logo
Dolton Mayor Jason House won't rule out public purchase of Pope Leo XIV's childhood home

Dolton Mayor Jason House won't rule out public purchase of Pope Leo XIV's childhood home

Chicago Tribune16-05-2025

Despite Pope Leo XIV's childhood home being recently listed for auction, Dolton Mayor Jason House said Friday he has not ruled out taking public ownership of the property via eminent domain.
'I'm interested in a peaceful transfer,' House, who was sworn in as mayor May 5, told the Daily Southtown.
He said he is excited for the property's potential as an attraction and historical landmark, and is prioritizing ensuring it is 'honored in the proper way.'
House said it's too early to say how much the village would be willing to pay for the 1,050-square-foot home on 141st Place or whether it should be converted into a museum or historical landmark. He said he plans to speak with the homeowner early next week to discuss the property.
Homer Glen-based home rehabber Pawel Radzik paid $66,000 for the modest, three-bedroom, ranch-style brick house without knowing just a year later its former occupant would be named the leader of the Catholic church. Real estate broker Steve Budzik said Friday Radzik listed the home in January for $219,000 but pulled it after the pope's election generated a high volume of interest.
Budzik said he heard rumors circulating about interest in public ownership before he and Radzik decided to list the home for auction.
'I don't know if that's — I don't know the word I would use — a justifiable means of getting the property,' Budzik said. 'So that's again why we did an auction.'
While the auction is set to close on June 18, Budzik emphasized the seller can choose to accept an offer, which are entered privately through Paramount auction house, at any time.
'The auction gives everybody a fair chance at putting in a bid,' Budzik explained. 'And even with eminent domain, I think the question is, what's the value?'
Budzik believes for a home with such an important historical connection, the just compensation required in exchange for the property is 'totally subjective.'
Excitement surrounding the unassuming Dolton home was hard to avoid Friday afternoon. Neighbors and visitors parked on side streets to stand on the sidewalk facing the building, taking videos and photos with their phones as an energetic Budzik led news reporters inside the renovated space.
Donna Sagna and her mother, Peggy, said they are Catholics who lived next door to the house for eight years before learning of Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV. As they projected church music on a speaker in their backyard, the younger Sagna said she had begun holding prayer vigils to honor their local connection to the religious leader.
Sagna and Amarcia Garcia, a former Dolton resident who visited the home with her own mother, both said individually they hoped 212 East 141st Place would be preserved as a museum, bringing tourism and attention to the community.
'It'd be good for Dolton, to bring more positivity, more people and more revenue,' Garcia said.
Budzik said he understands the interest in creating a museum, and 'there's still possibly some interest' in that on the part of the seller, who through Budzik declined to speak with the Daily Southtown.
But, at the end of the day, 'he really wants to see where the auction goes,' Budzik said.
'The next person, who is obviously going to love it, can do whatever they want with it,' Budzik said.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Hong Kong giant CKI demands to rejoin auction of stricken Thames Water
Hong Kong giant CKI demands to rejoin auction of stricken Thames Water

Yahoo

timean hour ago

  • Yahoo

Hong Kong giant CKI demands to rejoin auction of stricken Thames Water

The Hong Kong-based investor CK Infrastructure Holdings (CKI) is demanding to be readmitted to the auction of ailing Thames Water, days after its preferred bidder walked away and pushed it closer to the abyss of nationalisation. Sky News can exclusively reveal that CKI wrote to Sir Adrian Montague, the chairman of Thames Water, on Monday, seeking access to due diligence materials and insisting that it could be ready to table a formal bid to take control of the company within six weeks. In the letter, which was signed by Andy Hunter, CKI's deputy managing director, the owner of Northumbrian Water said it was keen to rejoin the Thames Water board's equity-raise process, roughly three months after submitting a multibillion pound proposal to take control. Money latest: Britain's biggest water utility has been plunged back into crisis by a decision last week by KKR, the private equity firm, to abandon its status as preferred bidder. Sky News revealed that the decision was made after talks between KKR and Downing Street officials amid concerns about the political risk of bailing out a company which supplies essential services to more than 15m people. Since then, Thames Water's biggest group of creditors - accounting for approximately £13bn of its vast debt-pile - has submitted what it described as a £17bn proposal to recapitalise the company. This, the bondholders said, would comprise £3bn of new equity and more than £2bn of debt funding. Existing shareholders would be completely wiped out, while there would also be several billion pounds of debt writedowns aimed at restoring financial resilience and improving services, The bondholders are reported to seeking immunity from prosecution for Thames Water's environmental failings, while they also want an agreement that Ofwat, the industry regulator, would drastically reduce the level of financial penalties facing the company. Last month, Thames Water was fined a record £123m over sewage leaks and the payment of dividends, with Ofwat lambasting the company over its performance and governance. Sir Adrian has run into yet more difficulties in recent days, with MPs on a key Commons select committee questioning evidence he had given to it and calling on Thames Water to claw back hundreds of thousands of pounds paid to a number of senior executives as retention payments in recent months. Under new laws, Thames Water is among half a dozen water companies which have been barred from paying bonuses this year because of their poor environmental records. CKI owns large swathes of British infrastructure, including Northumbrian Water, Northern Gas Networks, UK Power Networks and Eversholt, the rolling-stock leasing company which has been put up for sale. Its expertise in running major companies of the scale of Thames Water would resolve a headache for ministers anxious to avoid placing the group into a special administration regime (SAR), which would incur a multibillion pound bill for taxpayers. Ministers are also said to be wary about the lack of experience in the bondholder group at running a major water company, although Sky News revealed last week that the business veteran Mike McTighe had been lined up to spearhead their interest. "This is a proven operator versus a group of financial engineers," said one person close to CKI. However, a takeover of Thames Water by CKI could yet face stiff political opposition. In April, a cross-party group of politicians wrote to Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, expressing concerns about CKI's links to Beijing. Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative Party leader and a strident critic of Chinese investment in the UK, posted on social media last week that a CKI takeover of Thames Water "should be avoided at all costs". Read more from Sky News:Unemployment rate highest in four years CKI had already expressed frustration at being eliminated from the Thames Water process in April, with The Times reporting that it had written to Ofwat to express its dismay. In recent weeks, the government has described Thames Water as "stable", but said it was ready to step in and take control of the company if required to. The company effectively faces a deadline of late July to finalise a rescue deal because of a referral of its five-year regulatory settlement to the Competition and Markets Authority. The Hong Kong-based company declined to comment on Tuesday.

New Jersey voters choose governor nominees as Trump looms over campaign
New Jersey voters choose governor nominees as Trump looms over campaign

Yahoo

timean hour ago

  • Yahoo

New Jersey voters choose governor nominees as Trump looms over campaign

By Joseph Ax PRINCETON, New Jersey (Reuters) -New Jersey voters head to the polls on Tuesday to select Democratic and Republican nominees for governor, following a campaign that has been dominated by a part-time state resident who isn't even on the ballot: President Donald Trump. New Jersey and Virginia are the only two states that hold gubernatorial contests the year after a presidential election, and the races offer an early check on how voters feel about the new administration - as well as an opportunity for the parties to test out their messaging ahead of next year's congressional elections. Trump's whirlwind first four months have made him the central character in both the Republican and Democratic campaigns in New Jersey. Virginia has no primary elections this year after Republican Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears and Democratic former U.S. Representative Abby Spanberger ran unopposed for their party's nominations. There are six major Democratic candidates vying to succeed term-limited Democratic Governor Phil Murphy: U.S. Representative Mikie Sherrill, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, U.S. Representative Josh Gottheimer, former state Senate President Steve Sweeney and Sean Spiller, the president of the state's largest teachers' union. While Sherrill has held a steady lead in the few public polls of the race, the margins have been narrow enough that the outcome is far from certain. "Every candidate has a plausible path forward," Dan Cassino, director of the New Jersey-based Fairleigh Dickinson University poll, said. "The polling is all over the map." On the Republican side, former state Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli – who narrowly lost the governor's race to Murphy in 2021 – appears poised to win the party's nomination after Trump, a Republican, endorsed him. While New Jersey is a Democratic-leaning state, it moved further toward Trump from 2020 to 2024 than any state except New York. The state has swung back and forth from Republican to Democratic governors for decades – a Democratic victory in November would be the first time either party won three consecutive gubernatorial races in more than 60 years. The race is already the most expensive in state history, with more than $85 million spent as of June 4, according to the political advertising analysis firm AdImpact. Most of that spending has been driven by the intensely competitive Democratic primary. VOWING TO FIGHT TRUMP All of the Democrats have vowed to protect New Jersey from Trump, seeking to harness the growing anger among Democratic voters over the president's policy agenda. But they have also focused on affordability, always a critical issue in a state with the highest property taxes in the country. "MAGA is coming for New Jersey," one Sherrill television ad warns, explicitly tying Ciattarelli to Trump. Another memorable ad from Gottheimer showed him trading jabs with Trump in a boxing ring. Baraka made national headlines when he was arrested by the Justice Department in May for allegedly trespassing at a privately run immigration detention center, though the charge was later dropped. The mayor sued the Trump administration last week, claiming the arrest was politically motivated. "Trump looms large over the primaries and will do so over the general," said Ashley Koning, who oversees the Rutgers-Eagleton Poll at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Sherrill, 53, has leaned into her biography as a former Navy helicopter pilot, former federal prosecutor and a mother of four. As the front-runner, she has drawn fire from some of her Democratic rivals, including criticism for taking tens of thousands of dollars for her congressional campaigns from a political action committee tied to Elon Musk's SpaceX. Sherrill's campaign donated money equal to the funds she received from the SpaceX PAC to a food bank in March, according to campaign finance reports. She has won the endorsement of about half the state's Democratic county parties, which in the past might have guaranteed her victory. But Tuesday's elections are the first gubernatorial contests to take place under a new ballot design that has created vastly more competitive primaries. For decades, New Jersey's ballot included a so-called "county line," which put the candidates who had earned the backing of county party leaders in a leading column on the ballot. Other candidates' names appeared off to the side, in practice all but guaranteeing that party bosses could choose the eventual nominees for state offices. A federal judge last year ruled that the old ballot was unconstitutional after Democratic Senator Andy Kim, who was running for a Senate seat, sued over the practice.

Trump's second term is creating ‘a limbo moment' for US battery recyclers
Trump's second term is creating ‘a limbo moment' for US battery recyclers

Yahoo

timean hour ago

  • Yahoo

Trump's second term is creating ‘a limbo moment' for US battery recyclers

In a recycling facility in Covington, Georgia, workers grind up dead batteries into a fine, dark powder. In the past, the factory shipped that powder, known in the battery recycling industry as black mass, overseas to refineries that extracted valuable metals like cobalt and nickel. But now it keeps the black mass on site and processes it to produce lithium carbonate, a critical ingredient for making new batteries to power electric vehicles and store energy on the grid. From Nevada to Arkansas, companies are racing to dig more lithium out of the ground to meet the clean energy sector's surging appetite. But this battery recycling facility, owned by Massachusetts-based Ascend Elements, is the first new lithium carbonate producer in the nation in years — and the only source of recycled lithium carbonate in North America. The company is finalizing upgrades to its Covington facility that will allow it to produce up to 3,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate per year beginning later this month. Right now, the only other domestic source of lithium carbonate is a small mine in Silver Peak, Nevada. Since January, President Donald Trump has taken a sledgehammer to the Biden administration's efforts to grow America's clean energy industry. The Trump administration has frozen grants and loans, hollowed out key agencies, and used executive action to stall renewable energy projects and reverse climate policies — often in legally dubious ways. At the same time, citing economic and national security reasons, Trump has sought to advance efforts to produce more critical minerals like lithium in the United States. That is exactly what the emerging lithium-ion battery recycling industry seeks to do, which is why some industry insiders are optimistic about their future under Trump. Nevertheless, U.S. battery recyclers face uncertainty due to fast-changing tariff policies, the prospect that Biden-era tax credits could be repealed by Congress as it seeks to slash federal spending, and signs that the clean energy manufacturing boom is fading. Battery recyclers are in 'a limbo moment,' said Beatrice Browning, a recycling expert at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, which conducts market research for companies in the lithium-ion battery supply chain. They're 'waiting to see what the next steps are.' To transition off fossil fuels, the world needs a lot more big batteries that can power EVs and store renewable energy for use when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining. That need is already causing demand for the metals inside batteries to surge. Recycling end-of-life batteries — from electric cars, e-bikes, cell phones, and more — can provide metals to help meet this demand while reducing the need for destructive mining. It's already happening on a large scale in China, where most of the world's lithium-ion battery manufacturing takes place and where recyclers benefit from supportive government policies and a steady stream of manufacturing scrap. When the Biden administration attempted to onshore clean energy manufacturing, U.S. battery recyclers announced major expansion plans, propelled by government financing and other incentives. Under former president Joe Biden, the U.S. Department of Energy, or DOE, launched research and development initiatives to support battery recycling and awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to firms seeking to expand operations. The DOE's Loan Program's Office also offered to lend nearly $2.5 billion to two battery recycling companies. The industry also benefited from tax credits established or enhanced by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the centerpiece of Biden's climate agenda. In particular, the 45X advanced manufacturing production credit subsidizes domestic production of critical minerals, including those produced from recycled materials. For battery recyclers, the incentive 'has a direct bottom-line impact,' according to Roger Lin, VP of government affairs at Ascend Elements. The DOE didn't respond to Grist's request for comment on the status of Biden-era grants and loans for battery recycling. But recyclers report that at least some federal support is continuing under Trump. In 2022, Ascend Elements was awarded a $316 million DOE grant to help it construct a second battery recycling plant in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. That grant, which will go toward building capacity to make battery cathode precursor materials from recycled metals, 'is still active and still being executed on,' Lin told Grist, with minimal impact from the change in administration. Ascend Elements expects the plant to come online in late 2026. American Battery Technology Company, a Reno, Nevada-based battery materials firm, told a similar story. In December, the company finalized a $144 million DOE contract to support the construction of its second battery recycling facility, which will extract and refine battery-grade metals from manufacturing scrap and end-of-life batteries. That grant remains active with 'no changes' since Trump's inauguration, CEO Ryan Melsert told Grist. Yet another battery recycler, Cirba Solutions, recently learned that a $200 million DOE grant to help it construct a new battery recycling plant in Columbia, South Carolina, is moving forward. At full capacity, this facility is expected to produce enough battery-grade metals to supply half a million EVs a year. Cirba Solutions is also still spending funds from two earlier DOE grants, including a $75 million grant to expand a battery processing plant in Lancaster, Ohio. 'I think that we aligned very much to the priorities of the administration,' Danielle Spalding, VP of communications and public affairs at Cirba Solutions, told Grist. Those priorities include establishing the U.S. as 'the leading producer and processor of non-fuel minerals,' and taking steps to 'facilitate domestic mineral production to the maximum possible extent,' according to executive orders signed by Trump in January and March. Because critical minerals are used in many high-tech devices, including military weapons, the Trump administration appears to believe America's national security depends on controlling their supply chains. As battery recyclers were quick to note following Trump's inauguration, their industry can help. 'Critical minerals are central to creating a resilient energy economy in the U.S., and resource recovery and recycling companies will continue to play an important role in providing another domestic source of these materials,' Ajay Kochhar, CEO of the battery recycling firm Li-Cycle, wrote in a blog post reacting to one of Trump's executive orders on energy. Li-Cycle, which closed a $475 million loan with the DOE's Loan Programs Office in November but is now facing possible bankruptcy, didn't respond to Grist's request for comment. While Biden's approach to onshoring critical mineral production was rooted in various financial incentives, Trump has pursued the same goal using tariffs — and by attempting to fast-track new mines. Although economists have criticized Trump's indiscriminate and unpredictable application of tariffs, some battery recyclers are cautiously optimistic they will benefit from increased trade restrictions. In particular, recyclers see the escalating trade war with China — including recent limits on exports of various critical minerals to the U.S. — as further evidence that new domestic sources of these resources are needed. (China is the world's leading producer of most key battery metals.) 'There is a chance that limiting the amount that is being imported from China … could really strengthen' mineral production in other regions, including the U.S., Browning said. Trade restrictions between the U.S. and key partners outside of China could be more harmful. Today, Browning says, U.S. recyclers often sell the black mass they produce to refiners in South Korea, which don't produce enough domestically to meet their processing capacity and are paying a premium to secure material from abroad. Trump imposed 25 percent tariffs on Korean imports in April, before placing them on a 90-day pause. If South Korea were to implement retaliatory tariffs in response, it could cut off a key revenue stream for the U.S. industry. However, recycling companies Grist spoke noted that there are currently no export bans or tariffs affecting their black mass, and emphasized their plans to build up local refining capacity. 'The short answer is that we see the tariffs as an opportunity to focus on domestic manufacturing,' Spalding of Cirba Solutions said. While battery recyclers seem to align with Trump on critical minerals policy, and to some extent on trade, their interests diverge when it comes to energy policy. Without a clean energy manufacturing boom in the U.S., there would be far less need for battery recycling. Today, nearly 40 percent of the material available to battery recyclers in the U.S. is production scrap from battery gigafactories, according to data from Benchmark. Another 15 percent consists of used EV batteries that have reached the end of their lives or been recalled, while grid storage and micromobility batteries (such as e-bike batteries) account for 14 percent. The remaining third of the material available for processing is portable batteries, like those in consumer electronics. In the future, as more EVs reach the end of their lives, an even greater fraction of battery scrap will come from the clean energy sector. If a large number of planned battery and EV manufacturing facilities are canceled in the coming years — due to a repeal of Inflation Reduction Act tax incentives, a loss of federal funding, rising project costs, or perhaps all three — the recycling industry may have to scale back its ambitions, too. The budget bill that passed the House in May would undo a number of key Inflation Reduction Act provisions. Some clean energy tax credits, like the consumer EV tax credit, would be eliminated at the end of this year. The legislation was kinder to the 45X manufacturing credit, scheduling it to end in 2031 rather than the current phase-out date of 2032. But the bill could face significant changes in the Senate before heading to Trump's desk, possibly by July 4. Despite uncertainty over the fate of IRA tax credits, Trump's actions have already put a damper on U.S. manufacturing: Since January, firms have abandoned or delayed plans for $14 billion worth of U.S. clean energy projects, according to the clean tech advocacy group E2. While the battery recyclers Grist spoke with are putting on a brave face under Trump's second term, some are also looking to hedge their bets. As Ascend Elements ramps up lithium production in Georgia, it has lined up at least one buyer outside the battery supply chain. The battery industry accounts for nearly 90 percent of lithium demand globally, but the metal is also used in various industrial applications, including ceramics and glass making. Integrating into the EV battery supply chain remains 'the ultimate goal,' Lin told Grist. 'But we are looking at other plans to ensure … the economic viability of the operation continues.' This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump's second term is creating 'a limbo moment' for US battery recyclers on Jun 10, 2025.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store