Chicago

Alvin Bragg’s busted flush Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s indictment of former president Donald Trump was finally unsealed yesterday and the near-universal reaction was… really? That’s it? The charges are so weak that prominent Trump critics Senator Mitt Romney and former national security advisor John Bolton are scoffing. Bolton even predicted the case would easily be dismissed. Bragg claims Trump allegedly falsified business records in order to cover up a crime. What crime? We don’t know, because Bragg won’t tell us. So, a Soros-backed DA is dragging his political opponents into court for bookkeeping errors while downgrading half of NYC’s other crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. What a sane world we live in! -Amber Athey On our radar LET’S GO...

Spoilt for choice in the Windy City If the heavy defeat suffered by incumbent mayor Lori Lightfoot last month is anything to go by, Chicagoans have plenty to grumble about when it comes to how their city is managed. But when they head to the polls in the mayoral runoff next week, they cannot complain about a lack of choice. The two candidates are both Democrats, to be sure, but they offer sharply different approaches on the crime and public safety — issues that have dominated the race and which polls suggest are at the forefront of voters’ minds.  Paul Vallas, who used to run the city’s public schools, is running in the moderate lane: sharply critical of Lightfoot and prioritizing public safety above all else. Brandon Johnson is the progressive option.

Is this the best video to grace the internet today? Cockburn thinks yes. Check out Abel and Ola Osundairo, the Nigerian brothers who allegedly perpetrated a fake hate crime against Empire actor Jussie "Juicy" Smollett, re-enacting how they carried out the staged attack: https://twitter.com/foxnation/status/1635332394159939593 The clip is from Fox Nation's new documentary on the Jussie Smollett hate hoax crime, Anatomy of a Hoax — and is pure comedy. The Osundairo brothers previously testified that Jussie paid them to stage an anti-black, anti-gay attack against him so that he could gain sympathy and clout on social media. Jussie told police that he was physically attacked by two white men wearing "Make America Great Again" hats who recognized him from the show Empire.

When Chicago went to the polls on Tuesday, the voters made one thing abundantly clear: they wanted to see the back of Lori Lightfoot, the current mayor. She had come into office on a landslide in 2019, winning some three-quarters of the vote against a well-known, well-liked opponent. Four years later, all that support was gone. She received only 17 percent in 2023, a distant third in a race where only the top two candidates enter the runoff (since none received 50 percent). The candidates going into that runoff are Paul Vallas, with about 34 percent of the vote (twice that of the incumbent), and Brandon Johnson, with about 20 percent. The rest of the vote was spread among the six other candidates, including Lightfoot.

Cockburn found himself grimacing over his Monday morning mimosa as he watched a viral video of Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot “dancing” in the snow-strewn streets of the crime-ridden city she is supposed to govern. Lightfoot is under fire for her behavior at a Lunar New Year parade, as her lighthearted attitude contrasts sharply with the recent release of somber Chicago Police Department data showing crime reports have surged 59 percent this month compared to last January. Of course Cockburn is not surprised that Lightfoot would be so nonchalant in such a moment. Her city's crime problem is, after all, nothing new. According to the Washington Examiner, “the city has experienced an overall 33 percent increase in crime since 2019, the year Lightfoot was sworn in as mayor.

As President Biden’s team tried to put out fires regarding the Curious Case of the Corvette and the FAA fiasco, one Democrat must have been grateful for the White House’s sudden maelstrom of bad news. When it rains it pours — and Joe’s torrent of bad headlines overshadowed Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s latest scandal that is brewing in the Windy City. On Thursday, news broke that the mayor’s campaign had sent an email attempting to recruit Chicago Public School students to “help” with the incumbent’s reelection effort. The students would earn class credit in exchange for their contributions.

The father of a UCLA grad student, Brianna Kupfer, who was stabbed to death last week, is giving voice to the gut-wrenching human toll of the violent crime wave ravaging the nation — and the social and political forces enabling it. “What’s endemic in our society right now is that everyone seems oriented on giving back rights and bestowing favor on people that rob others of their rights,” said the grieving dad on Fox News. Brianna, a graduate student and design consultant, was found dead by a customer at the furniture store where she worked. On Wednesday, Los Angeles police identified her suspected killer, a 31-year-old career criminal named Shawn Laval Smith who was out on $1,000 bail for a misdemeanor.

Some people say that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. Nonsense. There is also the certainty that in America circa 2021 anti-black racist events are hoaxes perpetrated by left-wing whites or, more often, by blacks themselves. Right now, the world is mesmerized by the case of Jussie Smollett. Until he faked the “racist” attack on himself back in 2019, no one you knew had heard of Smollett. Now he is famous, not for being an actor, but for being a race-baiting hate monger. The fake-news, enemy-of-the-people, Trump-hating media slobbered all over that story. So did the slimy Democratic politicians sup daily on fifty-seven varieties of “racism” because they think it buys votes.

Former Empire actor Jussie Smollett appeared in court for the first time this week to defend himself against allegations that he fabricated an elaborate hate crime for attention. Chicago prosecutors say Smollett wasted police time and resources by sending them on a wild goose chase against his alleged attackers — resources which surely could have been better used elsewhere, given the city's astronomical murder rate. Early details shared during the trial don't help Smollett's case. Prosecutors showed the jury surveillance video of an alleged "dry run" of the orchestrated attack. The video, taken a day before the incident, shows Smollett walking around the area with the Osundairo brothers.