Author: chicagoinquirer

by Olivia Diaz and Bill Barrow PETERSBURG, Va.  — Rae Pickett stepped onto Richell Hines’ front stoop wearing a pink T-shirt that foretold the case she hoped to make to Virginia voters as she knocked on doors on a sunny Saturday in early October. “Abortion is on the ballot,” it read. Hines answered Pickett’s knock on her Petersburg, Virginia, door with a disarming smile and a T-shirt of her own: “She who kneels before God can stand before anyone.” The polite exchange that followed between Pickett and Hines revealed the complexity of one of the most vivid policy differences between…

by Andrew Seligma CHICAGO  — As much as Dennis Allen downplayed going against his former team, his players weren’t buying it. This one had to mean a little more. Allen’s defense dominated, and the Chicago Bears beat the New Orleans Saints 26-14 on Sunday for their fourth straight win. Allen, the Bears’ defensive coordinator, was facing the Saints for the first time since they fired him as head coach midway through last season after 2 1/2 years. “He didn’t make it about himself this entire week, he didn’t mention anything about it,” safety Kevin Byard said. “But just me being…

by Paul Wiseman and Gisela Solomon Maria worked cleaning schools in Florida for $13 an hour. Every two weeks, she’d get a $900 paycheck from her employer, a contractor. Not much — but enough to cover rent in the house that she and her 11-year-old son share with five families, plus electricity, a cellphone and groceries. In August, it all ended. When she showed up at the job one morning, her boss told her that she couldn’t work there anymore. The Trump administration had terminated President Joe Biden’s humanitarian parole program, which provided legal work permits for Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans…

by John O’Connor SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — It figures that a billionaire would win big in Las Vegas. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker reported a gambling windfall of $1.4 million on his federal tax return this week. The two-term Democrat, often mentioned as a 2028 presidential candidate, told reporters in Chicago on Thursday that he drew charmed hands in blackjack during a vacation with first lady MK Pritzker and friends in Sin City. “I was incredibly lucky,” he said. “You have to be to end up ahead, frankly, going to a casino anywhere.” Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt hotel chain,…

by Christine Fernando CHICAGO — Federal immigration officers in the Chicago area will be required to wear body cameras, a judge said Thursday after seeing tear gas and other aggressive steps used against protesters. U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis said she was a “little startled” after seeing TV images of clashes between agents and the public during President Donald Trump’s administration’s immigration crackdown. “I live in Chicago if folks haven’t noticed,” she said. “And I’m not blind, right?” Community efforts to oppose U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have ramped up in the nation’s third-largest city, where neighborhood groups have assembled…

by Curtis Yee and Amy Shafer Senate Democrats are poised for the 10th time Thursday to reject a stopgap spending bill that would reopen the government, insisting they won’t back away from demands that Congress take up health care benefits. The repetition of votes on the funding bill has become a daily drumbeat in Congress, underscoring how intractable the situation has become as it has been at times the only item on the agenda for the Senate floor. House Republicans have left Washington altogether. The standoff has lasted over two weeks, leaving hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed, even…

by Christine Fernando CHICAGO  — A high-speed chase involving Border Patrol agents led to the pursued person’s arrest Tuesday afternoon in a residential street on Chicago ’s South Side, authorities said, and footage from the scene shows protesters gathering before agents deployed a tear gas to disperse them. While federal agents conducted an immigration enforcement operation, a driver suspected of being in the country illegally rammed into a Border Patrol vehicle before fleeing, Department of Homeland Security officials said. The agents chased the vehicle until the driver stopped and attempted to run away, according to DHS. As agents arrested the…

by Emmanuel Tumanjong, Ngala Killian Chimtom and Mark Banchereau YAOUNDE, Cameroon (AP) — Cameroon opposition candidate Issa Tchiroma Bakary claimed victory Tuesday in the Oct. 12 presidential election ahead of the release of official results, urging President Paul Biya, the world’s oldest president, to concede. “Our victory is clear, it must be respected,” Tchiroma said in a video statement on Facebook, calling on Biya to “accept the truth of the ballot box” or “plunge the country into turmoil.” He said he will share a detailed report of the votes by region in the coming days. Elections Cameroon, the independent body…

by Jonathan Landrum Jr D’Angelo, the Grammy-winning R&B singer recognized by his raspy yet smooth voice and for garnering mainstream attention with the shirtless “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” music video, has died. He was 51. The singer, whose real name was Michael Eugene Archer, died Tuesday after a long bout with cancer, his family said in a statement. It called him “a shining star of our family and has dimmed his light for us in this life,” adding that they are “eternally grateful for the legacy of extraordinarily moving music he leaves behind.” In his music, D’Angelo blended hip-hop…

by Mark Sherman WASHINGTON  — A Republican attack on a core provision of the Voting Rights Actthat is designed to protect racial minorities comes to the Supreme Court this week, more than a decade after the justices knocked out another pillar of the 60-year-old law. In arguments Wednesday, lawyers for Louisiana and the Trump administration will try to persuade the justices to wipe away the state’s second majority Black congressional district and make it much harder, if not impossible, to take account of race in redistricting. “Race-based redistricting is fundamentally contrary to our Constitution,” Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill wrote…