Chicago’s deadly Juneteenth weekend leaves 7 dead as Trump shames Dem gov for inaction
The city of Chicago was rocked by a spate of shootings over the weekend, including a drive-by mass shooting on Juneteenth, leaving six dead and 39 injured in the Windy City. The shootings, which took place in a three day period between Friday evening and Sunday, prompted President Donald Trump to call on Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker to take action by requesting federal assistance. Chicago police reported that two dozen shooting incidents took place over the weekend, with victims who died ranging in age from 18 to 50, according to the Associated Press. On Friday night, two unidentified individuals fired into a crowd in Princeton Park on Chicago’s South Side, resulting in 12 people — eight males and four females — being hospitalized, according to the AP. That same night, a 29-year-old man named Mario Price was killed in a drive-by shooting in which he was shot in the body and face, according to Fox 32 Chicago. A 70-year-old man who was standing nearby was also shot in the leg but survived. Shootings continued on Saturday and Sunday, resulting in additional deaths and injuries. Besides these, on Thursday, a 14-year-old boy was shot multiple times, resulting in his death, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The outlet reported that the Midwest Hawks youth football team, of which the boy was a member, mourned his passing, saying in a statement that “there are no words that can ease the pain of a loss like this.” AG BLANCHE SLAMS PRITZKER FOR REFUSING HELP AS CHICAGO CRIME SURGES In response to the shootings, Trump shamed Pritzker for not taking action. “Lots of Killing going on in Chicago,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Why isn’t Governor Pritzker calling me for help. I could make Chicago a safe City in ONE MONTH, in ONE YEAR, it would be one of the safest!!!” The president pointed to his crime crackdown in the nation’s capital, writing, “D.C. went from one of the worst to one of the safest cities in the U.S.” Besides Washington, D.C., Trump has also deployed National Guard troops and federal authorities to Portland, Los Angeles and Memphis. After extensive legal challenges, Trump sent several hundred troops to the Chicago area late last year. However, the deployment remained tied up in court, and the troops were demobilized in January. TRUMP’S DC CRIME SUCCESS PUTS SPOTLIGHT ON CHICAGO’S DEADLY ‘WAR ZONE’ Pritzker, one of the country’s most prominent Democrats and a rumored 2028 presidential frontrunner, has repeatedly declined Trump’s offers to send the National Guard and federal authorities to crack down on crime in Chicago. In a news conference last year, Pritzker stated emphatically, “Mr. President, do not come to Chicago,” adding, “You are neither wanted here nor needed here.” Pritzker said, “If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is — a dangerous power grab.” ILLINOIS DEMOCRAT LEADERS BLAST TRUMP PUSH TO SEND NATIONAL GUARD TO CHICAGO In October, Pritzker mocked the notion that Chicago was undergoing a surge in violence during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show. Dressed in a Kevlar vest and standing in downtown Chicago, the governor quipped, “This is JB Pritzker, reporting from war-torn Chicago. As you can see, there’s utter mayhem and chaos on the ground. It’s quite disturbing.” “We’ve seen people being forced to eat hot dogs with ketchup on them, and our deep dish pizza, well, has gone shallow. So, it’s a challenge to survive here in the city of Chicago, but there’s no hellscape that I’d rather be in,” said Pritzker. Fox News Digital reached out to Pritzker for comment.
Chicago resident living in shadows of Obama Presidential Center reveal chaos caused by years-long construction
CHICAGO – A man who has lived on Chicago’s South Side for 18 years and now lives in the shadow of the newly opened Barack Obama Presidential Center described to Fox News Digital the havoc he says the years-long construction project wreaked on his housing complex. Akoma Amanze is a local cab driver who lives in Jackson Park Terrace, a low-income housing community directly across the street from the 19.3 acre campus dedicated to the 44th president. Over the weekend, while thousands of people from across the country — celebrities and ordinary folks alike — swarmed the area to visit Obama’s new campus that features a museum, library, gardens and recreational activities, Amanze and other residents took in the spectacle. But Amanze told Fox News Digital the buzz across the street was nothing new. While he made it very clear that he supports Obama, and described living at Jackson Park Terrace as a “very good experience,” Amanze and others in his complex dealt with massive headaches caused by the construction. OBAMA CENTER EMBEDS ‘INDIGENOUS’ LAND MESSAGE ON CONTROVERSIAL SITE He described the construction process, which began in 2021, as “sometimes very, very disturbing.” SUBCONTRACTORS SAY THEY’RE OWED MILLIONS, FACE FINANCIAL RUIN, AFTER HELPING BUILD OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL CENTER “He’s my man, and I’m excited that this site is here” said Amanze, referring to Obama, “but as a resident, there has been a lot of things [that] have stopped us here.” “On two occasions, my apartment flooded while they were digging the lower level of that project,” he said. “Two times. And I had to deal with the ramifications of that twice. Those ramifications were that all my apartment was flooded, and I had to throw away everything on the floor. Boxes, papers, clothes, I had to throw them away.” BUREAUCRATS HIDE TRUE PRICE OF OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL CENTER AS TAXPAYERS HIT WITH INFRASTRUCTURE BILL He said he had to suck the water out of his home himself, and then clean the entire mess up himself. Despite the destruction, according to Amanze, neither the complex’s management nor representatives from the Obama Center offered to help deal with the fallout, financially or otherwise. Then there was the reverberation from the digging, he said. “Sometimes, you stay in bed or in the apartment, [and] the digging — sometimes when they were digging deep— [it] would be shaking your bed,” he said. “I had that experience all through the construction.” OBAMA’S LEGACY PROJECT OFFERS LITTLE HOPE FOR CHICAGO’S SOUTH SIDE RESIDENTS Across the street used to be a community park where Amanze said he “more or less raised all [his] children.” “In fact, my last child, that is 14 today, there used to be a favorite swing on that park where I took him every time he starts crying or he starts showing signs of stress,” Amanze said. “I take him there, and I put him on that swing, and I swing him up and down, and then he will fall asleep, and then I bring him back home.” The park is gone now, but Amanze is not bitter. “When things are happening that you do not have the power to stop, you just have to learn to live with it,” he said. “I just learned to live with it. I’m not upset. I’m excited that my brother Obama was able to establish something this big in my neighborhood. At least in my mind, I’m a part of the history.”
Pence says Iran agreement ‘smacks of the kind of appeasement’ Trump rejected in prior term
Former Vice President Mike Pence said that the Iran Memorandum of Understanding President Donald Trump signed last week “smacks of the kind of appeasement” Trump rejected in his first White House term. “The president deserves tremendous credit for taking the fight directly to Tehran, and every American should welcome the prospect of peace. No one wants another prolonged war in the Middle East, despite the flippant accusations from isolationists on the populist right,” Pence asserted in a Wall Street Journal piece. Pence, however, characterized the agreement as nothing more than “a plan to make a plan.” TRUMP’S IRAN GAMBLE DIVIDES GOP HAWKS AND ‘AMERICA FIRST’ CONSERVATIVES OVER WHAT VICTORY LOOKS LIKE “But the memorandum of understanding with Iran signed last week falls well short of what is required to end the Iranian threat. It smacks of the kind of appeasement the president rightly rejected during our first term. It isn’t the deal a defeated Iran should be getting. It isn’t even a deal—it’s a plan to make a plan,” he asserted. “Maximum pressure worked. America’s military strength worked. The blockade worked. Iran came to the table because the regime’s existence teetered on a knife’s edge,” Pence wrote. VANCE, IRANIAN OFFICIALS END FIRST ROUND OF TALKS IN SWITZERLAND, MOVE TO NEXT PHASE “This 60-day period should be used to secure what this agreement doesn’t yet provide: an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, an end to Iranian-backed terror, and an end to its half-century of warfare against the U.S. and Israel. If those reasonable goals cannot be achieved, Mr. Trump should let the armed forces finish the job,” Pence wrote. ISRAELI AMBASSADOR WARNS IRAN’S GRIP ON LEBANON IS A ‘WARNING SIGN’ FOR MIDDLE EAST PEACE Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment.
Obama Center isn’t a traditional presidential library. Critics say it’s an activism center.
Don’t call it a library. The $1 billion Obama Presidential Center opened with huge fanfare last week in a park near the shore of Lake Michigan, but critics say what the public thinks is a library will function as the headquarters of Barack Obama’s private foundation, promoting the 44th president’s left-wing worldview to future generations. While every other modern presidential library houses that former commander-in-chief’s papers for public viewing, the Obama Presidential Center has no such component. Instead, Obama’s presidential records are being stored elsewhere, though digital versions may one day be available there. SUBCONTRACTORS SAY THEY’RE OWED MILLIONS, FACE FINANCIAL RUIN, AFTER HELPING BUILD OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL CENTER At its core, the center serves two purposes: a museum dedicated to Obama’s presidency and the headquarters of the Obama Foundation, Obama’s private nonprofit organization. The sprawling 19.3-acre campus will host various leadership programs, while spaces there include a “Democracy in Action Lab,” conference facilities, foundation offices and a major athletic complex designed for youth sports and community programs — features not typically associated with a presidential library. Signs reading “Bring Change Home” and “A Home For Action” surround the perimeter of the campus. The messaging mirrors how the Obama Foundation has described the center in its annual reports — not as a traditional presidential library, but as a “campus” and “living institution.” “We are building more than a campus. We are creating a living institution that will inspire, empower, and connect the next generation of leaders,” the foundation’s 2024 annual report reads. The center, which as of 2021 had cost well over $800 million and is believed to have eclipsed the $1 billion mark, is a departure from presidential libraries, in both scale and purpose. “Usually, these libraries are a monument to a presidency and the presidency is in the past, it’s in the rear-view mirror,” Tevi Troy, a presidential historian and former George W. Bush administration aide, told Fox News Digital. “It looks like Obama wants to use it as some kind of activism center, something that continues to promote his ideas and his political views.” Troy said the direction did not surprise him. “Obama was a community organizer. He’s an activist. That’s how he came up, and it doesn’t surprise me that he wants to go in this direction,” Troy said. Obama himself offered a glimpse into how he views the center’s mission during Thursday’s opening ceremony. “We designed the center not to be some lifeless mausoleum,” Obama said, while highlighting Obama Foundation leaders from around the world. Among them was a Polish human-rights lawyer behind more than 30 lawsuits involving refugees, climate policy, LGBTQ rights and anti-discrimination litigation. “This center is devoted to lifting up their stories, giving them the tools and support they need to expand their impact,” Obama said. Obama later underscored that mission in his speech. “While we are non-partisan, we are not value-neutral. We have a point of view,” he said OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL CENTER WANTS 100 UNPAID VOLUNTEERS AS VALERIE JARRETT EARNS $740K Critics say Thursday’s ceremony confirmed what they feared all along: The center seems designed not just to preserve Obama’s presidency, but to carry his vision into the future. The center’s opening has reignited debate over whether the project evolved far beyond the traditional presidential library model for which many Chicagoans originally believed they were handing over their historic parkland. The public land fight The distinction matters because the center occupies roughly 19 acres of Jackson Park — Chicago’s equivalent of New York’s Central Park — under a controversial 99-year agreement city leaders approved for a one-time $10 payment. Opponents argue that transferring public parkland to a private foundation violated the public trust doctrine, a legal principle intended to preserve public assets for the public benefit. Those challenges were ultimately unsuccessful in court, although critics note that the central public trust arguments were never fully tested on the merits. “When we were defeated, we weren’t told that we were wrong on the merits,” Richard Epstein, a New York University law professor and one of the nation’s foremost experts on the public trust doctrine, who represented the local Protect Out Parks group. “We were told that we had no right to bring the complaint at all.” The Chicago City Council approved the deal with Obama, but Epstein said lawmakers were not free to simply set aside the public trust doctrine. “The public trust doctrine is meant to be a restraint on the legislature,” Epstein told Fox News Digital. “This has been an epic frustration.” Epstein said his concerns extend beyond the use of public land. Courts never fully examined whether the foundation had sufficient financial safeguards in place before receiving control of the site, including a long-promised $470 million reserve fund intended to shield taxpayers from future liabilities, Epstein said. A Fox News Digital investigation found that just $1 million has been deposited into the fund. Epstein warned that handing over public land without fully vetting the foundation’s finances could expose taxpayers to future risks if the center encounters financial trouble down the road. WATCH: NYU law professor Richard Epstein says courts never ruled on key Obama Center claims Those concerns resurfaced after a Fox News Digital investigation found minority-owned and local subcontractors who worked on the center say they were stiffed for millions of dollars. Critics also point out that the public land transfer was only part of the taxpayer contribution. Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars were spent on surrounding road, utility and transportation improvements tied to the project. Supporters say those upgrades modernized the area, but opponents argue they were done to serve a privately run institution. Bait and switch? Bob Grogan, chairman of the Illinois Republican Party, said the project was initially promoted as a presidential library to win public support and secure the land, but then morphed into something very different. “This isn’t a presidential library. It’s a Democratic headquarters on the South Side,” Grogan told Fox News Digital outside the facility. Grogan described the shift as
Ex-Dem insider reveals she will expose Democrats who covered up Biden’s cognitive decline in new book
Lindy Li, a former Democratic fundraiser who switched party affiliation over unheeded warning signs about President Joe Biden’s decline in the 2024 election, is revealing new details about the red flags the party blew by. “Whatever was out there, it wasn’t the truth. They wanted him to go, and also in my book, I will be telling people exactly who was aware of Biden’s cognitive decline but pretended otherwise,” Li told Fox News Digital during a phone interview. Li, who is publishing a new book titled “Unburdened” later this year, adds to the picture of the internal discussions, the research, and the panic behind the scenes of the Democratic Party, indicating that Biden enjoyed only shaky support even among his own camp long before he ultimately dropped out of the 2024 election. Above all, Li said she was shocked by some of the party’s leading figures who expressed reservations behind the scenes about Biden’s decline, but remained staunch defenders of the president in public. BIDEN’S INNER CIRCLE LIVED IN ‘STUNNING’ DENIAL ABOUT HIS DECLINE, SAYS AUTHOR WHO INTERVIEWED TOP AIDE “I remember getting a text from Schiff,” Li said, referring to Adam Schiff, D-Calif., then a Democratic candidate for Senate and top Democrat in the House of Representatives. “I have it in my book. Basically, Adam Schiff was — I can’t remember what he said on TV, but I’m telling you right now that behind the scenes he very much wanted [Biden] to go.” A spokesperson for Schiff responded to Li’s claims, noting that the Senator had made his doubts about Biden known publicly after a 2024 debate where the president stumbled over his words, lost his train of thought and spoke in a whispery voice that, at times, was difficult to understand. He eventually called for Biden to step aside that July “The Senator’s concerns and call on President Biden to not run was very public, so none of this is news,” the spokesperson said. But even beyond Schiff, Li, who ran a formidable fundraising operation for the party and was connected with a wide swath of its figures, said that many figures who were hesitant about Biden’s cognitive abilities were afraid of putting themselves in the path of his political momentum. BIDEN AIDES WARNED DONORS DROPPING OUT AND RUNNING KAMALA HARRIS WOULD BE A MISTAKE: BOOK “They didn’t want to get ostracized by the party. It’s like the axiom: you come at the king; you better not miss. Everyone would have missed,” Li said. Li said that fear was bolstered by internal research the party had done, indicating that no one else in the party had the capital to challenge Biden. “There are many candidates who polled themselves against Biden and then realized that they couldn’t beat him in a primary. It wasn’t a matter so much of anti-Trumpism. It was self-interest,” Li said. “I’ve seen the polling data, and I also include that in my book — polling no one has seen before.” Li said that internal discussion had also revealed that Harris wasn’t considered a particularly strong candidate to take on Biden’s mantle. “She was the weakest candidate in the field,” Li said. “I also have polling data right before Kamala ascended. We stacked her against Buttigieg, Newsom, Shapiro, Whitmer — all of them,” Li said, referring to a handful of other key figures in the Democratic Party. Along with fears about going after Biden and coming up short, Li said she believes the Bidens — particularly Joe Biden — inspired a sense of loyalty in the people around him that was hard to shake. MORNING GLORY: JUST HOW BAD WERE THE BIDEN AND HARRIS CAMPAIGNS? “He had decades of loyalty — his bond with people like James Clyburn,” Li explained, referring to the chief Biden ally who had helped steer the party for decades. “There’s something about Joe Biden. He was incredibly kind,” Li said.
Japanese fans clean up stands after celebrating World Cup win
NewsFeed Many Japanese fans stayed behind after celebrating their 4-0 victory over Tunisia, by collecting rubbish from the stands. The practice is known in Japan as gomi hiroi, which emphasises on taking responsibility for shared spaces. Published On 22 Jun 202622 Jun 2026 Click here to share on social media share-nodes Share googleAdd Al Jazeera on Googleinfo Adblock test (Why?)
Colombia’s De La Espriella claims victory on preliminary results
NewsFeed Right-wing candidate Abelardo de la Espriella has claimed victory in Colombia’s presidential election after securing a narrow lead over left-wing rival Iván Cepeda in preliminary results. Supporters celebrated in the streets of Barranquilla, as Cepeda said his campaign is challenging results from some 33,000 ballot boxes. Published On 22 Jun 202622 Jun 2026 Click here to share on social media share-nodes Share googleAdd Al Jazeera on Googleinfo Adblock test (Why?)
Crimea halts fuel sales after Ukraine strikes cause shortages
NewsFeed Gas sales in Russian-controlled Crimea have halted after Ukrainian drone strikes on the peninsula’s supply route. Drivers are now looking for other modes of transport. Published On 22 Jun 202622 Jun 2026 Click here to share on social media share-nodes Share googleAdd Al Jazeera on Googleinfo Adblock test (Why?)
‘A truly global celebration’: PM Modi marks 12th International Day of Yoga
The 12th edition of the International Day of Yoga was celebrated across the country and around the world on Sunday (June 21) under the theme ‘Yoga for Healthy Ageing’, highlighting the role of yoga in promoting healthy and active living across all stages of life.
Has Uddhav Thackeray lost 6 MPs? Eknath Shinde camp claims ‘Operation Tiger’ success, merger likely set today
6 of Uddhav Thackeray’s 9 UBT Lok Sabha MPs are set to join the Shinde-led Shiv Sena at 3 pm today, according to reports. UBT holds an emergency MLA-MLC meet at 2.30 pm.