Illinois and other states have attached social equity goals to their marijuana legalization programs, but a new study says they are a failure.

In 2019, Illinois lawmakers took great pride in their efforts to craft a legalization bill intended to achieve social equity goals. The Reason Foundation report notes that advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union hailed the social equity provisions in Illinois as a new model for the nation, but three-and-a-half years passed before the state issued a single license to a social equity applicant.

The alleged scheme by four ComEd executives and lobbyists to bribe then-House Speaker Michael Madigan didn’t play out like it often does in the movies, with envelopes stuffed with cash passed under a table, prosecutors told the federal jury in the “ComEd Four” trial Monday.

It was far more elaborate, a web of illicit payments funneling more than a million dollars to do-nothing lobbyist “subcontractors,” a deal guaranteeing billable hours for a politically connected law firm, a lucrative board seat for Madigan’s candidate, and summer internships from people sent from the speaker’s 13th Ward.

Carmen A. Rossi, a lawyer and bar owner who holds the liquor license for Lollapalooza, has agreed to pay a $5,000 fine for violating City Hall’s lobbying rules when he asked a city official to help secure business licenses to operate parking lots on Chicago Public Schools property.

Rossi wasn’t registered as a lobbyist for his company, Chicago Parking Solutions, when he sent an email on March 7, 2022, asking Kenneth Meyer, Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s commissioner of business affairs and consumer protection, to help secure business licenses for the parking company, the Chicago Sun-Times reported last year.

After a string of armed robberies last November, a group of people in Little Village decided they needed to do something.

Community members decided to organize groups of people, in most cases in sizes of 5-7 people, into a citizen patrol who get up in the early hours of the morning to help protect street vendors, who they say are some of Little Villages most vulnerable workers.

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx has not yet publicly declared whether she will seek a third term in office in 2024, but there’s growing speculation that she could tip her hand during an address at a City Club of Chicago event on Tuesday.

Three sources have told NBC 5 Political Reporter Mary Ann Ahern that Foxx will announce that she is not running for a third term in office, paving the way for a new state’s attorney to seek the office next year.

A political consultant who was sued last week for allegedly defrauding Paul Vallas’ mayoral campaign out of hundreds of thousands of dollars threatened Monday to file a defamation lawsuit against the failed candidate he once counted as a close associate.

“In the end, I will be vindicated and Vallas’ claims will be seen for what they are – unfounded,” said Chimaobi Enyia.