The Trace • 3rd September 2019

Meet the Young Activists Fighting Chicago’s Gun Violence, With Lobbying and Group Hugs

Meet the Young Activists Fighting Chicago’s Gun Violence, With Lobbying and Group Hugs In a city where safety is not equally felt, GoodKids MadCity is creating a space for young people “to feel free,” and refusing to wait for grownups to act.

Washington Post • 25th June 2020

Chicago school board votes to keep $33M police contract — but student activists say the fight isn’t over

Chicago’s youth activists who have long pushed city officials to prioritize funding schools over police viewed Wednesday’s 4-3 vote through a hopeful lens: Their efforts, they said, are working.

U.S. Catholic • 1st June 2018

The Sisters of Perpetual Resistance

Just after sunrise on a below-freezing January morning, a huddle of people gathered outside a nondescript Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) building in the Chicago suburb of Broadview for a vigil the Interfaith Community for Detained Immigrants (ICDI) has been holding every week for more than 11 years.

Washington Post • 28th May 2020

‘Nothing short of murder’: After officers allegedly suffocate a suspect, condemnation grows

Condemnation rained down Thursday on the four Minneapolis police officers involved in the death of George Floyd this week, as local officials, police organizations and President Trump denounced the incident as a tragic and unacceptable case of police brutality.

City Bureau • 19th June 2019

There’s Still No Accountability for Police in Public Schools. Here’s How You Can Weigh In

Community members whose children attend the schools — and often come into contact with officers is troubling ways, including arrest — have few mechanisms for oversight or accountability.

Washington Post • 5th March 2020

On immigration, Attorney General Barr is his own Supreme Court. Judges and lawyers say that’s a problem.

Attorney General William P. Barr has increased used a process called “certification,” a historically little-used power of the attorney general that allows him to overrule decisions made by the Board of Immigration Appeals and set binding precedent.

Chicago magazine • 15th January 2019

What CTA Workers Know

Most of the hundreds of thousands of people who ride the L or take a city bus every day don’t pay much attention to transit employees — at least until something goes wrong. When that happens, those workers get an earful, and sometimes worse. They also routinely have to deal with sick passengers, rowdy teen­agers, violent drunks, fare skippers, suicide jumpers, and homeless people desperate for shelter, to say nothing of the demands of keeping trains and buses running on time 24 hours a day...

Washington Post • 20th February 2020

Rod Blagojevich is out of prison thanks to a kind of mercy he rarely showed as governor

Blagojevich’s history on criminal justice is especially striking now that he’s received the mercy he rarely showed others as the state’s top executive — a commutation Tuesday from President Trump.

Vice • 8th October 2018

A Killer Chicago Cop Finally Went Down. Here's Why It Matters

As Chicago awaited a decision in the murder trial of Police Officer Jason Van Dyke for the 2014 killing of Laquan McDonald last week, the city’s school-kids were preparing for something they had never seen in their lives.

Washington Post • 10th July 2020

Live updates: As coronavirus hospitalizations climb, Trump sidelines health advisors

In an interview published Thursday afternoon with FiveThirtyEight, infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci spoke candidly on a number of questions about the United States’ response to the coronavirus pandemic — including how partisanship has made combating the virus more difficult. “You have to be having blindfolds on and covering your ears to think that we don’t live in a very divisive society now, from a political standpoint,” Fauci responded when asked about the politicization of masks in

Washington Post • 10th July 2020

Breaking News, World, US, DC News & Analysis

Trump sees himself as the blameless victim of the nation’s turmoil Callers on President Trump in recent weeks have come to expect what several allies and advisers describe as a “woe-is-me” preamble: Lengthy monologues in which he portrays the pandemic, a stalled economy and racial unrest as happening to him rather than to the country.

Washington Post • 10th July 2020

Atlanta mayor tests positive for coronavirus; states mandate masks, shut down again

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has tested positive for the coronavirus, along with her husband and one of her children, Bottoms said Monday. “COVID-19 has literally hit home,” she tweeted. “I have had NO symptoms and have tested positive.” Bottoms, considered a contender to become Joe Biden’s running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket, told MSNBC that her family was tested two weeks ago and then got tested again because her husband had been sleeping an unusual amount for several da

Washington Post • 10th July 2020

Coronavirus update: Trump speaks at Mount Rushmore as U.S. sets record for new cases

Heading into the holiday weekend, at least 20 states set record highs for the average of new cases over seven days, with Florida, Texas, California, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina tallying the highest number of infections. Florida leads the nation with 9,488 new reported cases Friday — the 26th consecutive day it has set a record in its seven-day average. Meanwhile, scientists warn of a new coronavirus mutation, which doesn’t appear to make people sicker, but there’s concern it has made th

Washington Post • 10th July 2020

U.S. sets record for new coronavirus cases, surpassing 55,000

The Chicago Department of Public Health announced that travelers from 15 states, and Chicagoans who traveled to those states, will be expected to quarantine for 14 days. People found in violation of the order could be fined up to $500 per day for a maximum of $7,000. The states included in the order are seeing a recent surge in the spread of the virus, measured by the number of new cases per day, per 100,000 residents: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana,

Washington Post • 10th July 2020

St. Louis couple point guns at crowd of protesters calling for mayor to resign

Reaction to photos and videos of the incident was swift: One video had been viewed more than 16 million times and counting as of Monday evening and captured the attention of President Trump, civil rights advocates and the St. Louis circuit attorney, who is now investigating the incident. In a region that has long been in the spotlight for tensions over policing and racial inequality, the interaction seemed to capture the divisions rippling throughout the nation in 2020. “The only thing that st

Washington Post • 10th July 2020

U.S. sets another single-day record for new coronavirus cases, surpassing 40,000 for first time

Philadelphia officials issued a mandatory mask order Friday as the city also considered delaying future reopening plans, according to the city’s top health official. Health Commissioner Thomas Farley said Friday that the city has averaged more than 100 positive coronavirus cases per day in the past week — an increase compared with what the city had previously been seeing — and reported 143 new cases Friday, totaling 25,693 since the beginning of the epidemic. “The news about the epidemic is ve

Washington Post • 10th July 2020

U.S. sets another single-day record for new coronavirus cases

Apple announced on Thursday that it is re-closing 14 stores in Florida, as the state reported a second consecutive day of more than 5,000 new confirmed coronavirus cases. The decision comes a day after the tech giant announced it would temporarily close seven stores in the Houston area, owing to the rapid rise in infections and hospitalizations in and around Texas’s largest city. In recent days, Apple has announced the re-closing of 32 stores as case numbers surge in the United States, accordi

Washington Post • 10th July 2020

New coronavirus cases in the U.S. soar to highest single-day total

New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are instructing travelers arriving from states with high coronavirus infection rates to quarantine for 14 days, the three states’ governors announced Wednesday in a joint news conference. New York will be enforcing the measure with judicial orders and fines starting at $2,000, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) said, while the other states are not penalizing people for violating the “travel advisory.” Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D) said “stricter measures” could foll

Washington Post • 10th July 2020

Californians required to cover their faces in ‘most settings outside the home’

Employers cannot require their workers to take antibody tests before returning to the office, a federal civil rights agency said Wednesday. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is charged with enforcing federal anti-discrimination laws in the workplace, said in updated guidance that employers can test their workers for the novel coronavirus itself through a nose or throat swab. Under federal disability law, employees can be ordered to undergo a medical evaluation if it is “job re

Washington Post • 10th July 2020

Pence calls concerns about coronavirus spike ‘overblown’ as cases surge in a dozen states

Major League Baseball is in the midst of a labor battle over its return to play during the coronavirus pandemic, and now it must consider an outbreak of covid-19. Several players and staff have tested positive, according to a letter obtained by the Associated Press. The league is already in danger of losing the entire season as it bargains with the players union over terms to return. Commissioner Rob Manfred told ESPN “I’m not confident” there would be a 2020 season on Monday. This was a stark