Racial evolution of the Chicago City Council
After decades of so-called "plantation wards" occupied by non-white residents but led by white alders, today's Chicago City Council nearly matches the racial makeup of the city's population, thanks to a transformational 2023 election.
Why it matters: Equitable racial representation in government can help drive equitable policies and outcomes.
But diversity efforts are facing federal pushback, including an investigation launched this week into Mayor Brandon Johnson for allegedly favoring Black hires on his staff.
The big picture: For decades, white alders held disproportionate power on the council, but today they hold 28% of council seats, lagging behind their 32% of the 2024 population.
Black representation has flipped from 30% of council seats in the 1980s (when Black residents were 40% of the city) to 40% today, while the Black population is 28% of the city.
"Well, finally," says Black freshman Ald. William Hall (6th).
"How many years did it take to get here and to get the first Black female finance [committee] chair and general counsel? I think that what we're doing is catching up. It's inspirational when you see people who look like you leading and serving and working."
Latino representation grew from a single alder in 1983 to 14 today, or 28% of the council, nearly matching the city's 29% Latino population.
Many Latino alders, including Latino Caucus chair Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th), represent racially mixed wards, creating a need to balance a variety of priorities.
"I think [ethnic] representation is very important," Vasquez tells Axios. "But what's more important is that we're in touch with the constituents in our communities and we really listen."
Asian representation hit its highest point (4%) in 2023 after Nicole Lee (11th) and Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth (48th) won seats representing Chinatown and Edgewater/Uptown. Still, it remains behind the city's 7% Asian population.
"I just think it's important to bring our perspectives to the table," Filipino American Manaa-Hoppenworth tells Axios. "We bring the perspective of immigrants seeking better lives, and we know that to build strong communities, you need to bring empathy and collaboration, so I'm proud to be here in the city council doing that."
Between the lines: Some of the biggest power struggles on the council have shifted from Black and white issues to skirmishes between the Black and Latino caucuses.
Ald. Maria Hadden (49th) called the intense 2022 ward remap battle for representation"probably the most racialized thing I've ever been a part of."
Yes, but: Some alders say race is playing a shrinking role in voter choice as Black alders lead at least four plurality white wards.
"I think people are now voting based on the quality of the service that you give them, not your ethnicity," Black Ald. Walter Burnett (27th), who represents the plurality white 27th Ward, tells Axios.
"Maybe we're starting to get into Dr. Martin Luther King's dream when people are judged not based on their race."
Reality check: Council power hasn't yet translated to economic power. A new Urban League analysis suggests the median net worth of a Black Chicago family is $0 compared to $210,000 for white families.
This is one of the reasons Hadden believes the Black caucus, for all its diverse views, remains important.
"A lot of our efforts are really based on equity and parity, whether it's in contracting or the distribution of grants or economic development," she said. "And so that's still very important to me as a black Chicagoan, and it's important to my community."
What's next: Former council member Dick Simpson says he's not surprised to see council representation lag behind population changes as alders use "gerrymandering to protect political bases."
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UPI
23 minutes ago
- UPI
Thailand, Cambodia continue fighting despite cease-fire pledges
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Miami Herald
4 hours ago
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A clash over a promotion puts Hegseth at odds with his generals
WASHINGTON - In the spring, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth decided not to promote a senior Army officer who had led troops over five tours in Afghanistan and Iraq because Hegseth suspected, without evidence, that the officer had leaked sensitive information to the news media, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. When Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Sims II was cleared of the allegations, Hegseth briefly agreed to promote him, only to change course again early this month, the officials said. This time, Hegseth maintained that the senior officer was too close to Gen. Mark Milley, a former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff whom President Donald Trump has accused of disloyalty. Hegseth's sudden reversal prompted a rare intervention from Gen. Dan Caine, the current chair of the Joint Chiefs. He urged Hegseth to reconsider, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Hegseth met with Sims one final time but refused to budge. Sims is expected to retire in the coming months after 34 years in the military, officials said. Through a spokesperson, Sims and Caine declined to comment. A Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment on Hegseth's role. The standoff over his promotion reflects an ongoing clash between Hegseth's highly partisan worldview, in which he has written that the Democratic Party 'really does hate America,' and the long-standing tradition of an apolitical military that pledges an oath to the Constitution. Hegseth's actions could shape the military's top ranks for years to come. His insistence on absolute loyalty, backed with repeated threats of polygraphs, also creates uncertainty and mistrust that threaten to undermine the readiness and effectiveness of the force, officials said. The tension between top military officers and their civilian leaders has been persistent since the earliest days of Trump's second term, when senior administration officials ordered the removal of Milley's portrait from a Pentagon hallway. Caine, who pressed Hegseth on Sims' behalf, got the job of Joint Chiefs chair after Hegseth and Trump fired Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., his predecessor. Hegseth accused Brown, who is Black, of prioritizing diversity over the combat effectiveness of the force. Also removed during the first months of the new administration were the first woman to command the Navy, Adm. Lisa Franchetti; the first woman to command the Coast Guard, Adm. Linda Fagan; Hegseth's senior military assistant, Lt. Gen. Jennifer Short; and the U.S. military representative to the NATO military committee, Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield. All were dismissed as part of a campaign to root out diversity, equity and inclusion from the military and restore what Hegseth has described as a 'warrior ethos.' Hegseth also recently withdrew the nomination of Rear Adm. Michael 'Buzz' Donnelly to lead the Navy's 7th Fleet in Japan -- its largest overseas force -- amid reports in conservative media that seven years earlier the admiral had allowed a drag performance to take place on the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan. The decision not to promote Sims, who is white, seems unrelated to any issues of race or gender. Rather, the general's career seems to have become tangled up in broader suspicions about leaks and a mistrust of senior military officers that have defined much of Hegseth's first six months on the job. Hegseth, a former Fox News host and an Iraq War veteran, came to the Pentagon with little managerial experience. Since his arrival, a series of firings and resignations in his inner circle have left him with only a skeleton staff of civilian aides to run his office. He has been without a permanent chief of staff since late April. Ricky Buria, a recently retired Marine colonel who has forged a close relationship with Hegseth, has been serving in the critical role. But White House officials, who have concerns about Buria's competence and qualifications, have blocked Hegseth from formally appointing him to the job, officials said. Buria, meanwhile, has clashed repeatedly with many of Hegseth's closest aides and some officers in the Pentagon. This spring, Eric Geressy, a retired sergeant major who served with Hegseth in Iraq and now advises him in the Pentagon, threatened to quit after an argument with Buria, according to people with knowledge of the situation. Around the same time, the White House directed Hegseth to cease using polygraph tests on his team, after one of his senior aides complained, a former Pentagon official said. The rift and the decision to stop the polygraph testing were reported earlier by The Washington Post. Geressy briefly went to his home in Florida before Hegseth persuaded him to return, officials said. Hegseth is also still contending with a review by the Pentagon's inspector general related to his disclosure on the Signal messaging app of the precise timing of U.S. fighter jets' airstrikes against the Iranian-backed Houthi militia in Yemen in March. The office has received evidence that the information that Hegseth put in the commercial chat app came from a classified Central Command document, according to two U.S. officials with knowledge of the review. The classified origins of the information were reported earlier by the Post. The infighting, investigations and personnel churn have strained Hegseth's ability to manage critical operations in the Pentagon. Hegseth found himself in the crosshairs this month after Democrats and Republicans in Congress blamed him for pausing critical shipments of interceptors and other arms to Ukraine without sufficiently consulting with the White House or the State Department. The suspension was particularly jarring because just days earlier Trump had said he was open to selling more weapons to Ukraine after meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in The Hague. It also left the impression that Hegseth and his top aides had failed to keep the president and senior White House officials in the loop. As aides to Hegseth traded blame, and then tried to play down the impact of the pause, Trump dramatically overruled the Pentagon, saying he was unhappy with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. 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The photo ops -- known inside the Pentagon as 'troop touches' -- are a central part of almost all his public appearances, current and former aides said. Several officials have complained that the photos and videos -- including one that he posted from Omaha Beach in Normandy in which he joins Army Rangers carrying a soldier on a stretcher as part of D-Day remembrances -- are distractions that serve primarily to bolster his image. Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, said that Hegseth retained Trump's 'full confidence' and cited the 'critical role' he played 'in ensuring the flawless execution' of the strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in June. Current and former military officials said that Trump largely bypassed Hegseth in the days leading up to the strikes and instead relied on Caine and Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, the head of Central Command, for counsel. 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In the wake of their dismissal and a series of negative stories about Hegseth's performance in the job, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, offered a window into how Hegseth views the department he now runs. 'This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change you are trying to implement,' she said. That same spirit seems to animate the Pentagon today. Only a few months ago, Sims' promotion to four stars seemed to be a given. Of the last 21 officers to hold his current position, 19 were promoted to four-star rank. 'He's the type of person you would want your kids serving under -- extremely dedicated, selfless and loyal,' said Brynt Parmeter, who stepped down in June as the Pentagon's chief talent management officer and has known Sims for more than three decades. The Pentagon gave a more muted assessment. In a statement, Sean Parnell, the Pentagon's chief spokesperson, thanked Sims for his 'decades of service.' 'We wish him well in his future endeavors,' Parnell wrote. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Copyright 2025
Axios
10 hours ago
- Axios
AI's global race in the dark
The U.S.'s great AI race with China, now freshly embraced by President Trump, is a competition in the dark with no clear prize or finish line. Why it matters: Similar "races" of the past — like the nuclear arms race and the space race — have sparked innovation, but victories haven't lasted long or meant much. The big picture: Both Silicon Valley and the U.S. government now agree that we must invest untold billions to build supporting infrastructure for an error-prone, energy-hungry technology with an unproven business model and an unpredictable impact on the economy and jobs. What they're saying:"America is the country that started the AI race. And as president of the United States, I'm here today to declare that America is going to win it," Trump said at a Wednesday event titled "Winning the AI Race." Policy experts and industry leaders who promote the "race" idea argue that the U.S. and China are in a head-to-head competition to win the future of AI by achieving research breakthroughs, establishing the technology's standards and breaking the AGI or "superintelligence" barrier. They suggest that the world faces a binary choice between free, U.S.-developed AI imbued with democratic values or a Chinese alternative that's under the thumb of the Communist Party. Flashback: The last time a scientific race had truly world-shaping consequences was during the Second World War, as the Manhattan Project beat the Nazis to the atomic bomb. But Germany surrendered well before the U.S. had revealed or made use of its discovery. The nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union that followed was a decades-long stalemate that cost fortunes and more than once left the planet teetering on an apocalyptic brink. The 1960s space race was similarly inconclusive. Russia got humanity into space ahead of the U.S., but the U.S. made it to the moon first. Once that leg of the race was over, both countries retreated from further human exploration of space for decades. State of play: With AI, U.S. leaders are once again saying the race is on — but this time the scorecard is even murkier. "Build a bomb before Hitler" or "Put a man on the moon" are comprehensible objectives, but no one is providing similar clarity for the AI competition. The best the industry can say is that we are racing toward AI that's smarter than people. But no two companies or experts have the same definition of "smart" — for humans or AI models. We can't even say with confidence which of any two AI models is "smarter" right now, because we lack good measures and we don't always know or agree on what we want the technology to do. Between the lines: The "beat China" drumbeat is coming largely from inside the industry, which now has a direct line to the White House via Trump's AI adviser, David Sacks. "Whoever ends up winning ends up building the AI rails for the world," OpenAI chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane said at an Axios event in March. Arguing for controls on U.S. chip exports to China earlier this year, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei described competitor DeepSeek as "beholden to an authoritarian government that has committed human rights violations, has behaved aggressively on the world stage, and will be far more unfettered in these actions if they're able to match the U.S. in AI." Yes, but: In the era of the second Trump administration, many Americans view their own government as increasingly authoritarian. With Trump himself getting into the business of dictating the political slant of AI products, it's harder for America's champions to sell U.S. alternatives as more "free." China has been catching up to the U.S. in AI research and development, most tech experts agree. They see the U.S. maintaining a shrinking lead of at most a couple of years and perhaps as little as months. But this edge is largely meaningless, since innovations propagate broadly and quickly in the AI industry. And cultural and language differences mean that the U.S. and its allies will never just switch over to Chinese suppliers even if their AI outruns the U.S. competition. In this, AI is more like social media than like steel, solar panels or other fungible goods. The bottom line: The U.S. and China are both going to have increasingly advanced AI in coming years. The race between them is more a convenient fiction that marshals money and minds than a real conflict with an outcome that matters.
