Mayor runoff begins with mutual attacks – Chicago Tribune newstrendslive

Good morning, Chicago.

This didn’t take long. Chicago’s mayoral runoff campaign has officially begun, with finalist Brandon Johnson the first to go on the offensive against Paul Vallas as the rivals shared starkly differing visions for the city’s future.

Read the full story from the Tribune’s Gregory Pratt and Alice Yin.

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A nominee of Republican President Donald Trump, John Lausch was originally asked by the incoming Biden administration to step down from his post in 2021 along with other Trump holdovers.

But Lausch was allowed to stay on the job after an unusual push from Dick Dubin and Tammy Duckworth, who extolled Lausch as a corruption buster who needed to see through investigations of some of the state’s most powerful politicians.

Adorned with its distinctive floor-to-ceiling Mexican flag, the shopping center is located in the plaza next to the emblematic Little Village arch — the icon of the Mexican community in Chicago, also known as the Mexico of the Midwest — and for the past 30 years has been a cultural centerpiece for the neighborhood.

Beyond items in an old building, there are dozens of stories of resiliency and love that have led immigrant families to establish businesses there — for many, it’s their only livelihood. However, as the immigrant community has grown older, and the younger generation takes root, the slow but steady gentrification of the neighborhood has been inevitable.

TV personality Geoffrey Baer is a typically ebullient tour guide in his latest jaunt, “The Most Beautiful Places in Chicago,” premiering this month on WTTW-Ch. 11, writes Rick Kogan.

It is handsomely produced and unsurprisingly boosterish, like most all of his previous two dozen-some shows, which had trips on the Chicago River (first in 1995), to the lakefront (2008), the Loop (2011) and most recently on the “L” (2020).

This is a story of excitement, of hope, of grand dreams. This is a story of one city’s thirst to have its forever quarterback in place and the monumental challenges to make that a reality. This is a story about greatness versus weakness, about possibility versus probability, about speculation and forecasting.

This is the book on Chicago Bears quarterback Justin Fields and his quest to become the no-doubt savior for one of the NFL’s charter franchises.

The original “Perry Mason” TV series starring Raymond Burr premiered in 1957 and ran for nearly a decade. As courtroom dramas go, it’s an early classic that put a criminal defense attorney center stage.

We haven’t seen much of that lately; cops and prosecutors predominate at the moment. So when HBO revived “Perry Mason” with Matthew Rhys (“The Americans”) in the title role, critic Nina Metz was curious.