Good morning, Chicago.
A downstate judge’s ruling Friday set off a weekend of confusion for schools across Illinois.
Sangamon County Circuit Judge Raylene Grischow granted a request to temporarily halt Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s executive orders on masking and quarantining for schools. Pritzker issued a statement saying he asked the attorney general’s office for an immediate appeal of the decision.
When students return to class this morning, mask policies may depend on where you live. Some districts, like District 25 in northwest suburban Arlington Heights, announced they would move to a mask-optional policy in the wake of the ruling, while Chicago Public Schools issued a statement Saturday saying the ruling would not prevent the district from continuing to require masks.
The ruling will be welcomed as a relief to some parents and school officials who have been calling for an “off ramp” to COVID-19 mask mandates as the omicron surge wanes, but the pandemic still poses an extraordinary public health challenge: The U.S. has now surpassed 900,000 coronavirus deaths, and many, schoolchildren and adults alike, have not yet received a COVID vaccine.
— Paul Day, audience editor
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As Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker tries to fend off Republican rivals who accuse him of being soft on crime, his office is announcing the arrests of about a dozen people in the last several months for crimes on Chicago-area expressways.
The rise in violent crime afflicting parts of the state has not spared the city’s expressways, which are patrolled by Illinois State Police. There were roughly 260 shootings on Chicago-area expressways in 2021, about double the number on those roadways the previous year, according to the state police.
As a chronic polluter sought city permission to set up shop on Chicago’s Southeast Side, recently released emails show there was a stark divide in the administration of Mayor Lori Lightfoot — one the mayor wanted to keep secret from the public.
The fall 2020 emails, released to the Tribune under an open records request, offer a window into the extent to which Lightfoot hoped to stop the public from learning details of the behind-the-scenes debate over General Iron’s attempted move from a wealthy, largely white Lincoln Park neighborhood to a lower-income, predominantly Latino one on the Southeast Side.
Monday trial opening set for Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson, the only Daley to face federal charges
The list of political heavyweights to face criminal prosecution at Chicago’s federal courthouse is dismally long and peppered with names such as Ryan, Blagojevich, Cellini, Vrdolyak, and Burke.
But there has never been a Daley — until now.
On Monday, Chicago Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson, grandson and nephew of the city’s two longest-serving mayors, is scheduled to go on trial at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse on charges alleging he lied on federal tax returns about a line of credit he received from a Bridgeport bank that later collapsed.
The Chicago Blackhawks fired the head athletic trainer of the minor-league Rockford IceHogs in November for alleged sexual harassment, the team confirmed to the Tribune late Sunday.
D.J. Jones was in his 16th season with the Hawks’ American Hockey League affiliate.
Tribune critic Nick Kindelsperger admits he never made it to Sabor a Jalisco at the corner of Belmont and Karlov avenues before it closed: “Had I done so, I would have been able to rave about the goat birria made by owner Margarita Nunez five years sooner.”
You can now find the same birria at Barca Birrieria y Restaurant, Kindelsperger writes, and it’s one of the finest versions of that dish you’ll find in the state.
