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Lori Lights Up Chicago

NNPA NEWSWIRE — To hundreds of her supporters Lightfoot said, ‘You created more than just history. You created a movement for change. When we started this journey 11 months ago, nobody gave us much of a chance. We were up against powerful interests, a powerful machine and a powerful mayor. [Dr.] Martin Luther King said something when I was very young. Faith, he said, is taking the first step when you can’t see the staircase…We let our faith overcome our fears.

Published

6 years ago

April 4, 2019

Oakland Post

By Erick Johnson, The Chicago Crusader

On a historic night, Lori Lightfoot cemented her inspiring rise to political power to become Chicago’s first Black female mayor commanding a landslide victory over machine politics in the nation’s third largest city where there are more Blacks in public office than anywhere in the country.

In the second mayoral runoff in Chicago’s 182-year history, she swept all 50 wards as she delivered a crushing defeat to her opponent, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, a Black female political “Boss” who after rising to political prominence, lost an election for the first time in 32 years.

The evening also marked an unprecedented achievement for Chicago Blacks-one that set new records in Black political power in Chicago and Cook County. For the first time in the country, two Black women at the same time will lead Chicago, and Cook County, the second biggest county in America.

Chicago is now the largest city to elect a Black female mayor. It joins 13 cities headed by Black female mayors. They include San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Baltimore, New Orleans, Baton Rouge (LA), Charlotte (NC), New Haven (CT) and Rochester (NY).

In another historic victory, State Representative Melissa Conyears-Ervin became the city’s first Black female treasurer.

Blacks in Chicago now head the nation’s second largest police department, the second largest transit system, the third biggest public school system as well as the Chicago Fire Department, the Chicago Housing Authority and the Water Department.

With many Black residents struggling and disillusioned, some of these positions carry more symbolism than power and influence. With Lightfoot poised to take over, there’s the question of whether she will challenge or even shakeup the Black public leadership that Mayor Rahm Emanuel created, to restore trust with Black voters.

Lightfoot will be sworn in next month and replace Emanuel, an embattled official who decided not to run for a third term after losing trust among Chicago’s Black voters amid the police shooting of 17-year Laquan McDonald.

But the spotlight is on Lightfoot, a former prosecutor who was born to a working class family in Ohio. Thirty-six years after Harold Washington became the city’s first Black mayor, Lightfoot steps into the role at a time when hundreds of thousands of Blacks are leaving the city after years of crime, poverty and sweeping segregation among its Black and white residents.

Lightfoot is also the city’s first openly gay public official.

The evening set records on various levels in an election where only 30 percent of Chicago’s 1.6 million voters went to the polls after a long, highly publicized campaign season that for the first time saw two Black women vie for the city’s highest political office.

Lightfoot’s victory is being viewed as extraordinary. She defied odds as a gay, political rookie who had never held an elective office. There was concern that she would not get the support of the Black electorate because of her sexual orientation. In addition to being an ‘outsider’ at City Hall, the Chicago Black Caucus as an organization did not endorse her, or publicly campaign for Lightfoot. A WGN poll on March 5 showed that Lightfoot led her opponent by as much as 53 percent to Preckwinkle’s 30 percent. Another poll showed that 29 percent of voters remained undecided on their candidate of choice.

That left Preckwinkle’s supporters hopeful. But Lightfoot won anyway.

Forty-six minutes after the polls closed at 7 p.m, Lightfoot was declared the winner.

She grabbed nearly 74 percent of 498,154 votes that were cast. Lightfoot kept a massive lead over her opponent throughout the evening. When the first results appeared on the screens at her election night watch party at the Hilton Chicago on Michigan Avenue, cheers erupted from a diverse crowd of supporters in a packed ballroom where Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr., businessman Willie Wilson, activist Ja’Mal Green and several Black aldermen were in attendance.

With her wife and daughter standing behind her, Lightfoot gave an 18-minute speech that highlighted her tough journey to victory and expressed her vision for Chicago.

To hundreds of her supporters Lightfoot said, ‘You created more than just history. You created a movement for change. When we started this journey 11 months ago, nobody gave us much of a chance. We were up against powerful interests, a powerful machine and a powerful mayor. [Dr.] Martin Luther King said something when I was very young. Faith, he said, is taking the first step when you can’t see the staircase…We let our faith overcome our fears.

“Together, we can and will, finally put first the interests of our people-all of our people, and not the interests of a powerful few. We can and will make Chicago a place where your zip code doesn’t determine your destiny.”

Lightfoot also won all of the city’s Black wards, weeks after she was endorsed by Black businessman and former mayoral candidate Willie Wilson, who won 13 Black wards in the general election in February. Wilson’s endorsement is being viewed as a game changer in Lightfoot’s campaign, and his influence signaled his own rise to political prominence in a city that never took him seriously as an ambitious figure seeking to shake up Chicago’s political machine.

His downfall gave rise to Lightfoot, a relatively unknown figure in the Black community who quit her mayoral-appointed job to take on Emanuel and the machine politics at City Hall. She stunned the city’s status quo after beating 14 candidates in the February 26 election with little support from big donors and the political elite.

The victory added more fuel and momentum to Lightfoot as she remained defiant and outspoken about the city’s machine politics that for years have left many residents disenfranchised and disillusioned.

Standing in Lightfoot’s way was Preckwinkle, a political heavyweight, who has grown after she helped put in office Cook County’s first Black female State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, and Juliana Stratton, the first Black female Lieutenant Governor of Illinois. After winning the Primary in March, 2018, Preckwinkle became the first Black female to serve as chairman of the powerful Cook County Democratic Party.

Preckwinkle launched a negative advertising campaign that painted Lightfoot as an affluent attorney who built her legal career on defending powerful corporations while she served as a partner at the high-profile global law firm of Mayer Brown. But in the end, Preckwinkle’s ties to the corruption scandal of Alderman Ed Burke played into her opponent’s message that she is part of Chicago’s political machine. And Preckwinkle’s negative attacks only boosted her negative image as a mean-spirited public official.

In the final weeks leading up to the runoff election, the two racked up political endorsements at a pace not seen before in recent Chicago memory.

Lightfoot was endorsed by the city’s daily newspapers and several Black aldermen. Many of Preckwinkle’s endorsements came from unions. Former President Barack Obama and several organizations remained silent, fueling speculation that many Democrats had abandoned Preckwinkle when she really needed them. Obama’s former Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett endorsed Preckwinkle in the final weeks of her mayoral campaign.

Obama, whose mansion is in Hyde Park where Preckwinkle lives, endorsed Preckwinkle during her campaign for a third term as Cook County Board President.

Lightfoot in her victory speech promised to heal the wounds, after a bitter campaign season among two strong Black women.

“In this election, Toni and I were competitors. But our differences are nothing compared to what we can achieve together. Now that it’s over, I know that we will work together in a city that we both love.”

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Recently Approved Budget Plan Favors Wealthy, Slashes Aid to Low-Income Americans

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — The most significant benefits would flow to the highest earners while millions of low-income families face cuts

Published

1 week ago

March 21, 2025

Stacy M. Brown

By Stacy M. Brown

BlackPressUSA.com Senior National Correspondent

The new budget framework approved by Congress may result in sweeping changes to the federal safety net and tax code. The most significant benefits would flow to the highest earners while millions of low-income families face cuts. A new analysis from Yale University’s Budget Lab shows the proposals in the House’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Resolution would lead to a drop in after-tax-and-transfer income for the poorest households while significantly boosting revenue for the wealthiest Americans. Last month, Congress passed its Concurrent Budget Resolution for Fiscal Year 2025 (H. Con. Res. 14), setting revenue and spending targets for the next decade. The resolution outlines $1.5 trillion in gross spending cuts and $4.5 trillion in tax reductions between FY2025 and FY2034, along with $500 billion in unspecified deficit reduction.

Congressional Committees have now been instructed to identify policy changes that align with these goals. Three of the most impactful committees—Agriculture, Energy and Commerce, and Ways and Means—have been tasked with proposing major changes. The Agriculture Committee is charged with finding $230 billion in savings, likely through changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps. Energy and Commerce must deliver $880 billion in savings, likely through Medicaid reductions. Meanwhile, the Ways and Means Committee must craft tax changes totaling no more than $4.5 trillion in new deficits, most likely through extending provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Although the resolution does not specify precise changes, reports suggest lawmakers are eyeing steep cuts to SNAP and Medicaid benefits while seeking to make permanent tax provisions that primarily benefit high-income individuals and corporations.

To examine the potential real-world impact, Yale’s Budget Lab modeled four policy changes that align with the resolution’s goals:

A 30 percent across-the-board cut in SNAP funding.
A 15 percent cut in Medicaid funding.
Permanent extension of the individual and estate tax cuts from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Permanent extension of business tax provisions including 100% bonus depreciation, expense of R&D, and relaxed limits on interest deductions.

Yale researchers determined that the combined effect of these policies would reduce the after-tax-and-transfer income of the bottom 20 percent of earners by 5 percent in the calendar year 2026. Households in the middle would see a modest 0.6 percent gain. However, the top five percent of earners would experience a 3 percent increase in their after-tax-and-transfer income.

Moreover, the analysis concluded that more than 100 percent of the net fiscal benefit from these changes would go to households in the top 20 percent of the income distribution. This happens because lower-income groups would lose more in government benefits than they would gain from any tax cuts. At the same time, high-income households would enjoy significant tax reductions with little or no loss in benefits.

“These results indicate a shift in resources away from low-income tax units toward those with higher incomes,” the Budget Lab report states. “In particular, making the TCJA provisions permanent for high earners while reducing spending on SNAP and Medicaid leads to a regressive overall effect.” The report notes that policymakers have floated a range of options to reduce SNAP and Medicaid outlays, such as lowering per-beneficiary benefits or tightening eligibility rules. While the Budget Lab did not assess each proposal individually, the modeling assumes legislation consistent with the resolution’s instructions. “The burden of deficit reduction would fall largely on those least able to bear it,” the report concluded.

Stacy M. Brown

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#NNPA BlackPress

A Threat to Pre-emptive Pardons

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — it was a possibility that the preemptive pardons would not happen because of the complicated nature of that never-before-enacted process.

Published

1 week ago

March 21, 2025

Oakland Post

By April Ryan

President Trump is working to undo the traditional presidential pardon powers by questioning the Biden administration’s pre-emptive pardons issued just days before January 20, 2025. President Trump is seeking retribution against the January 6th House Select Committee. The Trump Justice Department has been tasked to find loopholes to overturn the pardons that could lead to legal battles for the Republican and Democratic nine-member committee. Legal scholars and those closely familiar with the pardon process worked with the Biden administration to ensure the preemptive pardons would stand against any retaliatory knocks from the incoming Trump administration. A source close to the Biden administration’s pardons said, in January 2025, “I think pardons are all valid. The power is unreviewable by the courts.”

However, today that same source had a different statement on the nuances of the new Trump pardon attack. That attack places questions about Biden’s use of an autopen for the pardons. The Trump argument is that Biden did not know who was pardoned as he did not sign the documents. Instead, the pardons were allegedly signed by an autopen. The same source close to the pardon issue said this week, “unless he [Trump] can prove Biden didn’t know what was being done in his name. All of this is in uncharted territory. “ Meanwhile, an autopen is used to make automatic or remote signatures. It has been used for decades by public figures and celebrities.

Months before the Biden pardon announcement, those in the Biden White House Counsel’s Office, staff, and the Justice Department were conferring tirelessly around the clock on who to pardon and how. The concern for the preemptive pardons was how to make them irrevocable in an unprecedented process. At one point in the lead-up to the preemptive pardon releases, it was a possibility that the preemptive pardons would not happen because of the complicated nature of that never-before-enacted process. President Trump began the threat of an investigation for the January 6th Select Committee during the Hill proceedings. Trump has threatened members with investigation or jail.

Oakland Post

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Reaction to The Education EO

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — Meanwhile, the new Education EO jeopardizes funding for students seeking a higher education. Duncan states, PellGrants are in jeopardy after servicing “6.5 million people” giving them a chance to go to college.

Published

1 week ago

March 21, 2025

Oakland Post

By April Ryan

There are plenty of negative reactions to President Donald Trump’s latest Executive Order abolishing the Department of Education. As Democrats call yesterday’s action performative, it would take an act of Congress for the Education Department to close permanently. “This blatantly unconstitutional executive order is just another piece of evidence that Trump has absolutely no respect for the Constitution,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) who is the ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee. “By dismantling ED, President Trump is implementing his own philosophy on education, which can be summed up in his own words, ‘I love the poorly educated.’ I am adamantly opposed to this reckless action, said Rep. Bobby Scott who is the most senior Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee.

Morgan State University President Dr. David Wilson chimed in saying “I’m deeply concerned about efforts to shift federal oversight in education back to the states, particularly regarding equity, justice, and fairness. History has shown us what happens when states are left unchecked—Black and poor children are too often denied access to the high-quality education they deserve. In 1979 then President Jimmy Carter signed a law creating the Department of Education. Arne Duncan, former Obama Education Secretary, reminds us that both Democratic and Republican presidents have kept education a non-political issue until now. However, Duncan stressed Republican presidents have contributed greatly to moving education forward in this country.

During a CNN interview this week Duncan said during the Civil War President Abraham “Lincoln created the land grant system” for colleges like Tennessee State University. “President Ford brought in IDEA.” And “Nixon signed Pell Grants into law.” In 2001, the No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush which increased federal oversight of schools through standardized testing. Meanwhile, the new Education EO jeopardizes funding for students seeking higher education. Duncan states, PellGrants are in jeopardy after servicing “6.5 million people” giving them a chance to go to college. Wilson details, “that 40 percent of all college students rely on Pell Grants and student loans.”

Rep. Alma Adams (D-NC) says this Trump action “impacts students pursuing higher education and threatens 26 million students across the country, taking billions away from their educational futures. Meanwhile, During the president’s speech in the East Room of the White House Thursday, Trump criticized Baltimore City, and its math test scores with critical words. Governor West Moore, who is opposed to the EO action, said about dismantling the Department of Education, “Leadership means lifting people up, not punching them down.”