Daywatch: Not your grandparents' City Council
Good morning, Chicago.
When Ald. Scott Waguespack started his City Council career as an opponent of Mayor Richard M. Daley, it was mostly at the wrong end of a bunch of lopsided votes.
But his days as one of five aldermen who said no to Daley's infamous parking meter deal or a quixotic early thorn to Mayor Rahm Emanuel are long gone.
Now, when the Northwest Side alderman butts heads with Mayor Brandon Johnson, he is often one of many across a relatively broad political spectrum, and sometimes he even gets his way.
'You see more accountability and more responsibility that's shared now than in the past,' he said. 'I think you're seeing people kind of trust in each other.'
It's a sea change that grew under Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and is gaining momentum in City Hall with Johnson: The City Council, long derided as a mayoral puppet, is increasingly operating independent of the fifth floor.
The shift follows the demise of Chicago's infamous machine politics. It also tracks with the ascension of the aldermanic Progressive Caucus and the 'Common Sense Caucus' formed in part to oppose it, both shifting groups that bring more ideological force into debates.
Read the full story from the Tribune's Jake Sheridan.
Here are the top stories you need to know to start your day, including the never-built migrant tent encampment the state agreed to pay $1.3 million for, what's next on the docket for former House Speaker Michael Madigan after he was denied a motion for a new trial and our picks for where to go in Chicago for Father's Day.
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Another 2,000 National Guard troops along with 700 Marines are headed to Los Angeles on orders from President Donald Trump, escalating a military presence local officials and Gov. Gavin Newsom don't want and the police chief says creates logistical challenges for safely handling protests.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. yesterday removed every member of a scientific committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how to use vaccines and pledged to replace them with his own picks.
Despite assurances from Gov. JB Pritzker that state taxpayers would not end up footing the bill for a migrant tent encampment in Chicago that was never built, the state recently agreed to pay $1.3 million to the project's contractor.
A federal judge yesterday denied a motion by former House Speaker Michael Madigan seeking to overturn his recent conviction on bribery and other corruption counts, setting the stage for a high-stakes sentencing hearing later this week.
Speaking from the witness stand nearly a decade after her 7-year-old son was shot and killed, Amber Hailey said every court date has tested her resolve.
Her son, Amari Brown, was gunned down on the Fourth of July in 2015 in an act of violence that spurred national news coverage and calls for change. Those calls heightened just months later after the targeted killing of another child, 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee.
'Amari was an innocent child who had his whole life ahead of him,' Hailey said, breaking down in tears. 'He had his dreams, aspirations.'
The nascent sports network finally joined the Comcast lineup Friday, but on the higher-priced Ultimate tier, which costs an additional $20 per month, on top of the $20.25 regional sports network fee charged to Chicago-area subscribers each month.
In the wake of the deal, CHSN abruptly pulled the plug on local TV affiliates in Chicago, Rockford, Peoria, and Fort Wayne and South Bend, Indiana.
The Indianapolis Colts are moving forward with the late Jim Irsay's transition plan for ownership, which calls for his three daughters to take charge of the club.
The team said that Carlie Irsay-Gordon, Casey Foyt and Kalen Jackson each would continue to hold the title of owner, which they have done since 2012 when they were named vice chairs. Irsay-Gordon is now CEO, and Foyt is executive vice president. Jackson will be chief brand officer.
Southern Baptists meeting this week in Dallas will be asked to approve resolutions calling for a legal ban on pornography and a reversal of the U.S. Supreme Court's approval of same-sex marriage.
The proposed resolutions call for laws on gender, marriage and family based on what they say is the biblically stated order of divine creation. They also call for legislators to curtail sports betting and to support policies that promote childbearing.
Most big collections have only a fraction of their items on display, with the rest locked away in storage. But not at the new V&A East Storehouse, where London's Victoria and Albert Museum has opened up its storerooms for visitors to view — and in many cases touch — the items within. Anyone can book a one-on-one appointment with any object, from a Vivienne Westwood mohair sweater to a tiny Japanese netsuke figurine. Most of the items can even be handled, with exceptions for hazardous materials, such as Victorian wallpaper that contains arsenic.
While Mother's Day celebrations traditionally involve breakfast in bed or brunches with free-flowing mimosas plus gifts of flowers, it can be a little harder to figure out what to do for Father's Day. Luckily, local bars and restaurants are making planning easier by offering a wide range of events and specials with an emphasis on big steaks, beer and whiskey. Whether you think your dad would love a multi-course dinner with plenty of time to talk or to show off his skills in a putting competition, these 39 spots make it easy to enjoy some quality time together.
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How Florida protest organizers are preparing as LA unrest unfolds
As Alan Kim walked toward a protest at Tampa's City Hall on Monday, he knew there was a chance that counter-protesters or law enforcement might act more harshly than usual. The day before, President Donald Trump had deployed National Guard troops to demonstrations in Los Angeles protesting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. Organizers across the country held protests and led marches in support of immigrant communities. Monday's demonstration drew a crowd of about 100 protesters, a police presence and counter-protesters. Kim, an organizer with the Tampa Bay Immigrant Solidarity Network, said he was 'pleased' that the protest was energetic, with people putting all their energy behind chanting loudly and in unison. While some Tampa organizers are preparing for additional demonstrations this weekend by beefing up safety measures, many say that working around efforts to suppress demonstrations is nothing new in Florida. 'We're not necessarily creating a ton of good tactics, we're just doubling down, tripling down, on the things that have served us,' Kim said. Helen Amburgey is an organizer with Pinellas chapter of the National Organization for Women, a group that's helping to coordinate a local 'No Kings' anti-Trump protest in St. Petersburg. She said the response to the Los Angeles protests has made her organization think more about safety plans and the guidance they give to protesters. She said the group is posting more reminders on social media that tell attendees to stay on sidewalks. The organization also expanded their safety marshal and volunteer teams for this weekend's protests, she said. Some organizers said they are also placing more of an emphasis on protecting immigrants without legal status. 'Even the citizens are getting to the point where they're so worried that they're going to get picked up, or the police are going to target them, or whatever, just because they happen to be immigrants,' Jared Dahan, an organizer for the Pinellas Empowerment Community Hub, said. Dahan said because many of the safety marshals are white or white-passing, they've come to an unspoken agreement that part of their role is to help de-escalate by physically moving themselves between a law enforcement officer and an immigrant if needed. Karla Correa, an organizer at Pinellas Democratic Socialists of America, said her organization hasn't added any specific safety protocols for this weekend's protests, but is aware that law enforcement or counter-protesters may try harder to suppress the demonstrations. Florida is already a state that cracks down on protests, Correa said. Kim said that the state will take any excuse to deem a protest a riot, so protesters and organizers need to be extra cognizant. 'Florida likes to lead the way on any demonstration of strict law and order,' Kim said. In 2021, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill tightening restrictions on protests, which was challenged by civil rights groups who worried that peaceful protesters could be charged if demonstrations became violent. Last year, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that peaceful protesters are not at risk of being considered rioters, and the bill later was sent to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which sided with DeSantis against concerns that the law was too vague. This past week, DeSantis compared Florida and California's response to protests against federal raids and policies regarding illegal immigration. He wrote on X that Florida will remain a law and order state. 'Florida will not let the inmates run the asylum,' DeSantis wrote. 'We are not going to sit by and let people take potshots at the men and women of law enforcement. Sheridan Murphy, executive director for the Florida chapter of the American Indian Movement, said violence from the government is nothing new, but openness about it is. He said he can understand why people of any immigration status may be wary of coming out to protest. 'I think it's incumbent on the rest of us to get out there,' he said. 'And be louder and stand up for those people that are at risk and have something to lose if they come out there.'
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The Assault on Good-for-You TV: C-SPAN and PBS Teeter as Trump Attacks
When money flowed more freely in television, public-service programming was seen as a means of giving back. From educational TV and supporting public broadcasting to cable operators providing C-SPAN, spaces existed where ratings weren't the yardstick — instead, this was TV intended to be good for you. On Thursday, Congress took a major step toward undermining all of that, as the House narrowly approved a rescission bill that would claw back $1.1 billion in funding to the Corp. for Public Broadcasting, which helps support PBS stations, in addition to cuts to other programs. The bill passed by the slimmest of margins, 214 to 212, with a few GOP legislators switching their votes to get it through. The funding was part of a larger $9.4 billion allocation that lawmakers had already approved for foreign aid and public broadcasting. Senate still has to weigh in on the matter, and has five weeks to decide. With PBS and NPR besieged by the political right, with C-SPAN's funding via cable and satellite fees strafed by cord cutting, higher-minded alternatives have been hit by hard times. The whole point of PBS and National Public Radio was that they would be unfettered by commercial demands, allowing them to offer programming — from children's programming like Mr. Rogers and 'Sesame Street,' devoid of toy commercials, to lower-key news, documentaries and public affairs — that didn't have to justify its existence on a balance sheet. Ditto for C-SPAN, which cable operators carried for a small licensing fee simply because of the perceived value in allowing subscribers to see what their elected representatives were doing and saying, unfiltered and unedited. Public broadcasting has found itself swept up in the Trump administration's war against the media, with the perception that any unflattering reporting about the president — whether from PBS' 'NewsHour' or 'Frontline' or NPR's 'All Things Considered' — reveals 'invidious' bias and a liberal agenda, to use FCC chairman Brendan Carr's favorite word. Conservatives have long argued that public broadcasting represents an unnecessary expense given the abundance of choices available to most consumers. But in its latest incarnation, 'Defund PBS' overtly translates into being less about fiscal responsibility than leveraging the government's underwriting role to silence otherwise-independent media voices by labeling them progressive propaganda. On the left, the response was unambiguous. The Writers Guild of America East (WGAE) condemned the House vote as 'a radical right-wing ideology that aims to destroy a non-partisan public service despite all evidence of its wide benefits.' The group quickly turned its attention to pleading with the Senate, which holds a GOP majority but has exhibited a bit more restraint than the House in prosecuting the MAGA agenda. The CEO of PBS, Paula Kerger, remained silent in the wake of Thursday's vote, but she has been lobbying intensively to save PBS, warning that Trump's push to defund public broadcasters would spell the end for a number of local stations, and the service they provide to their communities. In a recent interview with Katie Couric, Kerger contemplated the end of public funding for the network, which only relies on the government for a portion of its funds. 'I think we'll figure out a way, through digital, to make sure there is some PBS content,' she said. 'But there won't be anyone in the community creating local content. There won't be a place for people to come together.' Kerger was referring to the fact that the campaign against PBS and NPR disproportionally harms smaller and more rural communities that voted for Trump (even if many listeners and viewers didn't), which lack the same menu of local-media options as major markets. In a sense, Sesame Workshop — the entity behind 'Sesame Street' — has provided an unlikely poster child for the financial pressures on public TV, having undergone layoffs before losing its streaming deal with Warner Bros. Discovery's Max. Netflix has since stepped into the breach, joining with PBS Kids in providing access Elmo and his pals. As for C-SPAN, its challenges stem primarily from evolving technology, which has dramatically undercut the financial model upon which the network was founded in 1979. With viewers shifting to streaming and dropping cable and satellite subscriptions, the number of homes receiving C-SPAN has sharply dropped to a little over 50 million, meaning the nonprofit enterprise — which costs operators just $7.25 a month, a fraction of what they pay for channels like Fox News and CNN — is running at a significant deficit. One proposed solution would be for entities with streaming subscribers, like YouTube or Hulu's live-TV package, to carry C-SPAN. Indeed, YouTube's 8 to 10 million subscribers alone would provide enough income to offset most of the shortfall in its roughly $60 million annual operating expenses. Thus far, however, those companies have balked, prompting a rare bipartisan push in the Senate on C-SPAN's behalf, with Republican Chuck Grassley and Democrat Amy Klobuchar among those joining in a resolution calling upon streaming services to carry the network. 'For tens of millions of Americans who have cut the cord and get their content from streaming services, they should not be cut off from the civic content made available by C-SPAN,' the senators stated. It's a welcome development for C-SPAN CEO Sam Feist, who joined the network a little over a year ago from CNN. Feist noted that 'cord cutting' doesn't accurately characterize what's transpired — since old cable subscribers have generally moved to new delivery systems — meaning the case for carrying the network remains as simple as the public-service ideal that inspired its launch. 'We're the only network that provides what we provide, which is this unfiltered view of American government,' Feist told TheWrap, adding in regard to the streamers, 'It is good for the country for their customers to have access to our product.' The campaign regarding C-SPAN carriage has seemingly gained some momentum over the last year, with former Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler and the Washington Post's Karen Tumulty among those joining the aforementioned senators in taking up the cause. Wheeler called YouTube's decision not to carry C-SPAN 'baffling and anti-democratic,' writing in The Hill that the company is depriving viewers of 'an unfiltered window into the goings-on in Congress, the White House and other parts of the government.' As Sen. Ron Wyden told Tumulty, carrying the network would only cost YouTube about $6 million a year — 'crumbs,' he suggested, for a streamer that rakes in billions in ad revenue. YouTube has stated that its subscribers 'have not shown sufficient interest in adding C-SPAN to the YouTube TV lineup to justify the increased cost' to their monthly bills, although as Wyden noted, that would amount to a relative pittance of 87 cents a year per household. The two situations aren't completely analogous, especially with the fate of PBS and NPR having become embroiled in politics, as opposed to corporate stubbornness. More fundamentally, though, both situations speak to the question of civic responsibility, and whether the government and private interests acknowledge such obligations. Because even if C-SPAN and PBS reach smaller audiences in a fragmented world, certain things are worth keeping around not because everybody watches them, but rather for what they offer, symbolically as well as tangibly, thanks to the staid sobriety they provide by being available to the people that do. The post The Assault on Good-for-You TV: C-SPAN and PBS Teeter as Trump Attacks appeared first on TheWrap.
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Senate GOP Strips Provision From Tax Bill That Would Let Trump Rule As A King
WASHINGTON – Senate Republicans have quietly removed a provision from the House GOP's massive tax-and-spending bill that would have allowed President Donald Trump to circumvent the courts and essentially serve as a king. Late Thursday, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released the panel's proposed text for the GOP's so-called Big Beautiful Bill. The House passed its version of the bill last month, so now the Senate is making its changes. Each committee is tasked with putting together language for its relevant section in the legislation. The text that Grassley released for the bill's judicial section doesn't include this jarring, one-sentence provision that House Republicans buried in their 1,116-page bill: Translated, this provision would restrict the ability of any court, including the Supreme Court, to enforce compliance with its orders by holding people in contempt. Contempt citations are an essential tool for the courts; they allow judges to threaten fines, sanctions or even jail if people disobey their orders. The provision in the House GOP's bill also would apply retroactively to all temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions, leaving courts with no real way of enforcing orders they've already handed those orders? The 184 court rulings that have temporarily halted unlawful actions taken by the Trump administration. And Trump has already been ignoring orders from judges to stop deporting migrants without giving them due process. Every House Republican voted for this provision when they voted to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Even if they didn't know it. Senate Democrats had been pressuring their GOP colleagues to take this language out of the bill when they unveiled their version of it. Not only does this provision appear to violate the constitutional separation of powers, it also violates Senate rules. Republicans are relying on a fast-track legislative process known as budget reconciliation to move the bill, which means everything in it must be related to budget matters. Restricting judges' abilities to hand down contempt orders has nothing to do with budgets. Senate Republicans almost certainly knew this when they stripped it from the bill. Leaving it in could lead to problems for passing the broader bill, which is Trump's signature domestic policy legislation ― a package that slashes nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid and food assistance programs to pay for a massive tax cut for rich people. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told HuffPost last week that he knew some GOP senators were 'very uncomfortable' with this contempt provision, and said Democrats planned to use every procedural tool possible to remove it. 'This is a naked attempt to shield members of the Trump administration from court orders,' Schumer said.
