric from Democratic lawmakers. Patty Morin, the mother of 37-year-old Rachel Morin, appeared on "Fox & Friends" Friday to voice her frustration over ongoing anti-ICE protests and remarks made during a recent House hearing on sanctuary cities. "To have all these protests for illegal immigrants, they're not even American citizens," Morin said. "While completely ignoring or at minimal, just acknowledging sometimes the names, sometimes not, the American citizens that are dying, the children that are being raped, the people that are being burned alive." Rachel Morin, a mother of five, was attacked and killed while jogging in Maryland. Authorities say she was ambushed, beaten and strangled by Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez, an undocumented migrant who was convicted of her murder earlier this year. Patty Morin's remarks came after Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas made comments during a House Oversight Committee hearing, where she accused Republicans of "cherry-picking" victims of illegal immigration and downplaying the threat of white supremacy. "I don't know how many hearings we [are going to] have about the fact that there's been this one immigrant that killed this one person," Crockett said Thursday. "And no, I'm not excusing any killings by them or white supremacists. But they haven't had these hearings." The hearing called the governors of states with sanctuary city policies to testify, including Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Crockett apologized to the governors for having to speak and called the hearing "political theater." Morin strongly disagreed with Crockett's comments and took issue with the congresswoman's criticism of President Donald Trump's immigration policies. "One of the things that Crockett said was that President Trump is spending millions of dollars to protect American citizens, to send in ICE and the National Guard," said Morin. "She forgot to say that these sanctuary cities and states are spending billions of dollars to freely give things to illegal immigrants that the American citizen does not receive." Morin has become a vocal supporter of Trump's immigration agenda and has appeared alongside him at several public events. She continues to call for stricter immigration enforcement, saying what happened to her daughter should never happen to another family. "The American people see that the [Democratic Party] and the liberals have no concern for the American people, for the everyday American citizen," Morin said. "They only have concern for their agenda. And that agenda is nothing more than to weaken and dismantle our country."


Politico
25 minutes ago
- Politico
The ACIP fallout
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The CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices helps set the CDC's childhood and adult immunization schedules, and several state and federal laws reference ACIP recommendations — including the Affordable Care Act, which requires health plans to cover vaccines the committee recommends for routine use without cost-sharing. Kennedy's sweeping moves in his first few months on the job underscore the broad mandate President Donald Trump gave him to remake the federal health department. 'Secretary Kennedy is restoring trust by demanding radical transparency and ending the complacency that defined past public health failures,' HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon told POLITICO in a statement Thursday, noting that Kennedy's commitment to putting 'accountability and radical transparency first' will 'restore trust in our public health system.' Biden's final push: ACIP voting members usually serve four-year terms — and STAT has reported that the Biden administration intentionally stacked the committee's membership, selecting replacements for members whose terms were set to expire in June. Even so, Kennedy's decision to fire all of the panel's members and replace them is unprecedented. The HHS secretary wields broad authority to manage the panel as he sees fit under federal law. And the slate he announced Wednesday includes several people known for questioning the safety of either messenger RNA vaccines specifically or, more broadly, the childhood schedule. RFK's informal advisor: Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a former public health official in California, has informally advised Kennedy since the November election, including compiling a list of names for new ACIP members who he thought would balance public health imperatives with vaccine safety concerns. None of his suggestions made the cut so far, he told POLITICO. 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