Whether Brandon Johnson or Paul Vallas wins, the new mayor will have to work with the current police leadership to tamp down rising crime and implement sweeping court-ordered reforms.

About 160 faculty and staff at Chicago State University’s employee union will go on strike Monday after almost a year of bargaining to secure a fair contract, union officials said.

Members of CSU’s chapter of the University Professionals of Illinois (CSU UPI, Illinois Federation of Teachers Local 4100) had previously voted to authorize a strike if the university administration didn’t take “significant movement” at the bargaining table. Yet disagreements continued over workload issues and compensation.

Amid a hotly contested mayoral election, friction is growing within the Chicago Teachers Union.

Specifically, a group of teachers has now filed legal action against the union, alleging union leaders are wrongly spending dues money on political organizations supporting Brandon Johnson for mayor. They said it’s not about politics, but about their contention that their own union has deceived them.

Saying the integrity of the Illinois Supreme Court itself is at stake, lawyers representing gun owners from Macon County have formally asked the court’s two newly elected justices, Democrats Elizabeth Rochford and Mary K. O’Brien, to step aside from hearing an appeal over the fate of the state’s ban on so-called assault weapons, because the justices accepted more than $2.6 million in campaign donations from Gov. JB Pritzker and other prominent Democrats, and also pledged during their campaigns last fall to support assault weapons bans.

On March 30, attorneys Jerrold H. Stocks and Brian D. Eck, of the firm of Featherstun Gaumer Stocks Flynn & Eck, of Decatur, filed a motion with the Illinois Supreme Court, requesting the two justices recuse themselves in a lawsuit which argues the new gun ban violates the Illinois state constitution.

In the weeks following then-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s forced ouster of his longtime chief of staff following allegations of sexual harassment, a high-ranking Commonwealth Edison official was considering how to help the disgraced Madigan ally.

Tim Mapes had served as Madigan’s chief of staff for more than 25 years and further solidified his “right-hand man” status by serving as clerk of the House and executive director of the Democratic Party of Illinois. But Mapes was swiftly fired in June 2018 hours after a longtime female staffer publicly accused him of sexual harassment. The next year, an outside investigation corroborated further allegations of bullying by Mapes.