Free Republic

As the criminal trial of two So Cal Antifa members goes into its third week, the public is learning about how one of the notorious Antifa groups organizes and carries out violence against targets. Jeremy Jonathan White, 41, and Brian Cortez Lightfoot Jr., 27, both of Los Angeles, are accused of carrying out violent attacks on supporters of former President Donald Trump in a felony conspiracy—the first time Antifa suspects have been charged with such a serious felony accusation anywhere in the US. Nine of their co-defendant comrades have already been convicted in plea deals, including Luis Francisco Mora, 32,...

She’s the best they can find? The village of Dolton, Illinois, is considering hiring former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to investigate its own scandal-ridden leader, “dictator” Tiffany Henyard, as residents demand her resignation. Lightfoot, who lost her reelection bid in a landslide last year, would be tasked with probing numerous allegations against the self-proclaimed “Super Mayor” — including misusing taxpayer funds for lavish trips and sexual assault accusations, Fox 32 reported.

Chicago's Mayor Brandon Johnson claims he 'inherited' the city's spiraling migrant crisis and lashed out at Lori Lightfoot's former administration. Johnson criticized Lightfoot's administration at a press conference on Tuesday held to announce the Unity initiative, an interfaith partnership aimed at bringing sleeping migrants out of police stations and into shelters. Johnson told reporters that 'the international crisis that I inherited six months ago, I've made it very clear we are going to move people out of police districts, women and children who are living on floors and sleeping outside that we're going to create spaces that provide more dignity.'...

CAMBRIDGE, MA — As institutions for higher education search for new ways to expand the skills and knowledge offered to students, Harvard University has announced its new instructor, former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, will be teaching a class on how to be a horrific failure at your job and still be hired to teach a class at Harvard University. "She's the world's leading authority on the subject," said Harvard University President Claudine Gay. "When it comes to being an unmitigated failure at a prominent job and falling backward into a lucrative teaching position at the highest-regarded university in the nation,...

National Education Association is the most evil labor organization on the planet. All of the teachers’ unions are evil, but the NEA is the biggest, ... The teachers’ unions weren’t able to hide their nastiness from the public ... They did what they’ve always done — put their interests above those of the students and, as we are now finding out, doomed those kids to being forever behind. One of the more bizarre things we saw back then was the far-left regime in Chicago battling with the teachers’ union there to let the kids go back to school. Then-Mayor Lori...

Lori Lightfoot is bringing her skills and knowledge to Harvard University to teach a health policy and leadership course. According to The Harvard Gazette, the former mayor of Chicago has been named a Richard L. and Ronay A. Menschel Senior Leadership Fellow for the fall semester at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The fellowship program provides a once-in-a-lifetime chance for people who recently held prominent positions in journalism, nonprofit organizations, multilateral institutions, government and other fields to spend time mentoring and instructing students who want to fill those positions. Lightfoot, who served as the first openly gay and...

Former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has been named a Richard L. and Ronay A. Menschel Senior Leadership Fellow, receiving a once-in-a-lifetime chance to mentor Harvard University students. Lori Lightfoot is bringing her skills and knowledge to Harvard University to teach a health policy and leadership course. According to The Harvard Gazette, the former mayor of Chicago has been named a Richard L. and Ronay A. Menschel Senior Leadership Fellow for the fall semester at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The fellowship program provides a once-in-a-lifetime chance for people who recently held prominent positions in journalism, nonprofit organizations, multilateral...

Lori Lightfoot is the first Chicago mayor in 40 years to lose re-election. She will now assume a teaching role at Menschel Senior Leadership Fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Ironically, Lightfoot will teach a course titled “Health Policy, and Leadership.” While there are worse choices to educate students about leadership, we can’t think of one off hand. Nonetheless, Michelle A. Williams, Dean of Faculty at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, considers Lightfoot an impressive addition: “I’m delighted to welcome Mayor Lightfoot to Harvard Chan School as a Menschel Senior Leadership Fellow. As mayor,...

There are many reasons why so many US public schools remained persistently closed for well over a year, but at the top of the list is Randi Weingarten. She is the President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and served as the self-appointed and media-anointed spokesperson for teachers’ unions throughout the pandemic. Weingarten appeared regularly across national media outlets for well over two years, relentlessly touting the dangers of public schools and the risk to teachers from in-person instruction. She also painted anyone who advocated for schools to open as heartless and cruel. Now that it’s become clear what...

Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) has declared a state of emergency for the sanctuary city of Chicago, Illinois, stating that the city has hit a “breaking point” and is “full” due to illegal immigration flows arriving from the United States-Mexico border. Since August 2022, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has bused more than 8,000 border crossers and illegal aliens to Chicago to help save his state’s taxpayers billions in social and economic costs associated with illegal immigration.

Folk singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, a Canadian icon who Bob Dylan once referred to as a "rare talent," passed away in Toronto on Monday. Lightfoot was 84 years old. Representative Victoria Lord confirmed that Lightfoot died at a Toronto hospital early Tuesday morning, but did not elaborate on his cause of death. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was quick to offer tribute to the musician on Twitter.

Chicago voters lost Lightfoot, or perhaps better put, Lightfoot lost Chicago voters. The failure to keep children in schools and in effective learning environments undoubtedly played a big role in her political collapse, the worst in recent memory for Chicago mayors. Lightfoot herself counts that as a significant part of the “anger bubble” that pushed her out of office, and that also threatens to end the careers of other mayors of the COVID era. CNN’s Poppy Harlow points out this morning that Lightfoot went “head to head with the teacher’s union” over school shutdowns. Now Randi Weingarten wants to rewrite...

Legendary Canadian folk singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot has died at age 84. Victoria Lord, a representative for the family, says the musician behind classic Canadian ballads "Early Morning Rain" and "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" died at a Toronto hospital on Monday evening. His cause of death was not immediately available. The Orillia, Ont., native rose to fame in the early 1960s after a move to Toronto opened doors in the thriving Yorkville music scene, and hooked him up with fellow folkies Ian and Sylvia Tyson. They became great admirers of his work and covered two of his tracks. His...

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) sent a letter to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Sunday urging him to not bus any more migrants to Chicago, calling his move “inhumane and dangerous.” “Chicago is a Welcoming City and we collaborate with County, State, and community partners to rise to this challenge, but your lack of consideration or coordination in an attempt to cause chaos and score political points has resulted in a critical tipping point in our ability to receive individuals and families in a safe, orderly, and dignified way,” Lightfoot wrote in the letter. Lightfoot said that Texas was...

Last weekend, mobs of teenagers swarmed into downtown Chicago where they smashed store windows, set cars on fire, assaulted out-of-town tourists, and shot at each other. Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson (D) pleaded with the city's residents to "not overreact by demonizing the exuberance of our youth. They are our future and should not be condemned for expressing their joy in ways that our older residents might find frightening." He then went on to blame his predecessor for "allowing the pall of systemic racism to stifle opportunities for our black youth." Outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot denied that her reign stifled black youth...

A good Samaritan who saved a young couple that was brutally assaulted by an out-of-control mob during Chicago’s “Teen Takeover” has hit out at the city’s outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot, accusing her of trying to downplay the violence. “I’m sorry, Lightfoot. I voted for you… but I can’t be involved in any level of sugarcoating what I saw,” Lenora Dennis told Fox News’ Garrett Tenney. “That was mayhem.” Dennis was responding to Lightfoot’s comments arguing that what happened in downtown Chicago last weekend was not “mayhem.” “The mass majority of the young people who came downtown, came downtown because there...

But while the state’s coffers suffer, Pritzker will be doing just fine. He is a scion of a billionaire family, whose members include former secretary of commerce Penny Pritzker, who was an Obama campaign donor. Another Pritzker sibling, meanwhile, exemplifies how the family has used its vast wealth to promote liberal causes: specifically, the cultural normalization of transgenderism. Earlier this month, Jennifer Bilek explained this in great detail for Tablet. (Bilek prefers to use the term “synthetic sex identities,” or SSI, because she thinks the word “transgenderism” lacks “clear boundaries” and is thus “useless for communication.”): A sample: Ever since,...

Chicago's incoming liberal mayor has raised eyebrows by blaming the city's poverty problems and surging crime rates on businesses that don't pay tax. Brandon Johnson, a former union organizer who was elected on Tuesday, said Chicago doesn't have money to solve its problem because '70 percent of large corporations in the state of Illinois don't pay a corporate tax'. 'It's that type of restraint on our budget that has caused the type if disinvestment that has led to poverty, of course that has led to violence,' said Johnson, who didn't give the source for his claim. The 47-year-old Cook County...

Lame duck Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot got a tongue-lashing at a raucous city council meeting Wednesday, with a longtime critic telling the controversial pol to “get the hell out of my city.” Journalist William Kelly, a frequent adversary of Lightfoot, berated the outgoing mayor for her botched leadership, including her response to the COVID-19 pandemic, during a public comment portion of the meeting. “You shut down our schools, you shut down the churches, you shut down the businesses,” Kelly railed, according to a video posted by Forbes. “You did the one thing that I thought could never happen,” he said....

Heart be still, there are signs Democrats are finally getting the message that voters are sick to death of crime. Make that some Democrats. A brouhaha is brewing on at least three fronts, and the good news is that the White House is on the right side this time. President Biden stunned many in his own party by supporting a Republican-led House bill to overrule a nutty plan in Washington, DC, to reduce penalties for homicides, carjacking, and other violent crimes in the nation’s capital.