6th Annual Chicago Ideas Week

Chicago is playing host to some of the brightest thinkers, innovators, and world changers during the 6th Annual Chicago Ideas Week.

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  • Ted Cruz ‘traitor’ billboards go up in his Texas neighbourhood

    Activist group says Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley ‘deserve most blame for firing up violent mob of Trump supporters that attacked US Capitol and killed five people’

  • QAnon predicted Trump’s re-inauguration on 4 March. Congress braced for an assault. Neither happened

    Two months after Capitol attack, embittered conspiracy cult holds out for last-ditch effort to revive former president – but law enforcement warns that the insurrection was not an isolated event

  • ‘I collided with the establishment’: Inside the Wallis and Edward TV interview that rocked the monarchy five decades before Meghan and Harry

    Harry and Meghan’s upcoming Oprah interview recalls the last time two royal exiles agreed to a televised sit down with the BBC in 1970

  • Biden secretly limits drone strikes, amid congressional scrutiny over war powers

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  • DCF employee and her husband charged with sexually battering a 13-year-old girl, cops say

    A Department of Children and Families employee and her husband are accused of repeatedly sexually battering a 13-year-old girl over a period of 10 months, according to the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office.

  • ‘Always up for a fight’: Mike Pompeo refuses to rule out presidential run on Hannity

    ‘I’m always up for a good fight,’ says Trump ally

  • Disney World guests with COVID rage spit and yell at resort staff trying to enforce safety guidelines, report says

    Employees of Orlando's Walt Disney World Resort told the Orlando Sentinel about the harassment workers face when trying to enforce mask-wearing.

  • FBI Finds Contact Between Proud Boys Member and Trump Associate Before Riot

    WASHINGTON — A member of the far-right nationalist Proud Boys was in communication with a person associated with the White House in the days just before the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation. Location, cellular and call record data revealed a call tying a Proud Boys member to the Trump White House, the official said. The FBI has not determined what they discussed, and the official would not reveal the names of either party. The connection revealed by the communications data comes as the FBI intensifies its investigation of contacts among far-right extremists, Trump White House associates and conservative members of Congress in the days before the attack. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times The same data has revealed no evidence of communications between the rioters and members of Congress during the deadly attack, the official said. That undercuts Democratic allegations that some Republican lawmakers were active participants that day. Separately, Enrique Tarrio, a leader of the far-right nationalist Proud Boys, told The New York Times on Friday that he called Roger Stone, a close associate of former President Donald Trump’s, while at a protest in front of the home of Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. During the protest, which occurred in the days before the Capitol assault, he put Stone on speaker phone to address the gathering. A law enforcement official said that it was not Tarrio’s communication with Stone that was being scrutinized, and that the call made in front of Rubio’s home was a different matter. That two members of the group were in communication with people associated with the White House underscores the access that violent extremist groups like the Proud Boys had to the White House and to people close to the former president. Stone denied “any involvement or knowledge of the attack on the Capitol” in a statement last month to the Times. Tarrio was arrested in Washington on Jan. 4 on charges of destruction of property for his role in the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner that had been torn from a historic Black church during a protest in Washington in December. He was asked to leave the city, and was not present when the Capitol was attacked. His case is pending. The Justice Department has charged more than a dozen members of the Proud Boys with crimes related to the attack, including conspiracy to obstruct the final certification of President Joe Biden’s electoral victory and to attack law enforcement officers. In court papers, federal prosecutors have said groups of Proud Boys also coordinated travel to Washington and shared lodging near the city, with the intent of disrupting Congress and advancing Trump’s efforts to unlawfully maintain his grip on the presidency. The communication between the person associated with the White House and the member of the Proud Boys was discovered in part through data that the FBI obtained from technology and telecommunications companies immediately after the assault. Court documents show FBI warrants for a list of all the phones associated with the cell towers serving the Capitol, and that it received information from the major cellphone carriers on the numbers called by everyone on the Capitol’s cell towers during the riot, three officials familiar with the investigation said. The FBI also obtained a “geofence” warrant for all the Android devices that Google recorded within the building during the assault, the officials said. A geofence warrant legally gives law enforcement a list of mobile devices that are able to be identified in a particular geographic area. Jill Sanborn, the head of counterterrorism at the FBI, testified before a Senate panel Wednesday that all the data the FBI had gathered in its investigation into the riot was obtained legally through subpoenas and search warrants. Although investigators have found no contact between the rioters and members of Congress during the attack, those records have shown evidence in the days leading up to Jan. 6 of communications between far-right extremists and lawmakers who were planning to appear at the rally featuring Trump that occurred just before the assault, according to one of the officials. The Justice Department is examining those communications, but it has not opened investigations into any members, the official said. A department spokesperson declined to comment. The FBI did, however, say Thursday that it had arrested a former State Department aide on charges related to the attack, including unlawful entry, violent and disorderly conduct, obstructing Congress and law enforcement, and assaulting an officer with a dangerous weapon. The former midlevel aide, Federico Klein, who was seen in videos assaulting officers with a stolen riot shield, was the first member of the Trump administration to face criminal charges in connection with the storming of the Capitol. His lawyer declined to comment Friday. Right-wing extremists, including members of the Oath Keepers, a militia group that mainly comprises former law enforcement and military personnel, have been working as security guards for Republicans and for Trump’s allies, such as Stone. Stone, who was pardoned by Trump after refusing to cooperate with the investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian intelligence, has known Tarrio for some time and used Oath Keepers as bodyguards before and on the day of the assault on the Capitol. The Justice Department is looking into communications between Stone and far-right extremists to determine whether he played any role in plans by extremists to disrupt the certification on Jan. 6, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak about the investigation. Should investigators find messages showing that Stone had any connection to such plans, they would have a factual basis to open a full criminal investigation into him, the people said. Stone said last month that he was “provided voluntary security by the Oath Keepers,” but noted that their security work did not constitute evidence that he was involved in, or informed about, plans to attack Congress. He reiterated an earlier statement that anyone involved in the attack should be prosecuted. The Justice Department has charged more than 300 people with crimes stemming from the Jan. 6 assault. It has used evidence gathered in its broad search for assailants — including information from cellular providers and technology companies — to help piece together evidence of more sophisticated crimes, like conspiracy. It is also looking at possible charges of seditious conspiracy, according to two people familiar with the investigation. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company

  • The Wall Street Journal ridicules Trump in public feud after the paper questioned his usefulness to the Republican Party

    Wall Street Journal's editorial board suggests Trump needs therapy to get over his election failure, following a broadside from the former president.

  • Biden news: Senate at stimulus standstill as CDC ends Covid safeguard for shelters in migrant ‘tsunami’

    Follow live updates on the latest in US politics

  • Miley Cyrus said playing her alter ego Hannah Montana on her hit Disney show led to an 'identity crisis'

    Miley Cyrus appeared on the "Rock This with Allison Hagendorf" podcast on Friday and spoke about her hit TV show where she starred as Hannah Montana.

  • Inaugural poet Amanda Gorman said a security guard followed her and told her she 'looked suspicious' when entering her own building

    "This is the reality of black girls: One day you're called an icon, the next day, a threat," Gorman said in a tweet about the incident.

  • Cuomo skipped sexual harassment training - that he himself mandated - by having a staffer complete it for him, accuser says

    When asked by a reporter Wednesday if he had taken the sexual harassment training, Cuomo said, "Short answer is yes."

  • Nicolas Cage just got married for the fifth time

    Nicolas Cage, 57, tied the knot with Riko Shibata, 26, in Las Vegas on February 16.

  • A handful of QAnon followers flew all the way from California to DC in hopes of watching Trump's March 4 'inauguration'

    March 4 had become a highly anticipated date for followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory, who believed it was the day Trump would return to power.

  • Cellphone records tie Proud Boys member to someone in Trump White House, NYT reports

    An anonymous source who is familiar with an FBI cellphone data report says there was communication between the two.

  • A day after forcing marathon bill reading, Johnson says 'preference' to leave Senate

    The day after he single-handedly delayed the U.S. Senate's debate on President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill for 11 hours, Republican Senator Ron Johnson said on Friday that he could retire from office when his term expires. The 65-year-old Republican, who was first elected to the Senate during the Tea Party surge in 2010, had pledged to spend only two terms in the Senate.

  • A teenage girl wearing 'Everything will be OK' T-shirt was shot in the head on Myanmar's bloodiest day of protests yet

    Nineteen-year-old Kyal Sin had proudly cast her first vote last year in the very elections Myanmar's military has tried to annul with its ongoing coup.

  • After a TikToker found a secret apartment behind her mirror, another person with the same bathroom started posting

    TikTok user @schmidtyballs posted a video reacting to Samantha Hartsoe's viral mirror apartment TikTok, saying they have the same bathroom.

  • NASA's Perseverance rover just went for its first drive on Mars, then spotted its own wheel tracks in the dirt

    Perseverance's six-wheel drive leaves quite an imprint in its path. Those wheels are ready to carry the rover over an ancient river delta.