>> And everyone, thanks for joining us on the week in review, Amanda, Eva is easy as ABC and one to 3 within weeks of becoming the U.S. Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon wipes out half her agency's workforce.

Go the Chicago office responsible for enforcing civil rights >> Well, No, we will fight back.

We resist this move with everything we had.

>> Governor JB Pritzker says gutting public education is tantamount to dismantling democracy.

President Trump and his boot Lakers.

other words to describe them Are tearing down as we speak.

The U.S. Department of Education inside.

At risk for Illinois 3 billion dollars expected from the fence and the special education in low-income families.

Those dollars support.

This is Trump's Justice Department turns a critical eye toward Western University Chicago and other universities.

The president says haven't done enough to combat Anti-Semitism.

>> Meanwhile, downtown shootings reinvigorate talks of instituting a curfew.

Mayor Brenda Johnson sticks by his whole of government approach.

>> There are shootings that happened at 3 o'clock in the afternoon.

Sometimes.

You know, throughout the day, there are.

Moments where shootings take place and primarily because, of course, there are just to people who have access to legal.

>> plus a plan to store polluted sediment along the lakefront.

Get scrapped drivers line up for real ID's and the CTA drives forward with cameras to capture cars that don't legally use bus lanes.

>> And now to our week in review panel joining us, our Mitchell arm and Trout from the Chicago Sun-Times, Rufus Williams from W Vo melody Mercado from Block Club, Chicago and Nader.

Issa also from The Sun Times.

Now before we get to the Department of Education, we have some news that has developed within the hour or so.

And that is that the Senate advanced this continuing resolution.

Funds.

The government prevents the shutdown, but it took some Democrats in the Senate to do it, which that includes Illinois Zone.

Durbin.

Why did he side with the GOP despite tweeting out he doesn't like within the continuing resolution will know Democrats like what they see in this This is a spending plan that was forced through by President Trump and allies in Congress.

>> And this is causing a rift.

I among Democrats across the board, we saw Governor Pritzker today come out against the spending plan he called on the senators not to approve this Democrats to sign on with this.

You know, there's not going to be made that government shutdown creates more havoc than it is.

The Democrats want to create.

But there are others who say that this is not the time to cave to President Trump and his demands.

>> Yeah.

melody, you have Durbin taking that first line of thinking saying that you don't want to have a government shutdown and more chaos on top of the chaos that has already He says, I read by both the president and Elon Musk and then you had Governor Pritzker saying that Democrats have the power to stop Trump and Musk in.

They should use it.

Do they have the power actually or is this going to, as Mitch alluded to?

>> Further cause a rift in the party taking away power from Democrat to try and grant the actions of the president.

>> I think it's been definitely a push and pull here to try to figure out what the strategy is going to be.

It's pretty much, you know, if you do if you don't sort of a situation.

You know, there have been federal workers that wanted to shut down in order to, you know, have the possibility to negotiate.

>> against what Trump has been doing, which is laying off thousands of workers.

>> But then on the other hand, like if you have a government shutdown, people are not getting paid.

The last time this happened.

I saw so many stories about federal workers that were struggling.

And I think at this point, Democrats are trying to say we're at least we're doing the good thing to keep the payroll going.

You know, also questions I believe is well of if you would some of the >> victories that Democrats have had in court pushing back against Trump's measures.

If there isn't any sort of budget to fund the government.

So let's move now ago.

I that's I find it.

Frustrating.

>> Because this was an opportunity that the Democrats did have have some pushback against what's been coming out of Washington.

And so the fact that they went in and want to be the bigger, the bigger person and yield without getting anything back in return.

Nothing.

Nothing that is frustrating and not saying that the government should be shut down but certainly negotiate for something because otherwise you think all the would have given them any opportunity even to to be let in they needed Democratic votes.

>> This is how you negotiate.

They needed the votes that should have gotten something for and instead walking away with you.

Think not nothing.

Thanks.

>> And so now we will turn to nature because this does come as Democrats are very upset about the dismantling of the Department of Education, something that that education secretary promises to do.

What is the impact here thus far or could be the impact to Illinois students in classrooms.

>> I mean, it sounds scary like everybody knows the Department of Education at sort of overseas schools in the United States.

It's not necessarily doomsday for American education.

The department was created in 1979 by Congress.

There were days before when there wasn't education department.

But the department really administers a lot of federal funding that goes to states to spend most and vulnerable populations.

And so sends money to states for schools that have high shares of students who come from disadvantaged economic backgrounds.

It sends money to schools to help students with eye peas, which is a special education.

And they also oversee civil rights laws and discrimination and >> federal student aid for for students going to college.

So >> the department administers these things and when you fire the people who administer these things, you're not shutting down the department, but you're sort of getting rid of the the method of getting that money to the state, grind to a halt potentially.

What about the economic after the budget factor?

are we seeing we talked about the governor estimated 3 billion Illinois's way for education.

He so he he said the 3 billion dollars he thinks is at risk in Illinois.

And because what we said, it's not that.

>> The money is as being shut off right now.

But the people who administer that funding.

>> And CPS, it's about 16% of the district's budget that comes from federal funding.

And so it's a lot of money.

It's over a billion dollars.

The district's already dealing with deficits.

They have a 500 million dollar deficit next year that they have to grapple with.

And so it's coming at a bad time to a year or 2 after federal pandemic relief funding is running out and you know, that really papered over a lot of deficits for government agencies, including for those schools.

And they're sort of those 2 parallel stories where there is both actual dollars that are set to come engine sees ways for particular programs.

But then there's also this matter of if you don't have.

>> Folks in the government administering the money where he I'm hearing increasingly from government sources that >> they're not able to function.

They don't know if they can continue if grant program is supposed to be continuing.

There's nobody answering a call that the federal government to ensure answer those questions are to get signed 3 billion dollars is not When we talk about our schools throughout the state particularly in the city.

>> When we continue to push for more funding, we continue to see where the gaps are to say that you would take out 3 billion dollars out of the state.

That's that's a lot.

And again, you know, go back to when is there a fight?

One is that the push against these things or are they just being accepted as they come?

got to be somewhat certified or you do you think you could see happening or?

>> It's not as if Trump didn't promise these things.

Some of he was fairly open about on the campaign trail.

Not a surprise to Democrats are his.

And mean, we should accept.

>> I think we are looking at what tends to become authoritarian government.

And as we are citizens and we see this, we have to rise up into a number of different ways.

We expect our legislators to do so.

We expect the court do so.

We expect people do so in the streets, but to be silent in the face of all these things are coming is problematic on every single level.

So Pritzker has not particularly silent.

And when he earlier this week spoke to the state's largest public teachers union.

He really >> gotten some zingers that he talked about the Doe's bags in the federal government and in the White House.

>> It this was, of course, a speech to a very friendly audience.

He got a lot of raisin a standing ovation from the state's largest teachers union.

Is that it is the sort of rousing speech campaign style rhetoric or do you think he's saying we're going to take the fight to the feds is accurate.

>> You know, I as we've seen Democrats at the national level just sort of struggle to kind of pick a lane when it comes to addressing the Trump administration.

Governor Pritzker is very clearly trying to position himself as the attack dog.

The guy who's going on national news, seemingly a weekly basis.

Parents, as you know, I'm Jake Tapper.

Msnbc just got it.

Get his face out there.

Obviously we speculated for years that he's got interest in running for the White House and a few years you know, he's obviously his team has decided that.

Going head-on against Trump is the best way to try court voters and, you know, I think we'll see in the midterms exactly how that works out.

>> But meanwhile, melody, he says the Illinois does not have the money to make up these losses when it comes either to Medicaid when it comes to education, funding cuts.

Meanwhile, you do have Illinois among the states that are taking the federal government to court, especially in terms of this Department of Education or at least most recently.

What is the justification for saying that these moves to dismantle the Education Department are illegal?

>> Well, I think it would look bad if if our governor didn't join or was not one of the 20 states trying to fight to make sure that that that these cuts taken back.

I mean, we've heard the governor again trying to make a play to possibly one for president.

He needs to play the game as people say.

>> In Illinois, by the way, notching a win today with another ruling that many of those employees who were let go in various federal agencies, not I think the Department of Education just yet that one still too fresh.

But that they should get their jobs back at least temporarily know Nader.

All of this comes as universities are under a lot of prep.

pressure and a lot of threats, both get lose more federal money if they Joe, if they keep their dei offices open, they've already had some research grants rescinded.

The president also saying they should not receive money from the federal government if they have healthy endowment in now looking at investigation into some Chicago area campuses in regards to what the Department of Justice says is those who chose not to stand up to the tide of rising Anti-Semitism.

Who is doing the investigating.

What does this look like?

>> Yeah.

So the president launched through the Department of Justice.

This task force that's going around exploring allegations of Anti-Semitism and how they've been handled across the country.

And you're right.

There are a lot of issues that they're sort of picking off to go after blue cities, blue mayors, blue states and governors.

>> And so it's it's the same mayors and most of the same mayors that the department not want to talk about.

>> Anti-semitism with that, they talk to you about sanctuary cities DC a couple weeks ago.

>> Chicago, New York, Boston and La now instead of Denver.

And so.

>> This is something that, you know, the mayor's office, Ed and Chicago, we we've denounced Anti-Semitism.

You know, others have pointed to keeping Jewish students safe.

I'm campus and schools.

The universities have said that that's a priority for them.

also keeping Muslim students safe and allowing for, you know, free speech protest and obviously we saw a wave of pro-Palestinian protests last year and so there is the fallout of Have we seen any changes on these college campuses?

Granted, this is just this week.

So maybe too early, but have there been changes in policies at?

>> Northwestern at University of Chicago in Light of the Department of Justice's actions.

You know, I don't think anything very tangible right now, but we have seen policy changes since the protests last year.

I mean, >> a lot of universities, Putin pretty restrictive protest and demonstration policies restricting the time that people can protest how they can protest where they can protest.

And so that's sort of been the major fallout so far.

But there they're vowing to cooperate.

you >> make sure that they are protecting students of all faiths of all races.

>> roof is I'm curious, why send this letter to Mayor Johnson and focus on cities first, states that also, of course, house these campuses when especially when you have Governor Pritzker show openly antagonistic, why the focus on Johnson over Pritzker because he doesn't like Johnson.

>> Because nothing has been very clear and direct on some of the things that he said Pritzker.

I'm not particularly he's a billionaire.

You can say things a lot about people can't won't without concern about what the implication of that would be.

So as he comes into the mayor with these things, no different than when the mayor goes to Washington to talk sanctuary cities.

That just seems to be a target on Democratic cities.

And so he comes in to Democratic cities to push against, although that.

>> And there is also, you know.

Northwestern, for example, it's an Evanston.

It's not in Chicago and it's a private university.

So what's the mayor of Chicago supposed to do it?

The University of Chicago's here and to Paul, we saw the encampment that Chicago to shut down at the school of the Art Institute of Chicago.

So this some things, you know, might be under the mayor's jurisdiction through the police department in his response in that way.

But we've also seen that this isn't just at schools or colleges.

A lot of protests have, you know, been opposing people don't like them.

And so there that's not to say there haven't been incidents that are troubling, but that's that's sort of the crux of the issue Attorney General Pam Bondi is going after the Trump administration right up.

>> And that important to also point out as to near was saying, it's not that we've in action from the Johnson administration like we like mayor was saying, we've seen a lot of action through the Chicago Police Department in terms of resting.

I believe it was 68 students from rinse that were protesting at the Art Institute of Chicago.

And so it'll be interesting to see where the Department of Justice chooses to focus their energy on and whether whether or not that will be taken into account when doing all these interviews >> we can miss the fact that there's a continued well wanted to turn Gaza into resort resort.

So there's much push against.

Pro Palestinians and this becomes just another way to push against that throughout.

So we continue to see it.

This is just another way of doing use the leverage of the federal government continuously against cities that very much depend on the defense for the reasons that we had been talking about.

>> however we did have the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

>> Say that it is no longer going to expand a toxic dump that Woods near Calumet Park that it had been long been planning on doing.

What's being dumped Why did the Army Corps of Engineers reverse course?

So this is a project that environmental activists on the southeast side of in battling for years.

The Army Corps of Engineers is said that they need to.

>> Basically set up a new dumped for just a lot of toxic chemicals that are just dredged out of >> the at river, like you said, really important port of entry for a lot ships coming in through the Chicago area and even up through Canada and essentially what activists able to force the hands of they got the Illinois up and their side and file a lawsuit to stop this.

essentially the Army Corps of Engineers just with a white flag on this So do we know where this material is now going to go or what next steps are?

Doesn't?

>> Vanish?

>> you know, a court suggested other sites existing sites rather than dumping to one use it and I mean, like Mitch said, this is been a fight for a long time and the southeast side, especially it's sort of >> environmental activists environmental activism because there is so much environmental injustice you know, toxic waste put in that area and residents around there be >> And we continue.

This is around the country.

There are always these communities that are the poor communities in underserved communities where you find environmental issues because simply the people there don't have a voice.

And so these things happen because you don't hear back the people from the people who were there.

>> Which is where environmental advocates are very much claiming victory in another piece of relatively news for environmental activists, especially Chicago, is air pollution.

He's actually improved.

It seems we are the 7th worst air quality in the United States considering with the 3rd biggest city.

That's a guess.

Somewhat surprising.

What what has improved melody?

it's see yeah.

So it seems part of the warmer winters, so climate change is playing a part in to this.

>> Where because winters haven't been as cold as in the past that nobody is burning their wood fireplaces as much as not contributing to pollution in the air.

That was something that that was mentioned in the report.

And I thought that that was very interesting.

In addition to that, we don't have a giant wildfire that's coming down from Canada, which definitely affected Chicago's and air quality back in was at 2023.

Know 2020.

24 2. that's a time is a flat so that it's nice to see the the improvement there.

And I think that environmental activists are hoping to to to ramp this up so that maybe we won't be in the top but still higher levels of particulate matter and are deemed safe.

Unfortunately.

>> And now let's go need CPS data.

Some what, 700,000 current and former pupils.

>> Chicago public schools have had their data hacked and now it is in the hands of Russian hackers.

So what information are we looking at was CPS a target?

>> Yeah, it seems that this was the sort of deliberate attack trying to get data.

also seems that we can write the story the same story every few years.

This happens a lot.

Unfortunately, their hacks and and data breaches its EPS.

There wasn't any, you know, very sensitive personal information take.

And there is no Social Security numbers addresses anything like that.

The breach was mostly are Medicare and Medicaid information.

And so there's sort of nothing that hackers can do with that information.

Right now.

Family shouldn't, you know, be worried that they'll have identity theft or anything like that.

But that that information can then be used sort of phishing attack.

People can reach out and say, hey, we know you're this policy or you you want these services and we want like you owe us money.

Something like that to try to get people to cooperate and and still there money that way.

But be wary, be cautious it is quite a lot of people with 700,000 current and former students.

Yes, it is a lot of people.

In our note, Rufus.

>> We have a new push curfew for minors.

Atm is what second Ward Alderman Brian Hopkins is suggesting.

What prompted this latest push.

He has advocated for it before.

>> Shootings downtown when it gets warm outside, everybody comes out and unfortunately it leads to.

Gathering and acting out of acting out of turn and violence.

And so Brian Hawkins has been pushing for this for some time.

Every time something happens is the result is to do curfew.

The mayor looks at a holistic way in which we deal with children.

And so he thinks about how we can best going and give them all the other things that they need versus being heavy, handed him in position.

curfew.

So there are a number social service agencies that are doing a lot of work with young people.

But as we see this happen, it was the first time it happened.

It should not probably should not necessarily the knee reaction.

This isn't everyone go home and go inside.

Because one, there's no way to enforce but better.

It should be ways in which alternative found for children to do in militant.

You've done some reporting on this traction within the city councilor.

>> Does the fact that he's introduced before and it hasn't gained any momentum, a sign that it is not going to again, particularly after.

>> Lightfoot got a lot of pushback when the former mayor instituting earlier curfew.

>> Aldermen Hawkins is going to attempts to try to get his original ordinance out of the Rules Committee, which is where famously legislation goes to die.

It's the first time around when he when he had introduced it sent to rules right away.

I don't see a lot of support or at least a majority of support to be able to get this out of rules and get the ball rolling overall during Hawkins is planning to call a hearing next month on this exact issue.

But I think it's just going to be the same gridlock that we experienced around the same time last year.

>> Meanwhile, Mitt, you have been reporting on Ukrainians.

They're somewhat 40,000 or so that are living in Chicago.

And what are you hearing from them after now?

The Trump administration is talking about revoking their protected status.

There's huge concerns across the community.

He said almost a quarter million Ukrainians have come to the United States since the Russian invasion.

>> you almost 50,000 Ukrainians are living in Chicago.

>> On a temporary humanitarian parole status, which basically gives them a two-year sort of streamlined process to living in the United States legally.

This is system former President Joe Biden set up and current President Trump is now hinted that he might rescind these protections for Ukrainians.

So talking to folks Ukrainian village in on the northwest side where there's huge crane enclaves.

A lot of the concerns that we've heard from other immigrant communities across Chicago and the Latino community just about Immigrations Customs Enforcement agents knocking on their door and potentially taking away other folks who are concerned the credit community about potentially losing their legal status within a month of the president.

sending us that hasn't happened yet.

But everyone's kind of on full alert.

>> And with us, we only have about 15 seconds left.

But quickly, does it make any difference that Chicago is a sanctuary city in Illinois is a sanctuary state.

Does that help protect?

>> I think it does because then the authorities cannot go in and find them remove them.

So that's a good thing for the folks who are looking to stay, you know it.

We continue to come to these things and there's just a sense of is there's a lack of empathy that comes from from there.

They just really is no lack of empathy here with me cutting you off.

But we are out of time.

So I'm sorry to do that to I will give my appreciation, of course to Miss Williams as well as Mitchell Arman Trout.

>> Melody Mercado and Nader Issa.

We will, however, be back to wrap things up right after this.

>> Chicago tonight is made possible in part why the Alexander and John Nichols family.

The Pope Brothers Foundation, additional support is provided by.

>> And that is our show for this Friday night.

Check out our website for the latest from W T Tw News including whether the Chicago River is dyed job is getting this weekend is bad for fish.

That is that the W t Tw dot com slash news and now for the Week in review on the mend of any Thank you for watching.

Stay healthy and safe.

>> And have a good night.

Enjoy those Saint Patrick's Day festivities.

If you are going to partake Mitch, we have seen some long lines, folks getting their real ID's after a decade or so.

Finally, there is a real that fine.

>> What people need to know.

>> And even though that you probably don't need one unless you're trying to get on an airplane after May 7th.

But if you have a passport that works too.

So it's kind of possible unemployment But you don't have to kind of probably.

>> don't panic unless you don't have a passport, but you do need to get on a plane.

real briefly, Nader lets go to you that mayors get closet.

>> We finally done with the saga now that he is open.

>> Closed captioning is made possible by Robert a cliff and Clifford law offices, a Chicago personal injury and wrongful death.

And he's proud