Latest news with #Raoul
The Star
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Star
PJ sold-out shows by all-child cast help build confidence, imagination via theatre
(From third left)Raoul, Casey, Kaeley and Aviela (right) with the rest of the actors of 'Maleficent'. —Courtesy photo A GROUP of children aged four to 15 managed to put together four sold-out performances at the PJ Performing Arts Centre (PJPAC). Their performances brought storybook favourites to life on stage during Story Book Academy's theatre showcase featuring Pinocchio, Snow White, Peter Pan and Maleficent. The shows were staged by the all-child cast from diverse backgrounds, marking a milestone for the academy's growing performing arts community. The strong turnout was a mark of pride for the academy's mission of nurturing creativity, confidence and collaboration through storytelling and theatre. A special highlight was the staging of Maleficent, which featured four students from the Dignity for Children Foundation who received the academy's performing arts scholarship. In addition to Kaeley Ng Mei Shuen, three students – Aviela Nkechiamara Chukwu, Raoul Lee Tzyy Hao and Casey Chee Seng Quan were returning scholars. 'We're thrilled that so many families came to cheer on the children,' said academy director Jeanisha Wan. 'Our focus has always been on creating joyful, meaningful experiences through stories, not perfect performances, but real growth in confidence, imagination and connection.' The event also saw returning students take on emcee roles and ended with a mini 'Oscar Award' ceremony to recognise outstanding performers from past productions. Since its founding in 2020, The Story Book Academy has staged productions in malls and theatres, offering children opportunities to perform publicly and develop storytelling and roleplay skills.
Chicago Tribune
11-07-2025
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Illinois attorney general investigation of DuPage County clerk a concern for county's Democratic growth
When activist Jean Kaczmarek was elected DuPage County clerk seven years ago, she became the first Democrat elected to countywide office in 84 years and her subsequent work as clerk to make voting easier and more available was lauded by the party faithful. But the appointment of Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul's office as special prosecutor to investigate Kaczmarek's office over allegations of official misconduct has prompted concern among Democrats that the gains they have made in wresting significant control of the once strongly Republican suburban county could be at risk. Kaczmarek, hailed in 2022 by the Democratic Women of DuPage County with its leadership award, is already facing a primary challenge as she seeks a third term next year. And her previous budgetary actions helped lead to a change in state purchasing law for most Illinois counties — a law that is now at the center of the Raoul investigation. DuPage County Circuit Judge Bonnie Wheaton's order on Monday appointing Raoul's office as special prosecutor is rooted in more than two years of internecine battles between the Democratic clerk and the Democratic-led DuPage County Board involving the often labyrinthine world of budgetary control and power in county governance. Even before the special prosecutor appointment, each side had filed civil suits against the other over such issues as Kaczmarek's ability to make budgetary transfers from one account to another without informing the county's chief financial officer from where the money was coming — as other county agencies and offices are required to do. In defending the moves, Kaczmarek is leaning on an April 2023 advisory opinion from Raoul that says a county board's budgetary authority over county officers using 'internal control provisions' is limited to appropriating lump sum amounts for equipment, materials and services. 'The attorney general's office has been crystal-clear for decades on this issue and it's time DuPage County started following the law,' Kaczmarek said in a statement a day after the special prosecutor appointment. 'The job of the County Board is to fund the office, not to micromanage operations.' But DuPage County State's Attorney Robert Berlin, one of only three GOP countywide officeholders and the legal counsel for both the board and the clerk's office, said that under state law the clerk's transfers 'must be accomplished in such a manner for the County Finance Department to track' them. 'You were cautioned that expenditures in excess of an appropriation are prohibited, and a violation may result in prosecution of a Class B misdemeanor,' Berlin wrote to Kaczmarek's chief deputy clerk, Adam Johnson, in a May 2023 email. 'Further, a violation of any of these laws may constitute official misconduct by the public officer and/or the employee. Penalties may include forfeiture of the office or position, in the case of an employee, and is also a Class 3 felony.' The Democratic-led county board has sided with Berlin amid concerns over Kaczmarek's power, contending that there is a lack of transparency and a failure to follow traditional bidding rules. It led Deb Conroy, the county board's chair since 2022 and a former Democratic legislator, to travel to Springfield last year to persuade her former legislative colleagues to change state purchasing law to specifically put controls on the actions of elected county officials like Kaczmarek. 'The DuPage County Board and I work diligently to ensure our offices are fiscally responsible and that they comply with procurement laws and Generally Accepted Accounting Principles,' Conroy said in a statement. 'For years, we have expended significant time and energy to persuade the clerk's office to comply with these procedures. I went to Springfield in 2024 to clarify the law, ensuring the statute specifically outlined bidding guidelines for elected officials.' The new law, which took effect Jan. 1, requires elected county officials outside of Cook County to bid out 'services, materials, equipment or supplies in excess of $30,000.' Nine days after the law took effect, however, Kaczmarek signed a contract with Prager Moving & Storage Co. to transport early voting booths for this year's spring municipal elections, Berlin wrote in requesting a special prosecutor. The firm billed the clerk for $113,710, above the $30,000 bidding threshold, but the clerk's office has refused to give the county auditor any documentation to prove the contract was bid in order for the payment to be made, Berlin wrote. 'The County Auditor's office is not a court to which the County Clerk submits evidence in order to obtain the Auditor's subjective approval of her internal operational decisions,' Johnson, the chief deputy clerk, responded to the auditor's request for bidding documentation, according to Berlin's court filing. In another instance in April, the county auditor's office received a $115,997 bill from Governmental Business Systems for election supply kits, such as ballots, supplied to the clerk's office. The auditor requested more information from the clerk about the invoice, but the clerk has not provided any, and the auditor won't process the bill for payment. 'The clerk's failure to comply with the competitive bidding law may constitute official misconduct,' Berlin told the DuPage court, saying the county board knows the county could be sued for nonpayment of the invoices — something that prompted the board to request 'an investigation into possible misconduct.' Because Berlin legally represents both the clerk and the county board, he has a conflict of interest and requested Raoul's office step in as an independent special prosecutor. Wheaton granted the request and Raoul's office has agreed to the role. In a statement after the special prosecutor appointment, Kaczmarek said she would 'welcome the involvement of' Raoul's office but said the action was 'simply another example of the lengths to which Bob Berlin will go to avoid admitting being wrong about the law.' Berlin, in response, issued a statement saying, 'In my thirty-seven plus years in public service, my ethics have never been called into question. I have no vendetta against anyone. All I am trying to accomplish is to ensure that everyone follows the law.' The new state law contains one exception for bypassing competitive bidding — professional services. Those are generally defined as professions in which a government-issued license is needed for the work to be performed, such as lawyers, accountants, physicians or architects. In an interview with the Tribune, Johnson, Kaczmarek's chief deputy clerk, contended the contracts awarded for moving and supplying polling equipment and ballot materials were 'professional services' that exempted the clerk from having to bid out the work. 'The act of moving 250 pieces of sensitive equipment throughout the county to polling places that by law have to be open at 6 a.m. the next day — yes, we do believe that that requires the professional expertise of our vendor,' Johnson said of the moving and supply contract. He said the same held true for the ballot kits, citing the March 2018 primary night fiasco of misshapen ballots that hampered vote counting — an issue that effectively ended the DuPage County Election Commission and merged its duties into the clerk's office. 'If people go back and look at the issues that the election commission had with improperly produced (ballot) cards that caused the election night catastrophe, my feeling is, if you can ruin the entire election by doing your job wrong, that sounds like a professional risk to me,' Johnson said. Beyond the immediacy of the investigation by Raoul's office is the potential fallout for Democrats if the probe concludes that prosecution of a criminal nature or official misconduct is warranted. Once considered a Republican firewall against Democratic votes out of Cook County, DuPage County since Kaczmarek's 2018 election has seen Democrats now hold six of the nine countywide elected offices and 12 of the 18 county board seats, with the countywide-elected chair, Conroy, also being a Democrat. Democrats privately fear that a prosecution of the clerk could halt their advances, with many wondering why the clerk and county board couldn't simply work out their differences. Now, Kaczmarek, who in May announced her 2026 bid for reelection as clerk, faces an announced Democratic challenger, county board member Paula Deacon García of Lisle, who Conroy is backing. What's more, there are also Democratic concerns that a highly visible prosecution could give Republicans an opportunity to regain the office. Such a development could potentially curb the expansion of voting opportunities created under Kaczmarek, such as increasing early voting sites and allowing people to vote at any polling place in the county on Election Day. 'It's disappointing that an investigation is needed,' Conroy said in her statement. 'However, I'm grateful the attorney general's office will investigate, provide information and determine the appropriate next steps.'
Chicago Tribune
05-07-2025
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Supreme Court ruling means ‘harder work' for Illinois and others fighting Trump administration actions
A Supreme Court decision limiting federal judges from issuing nationwide injunctions is expected to make it more difficult for blue states fighting President Donald Trump's executive orders to get widespread relief and could further stretch the resources of Illinois' attorney general's office as it pushes back against the administration. For Americans opposed to Trump administration actions that include funding cuts and immigration matters, 'it creates a greater reliance on your state to take action for you, your state attorneys general,' Attorney General Kwame Raoul in an interview, 'because it's harder to get broad protection as an individual.' Since the start of the Trump administration, Raoul and other mostly blue state attorneys general have filed dozens of lawsuits against Trump's actions in federal courts, some of which led to nationwide injunctions blocking the president's orders. The high court's ruling has limited those injunctions. Illinois has joined more than 20 lawsuits against the Trump administration on issues ranging from funding issues to birthright citizenship. The court's ruling was a win for Trump, who has said he believes federal judges have overstepped in blocking some of his administration's actions. For those opposing the administration, 'It means that it's going to be harder work,' said Ed Yohnka, spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union Illinois, which has fought many of the Trump administration's actions. Still, given Illinois' aggressive stance against the administration's orders and involvement in so many lawsuits, 'we can hope that the impact will be minimal in our state,' Yohnka said. At this point, no one knows the full implications of last week's decision, said Carolyn Shapiro, former Illinois solicitor general. In the decision, the Supreme Court said lower courts generally can't issue an injunction to prevent the federal government — or any defendant — 'from doing an illegal thing to people who aren't in front of the court,' Shapiro said. In the opinion, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, members of the court's conservative majority said, 'federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them.' It left exceptions, including class-action lawsuits and cases in which a broad injunction would be necessary to bring relief to the people or states that filed the lawsuit. The court didn't rule on whether Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship — the matter that was before the high court — was constitutional. The court instead gave lower courts 30 days from its ruling to determine how to move forward with the challenges to the executive order. It could be a year before the high court weighs in on the substance of those challenges. In one of the most recent actions, Raoul's office this week filed a lawsuit in federal court in California against the administration for sharing Medicaid health records with immigration authorities, as the federal government says it looks to end unlawful benefits. In the lawsuit, the coalition of states argued that the resulting confusion could lead to people refusing to enroll in benefits for which they'd otherwise be eligible, leaving states and safety net hospitals to pay for needed health care. One of the cases involving Illinois and resulting in an injunction was a suit by 22 state governments against the National Institutes of Health, seeking to stop a new policy that limited reimbursements for medical research grants. A court blocked the policy nationwide in March, but NIH has since appealed. In another case, a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction against a Department of Health and Human Services directive to fire thousands HHS workers — though the court also recently asked for additional information on how the Supreme Court ruling on injunctions could affect the order, according to a tracker of actions against the administration from the law and policy journal Just Security. Raoul said he believes it's still easy to argue that there should be a nationwide stoppage on the birthright citizenship order, because people move across state borders, and having a 'state to state landscape' of citizenship would cause issues for the states that filed the lawsuit. But some other areas are more difficult to argue, Shapiro said — for example, arguing whether federal funding would need to be restored to universities nationwide in order to get relief for the states that file a lawsuit. 'It actually puts the red state AGs in a complicated position,' said Shapiro, who is also a law professor and co-director of the Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States at Illinois Tech Chicago-Kent. That's because they too could benefit from relief from nationwide orders that restore funding for education systems or health care systems, she said. As for the class-action option, the ACLU already filed a class-action lawsuit on the birthright citizenship issue, seeking broad relief from the Trump administration's order. But that kind of action can also come with obstacles for people or organizations filing lawsuits, Yohnka of the ACLU Illinois said, including the time and effort it takes to recruit people into the class. The ongoing legal fights come as Raoul's office has maintained essentially a flat overall budget for the fiscal year that began this month, despite a push during session to get additional funding. A line item for the AG's operations increased this year, but it was largely offset by anticipated dips in other funding streams, Raoul said. 'It was aspirational,' Raoul said of the push for additional funding for his office. 'However, we are — we're clearly busy.' He argued that rulings on some of the issues that states like Illinois are fighting shouldn't be applied differently around the nation. 'We have one Constitution that applies the same to all 50 states,' Raoul said, noting that a judge in Washington had said the birthright order was unconstitutional. 'If you think about that from that context, if it's unconstitutional and clearly unconstitutional … then why shouldn't it be stopped everywhere?'
Chicago Tribune
01-07-2025
- Chicago Tribune
South Holland woman sentenced in theft scheme, pocketed rent payments
A South Holland woman was sentenced to two years in prison for taking more than $18,000 in rent payments while she was working for a property management company, according to Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul's office. Delvya Harris also admitted to fraudulently obtaining more than $41,000 in federal Paycheck Protection Program loans by falsely claiming she owned a business, Raoul's office said in a news release. Harris, 32, was sentenced Monday by Cook County Judge Laura Ayala-Gonzalez after pleading guilty to a Class 3 felony theft charge, according to the release. Harris was employed by management firm Habitat Co. as an assistant community manager at the Chicago Housing Authority's Trumbull Park Homes in Chicago's South Deering community when she stole 50 money orders, according to the release. Harris admitted to depositing money orders CHA tenants used to pay, worth $18,215, into her personal bank account between December 2022 and March 2023, according to the release. Harris also fraudulently applied for two PPP loans from the U.S. Small Business Administration by falsely claiming that she owned a retail business that did not exist, Raoul's office said. Harris received a total of just over $41,000 in February and May 2021 from two fraudulent applications, according to the news release.
Yahoo
31-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Illinois AG joins lawsuit to stop federal cuts to science, research programs
CHICAGO, Ill. (WCIA) — The Attorneys General of 16 states, including Illinois, are taking the Trump administration to court in an attempt to stop his cuts to National Science Foundation (NSF) programs. In the lawsuit he and the coalition filed, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul is seeking a court order to block the implementation of the NSF's new directives to eliminate programs addressing diversity in STEM. In addition, the changes would eliminate funding and programs that Raoul said, 'help maintain the United States' position as a global leader in STEM.' 'The funds the Trump administration is attempting to cut are vital to addressing the nation's biggest challenges,' Raoul said. 'The impact of these illegal cuts would devastate scientific research at universities in Illinois and across the country and would stall efforts to grow the STEM workforce.' Illinois AG files lawsuits over immigration conditions placed on federal funding Raoul provided background, saying that on April 18, the NFS began terminating grants that funded projects focused on increasing the participation of women, minorities and people with disabilities in STEM fields. On May 2, the NFS announced that it would also cap 'indirect costs' of all NFS-funded research projects, such as laboratory space, equipment and facility services, at 15%. This, Raoul and his counterparts said, would slash millions of dollars from scientific research across the country and jeopardize national security, the economy and public health. The 15% cap would limit scientific research at universities across the country, they said, leading to the abandonment of critical projects and the end of 'essential research.' They also argue that these directives violate federal law. 'The NSF's directives violate the Administrative Procedure Act and the Constitution by unlawfully changing NSF policy and ignoring Congress' direction for how the NSF should function,' Raoul wrote in a news release. 'The lawsuit seeks a court order ruling the NSF's new directives are illegal and an injunction blocking their implementation.' Illinois AG wins court order supporting libraries, museums, minority-owned businesses Raoul also noted that per Congress, a 'core strategy' of the NFS's work must be to increase the participation of people who have historically been left out of STEM occupations, and that the strategy to increase participation STEM careers has worked. 'Between 1995 and 2017, the number of women in science and engineering occupations, or with science or engineering degrees, has doubled,' Raoul wrote. 'During that same time, people of color went from 15% to 35% of science and engineering job or degree holders. However, since the NSF's April 18 directive to terminate programs seeking to increase diversity in STEM, dozens of projects have been canceled.' Raoul has been involved in several multi-state lawsuits in the past to object to Trump's policies, including funding cuts. A lawsuit filed in February resulted in court orders that stopped attempts to cap indirect costs for National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Department of Energy (DOE) grants. The latest lawsuit was filed by Raoul and the Attorneys General of the following states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
