* Sun-Times…

The mother of an 11-year-old boy fatally stabbed while protecting her has filed a lawsuit claiming the state ignored the danger posed by her ex-boyfriend, who is charged in the attack and was released from prison a day before it.

Crosetti Brand, 37, is charged with forcing his way into Laterria Smith’s Edgewater apartment on March 13, 2024, and stabbing her and her son, Jayden Perkins. The boy died at a hospital.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday, claims several levels of enforcement failed its oversight by ignoring Smith’s calls for help and Brand’s history of domestic violence before releasing him from prison one day before the stabbings. […]

The Illinois Prison Review Board, Department of Corrections, the Chicago Police Department, Cook County Sheriff’s Office, and the city and county are named as defendants in the lawsuit. It also names former Prison Review Board chair Donald Shelton and board member LeAnn Miller, who both stepped down shortly after the attack.

* Sun-Times: “Immigration agents arrested a U.S. citizen and created warrants after an arrest, lawyers say in court”…

The 22 cases include Chicago resident Julio Noriega, 54, a U.S. citizen who, according to court documents, was arrested, handcuffed and spent most of the night at an ICE processing center in suburban Broadview. He was never questioned about his citizenship and was only released after agents looked at his ID.

“I was born in Chicago, Illinois and am a United States citizen,” Noriega said in his statement, adding that on Jan. 31, after buying pizza in Berwyn he was surrounded by ICE agents and arrested. Officers took away his wallet, which had his ID and social security card. “They then handcuffed me and pushed me into a white van where other people were handcuffed as well.”

In another case Abel Orozco-Ortega was detained outside his home in suburban Lyons without a warrant, just as he was arriving home from buying tamales. Federal agents were looking for one of his sons, who is about 20 years younger. But arrested Orozco-Ortega instead.

In his statement, Orozco-Ortega, 47, said an agent who identified as a police officer approached his car and asked to see a driver’s license. Orozco-Ortega was arrested shortly after showing a “Temporary Visitor’s” driver’s license, which used to be given to non-citizens in Illinois.

*** Statewide ***

* WCIS | Illinois school districts brace for elimination of the U.S. Department of Education: More than 1,000 school districts in Illinois receive Title 1 funding to support underserved students. That money comes from the federal government. If the Trump administration shuts down the department of education, that funding could be gone. “You got Title 1, which provides, for example amongst other things, free and reduced lunch for impoverished families,” Illinois Education Association President, Albert Llorens said. “Without the department of education there to ensure that extra funding is there All that’s going to do is drive a deeper hole.”

* Shaw Local | Illinois State Board of Education says its ‘deeply concerned’ about upcoming Department of Education changes: On the same day the White House announced that it planned to cut the staff of the United States Department of Education in half, the Illinois State Board of Education said it not received any official communication from Washington about changing policy.

* WBEZ | Trans people facing gender-affirming care bans flee to Illinois, shield law states: About 40% of LGBTQ+ youth reported considering moving to a different state because of laws targeting LGBTQ+ people, according to the Trevor Project’s 2024 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ Young People, a survey of nearly 19,000 LGBTQ+ people ages 13 to 24. Nearly 20% of trans people in that age range had to cross state lines for medical care because of the policies.

*** Cook County and Suburbs ***

* WTTW | Petition Filed Seeking to Transfer the Last 12 Men Out of the Aging Stateville Prison: The move is part of a lawsuit filed last month over 21 men who were housed at the derelict facility, alleging they were being kept in solitary conditions without programming. The filing states there are still a dozen men left in the facility’s medical unit, “condemning them to isolation and neglect.” IDOC’s inaction, it states, is inflicting irreparable harm.

* Crain’s | Chicago under pressure to kickstart talks with largest water customer: The city and the DuPage Water Commission have been in negotiations for years over a contract for the suburban entity to continue buying Lake Michigan water from Chicago under a new, lower rate. Claiming City Hall isn’t taking the negotiations seriously, the commission gave Johnson a deadline of the end of March to respond with a counter proposal. City officials told Crain’s they’ll meet that deadline.

* WTTW | Cook County’s Top Prosecutor Eileen O’Neill Burke Marks 100 Days in Office With Focus on Tackling Gun Crimes, Retail Theft: Through her first 100 days, O’Neill Burke’s office has a detention rate of 51% in felony and misdemeanor domestic violence cases (1,128 total cases), 85% in felony crimes on CTA train and bus lines (42 cases) and 100% in domestic violence murder and attempted murder cases (12 cases), according to data released by the state’s attorney’s office Friday.

* Daily Herald | Attorney jailed by DuPage judge responds — via TikTok: A TikTok-famous attorney thrown in the DuPage County jail last week for missing the start of a trial is addressing her time behind bars — over the social media site, of course. Cierra Norris posted three videos this week to her TikTok account with more than 477,000 followers about her jailing on March 5. That’s when DuPage County Judge Margaret O’Connell found Norris in indirect criminal contempt of court and gave her a five-day jail sentence.

* Tribune | Chicago dental equipment manufacturer gobbles up logistics warehouse at former Allstate site in Glenview: The Logistics Campus, a sprawling north suburban industrial development on the site of the former Allstate headquarters, has landed its first tenant since completing the initial phase of construction in October. HuFriedyGroup, a century-old, Chicago-based dental equipment manufacturer, has agreed to lease a full 326,278-square-foot-building — the largest of five warehouses that have sprung up along the Tri-State Tollway in Glenview.

* Shaw Local | Batavia multiplies penalties for illegal dumping by 100: Dumping prohibited materials into the Batavia’s sewer system could cost offenders up to 100 times what it would have before March 11, with the newly updated city code boasting much heftier penalties. Dumping fines were $200 last week, now up to $20,000 today.

*** Downstate ***

* WGLT | Court records show big retailers helped investigators make their case against B-N pawn shops: The Home Depot, Walmart, Target and Dick’s Sporting Goods all suspect Monster Pawn’s owners of profiting from organized retail theft from their stores. The lengthy investigation — at least 17 months — began in part because of a tip from The Home Depot’s retail crime unit, which suspected Monster Pawn of buying stolen tools and other new, in-box merchandise and then selling them on eBay.

* WCIA | Urbana’s Sola Gratia among non-profits left uncertain amid USDA funding freeze: The organization said they were awarded $90,000 in federal grants from the USDA. The farm manager, John Williams, said the potential of grant cancellation makes spending that money a risky endeavor. “You know, in terms of these programs being reimbursement-based, it puts us in a hard spot where we can’t really move forward and spend that money because, you know, if we spend that money towards these different projects, it might not get reimbursed, and it might put us in a hard spot moving forward,” Williams said.

* 21st Show | Cuts to the Weather Service in Illinois and Moline brings back the grocery tax: During our Friday Illinois Reporter Roundtable, we talked about stories in the Quad Cities, including a large rally from the local letter carriers union and a new dispensary and gas station coming to Rock Island meeting with some controversy.

* PJ Star | Peoria native and judge named Bradley University’s new president: U.S. District Judge James Shadid has been named the new president of Bradley University roughly 10 months after former president Stephen Standifird resigned amid financial troubles at the school. Shadid, who serves as a federal judge in the Central District of Illinois, is a native Peorian and 1979 graduate of Bradley University. He inherits a school that struggled financially in the final months of Standifird’s tenure, which saw the university take a $13 million budget shortfall in 2023 that led to both staff buyouts and program cuts.

* Rockford Register Star | Freeport area teacher accused in the sexual exploitation of a child: Federal prosecutors accuse Zier of sexually exploiting a minor in 2024 while he was working for Orangeville High. Producing child pornography carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years and a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.

*** Chicago ***

* WGN | Faced with fiscal fiasco, City of Chicago asks vendors for 3% discount: “Dear Valued Partner,” the message from Chicago’s chief procurement officer Sharla Roberts begins. “In light of the difficult economic times, the City of Chicago faces news challenges to reduces its costs.” One sentence later the email gets to the point: “Therefore, the City requests a price reduction of minimally 3% off all invoices sent to the City for the next twelve months off any contracts you currently hold as a prime contract with the City.”

* Sun-Times | ‘Where’s my justice?’ Slim odds of an arrest when someone is shot in Chicago, Sun-Times finds: Tom Wagner was working as a rideshare driver when he got shot during a carjacking on the West Side in 2021. The shooting left a jagged scar across his abdomen where bullets pierced his gallbladder, colon and liver. After three years of calling detectives for updates — including 10 months during which he says he got no response at all — Wagner says he found out last month that the police have formally dropped the investigation of his shooting without an arrest.

* Sun-Times | Immigration agents arrested a U.S. citizen and created warrants after an arrest, lawyers say in court: Chicago attorneys filed a motion in federal court in Chicago against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency on Mar. 13, 2025. Attorneys accused the federal government of making arrests without proper warrants and creating warrants in the field after the arrests. Chicago attorneys with the National Immigrant Justice Center and the ACLU of Illinois accused the federal government in court Thursday of violating immigration law and the constitutional rights of at least 22 people who were arrested and detained in the midwest since President Donald Trump’s inauguration as part of his crackdown on immigration. Two people are still in custody, 19 were released on bond and one has already been deported.

* Sun-Times | Michael Reese developers throw Hail Mary proposal for Bears stadium: Scott Goodman, principal of the Farpoint Development team that purchased the 48.6-acre site from the city, openly acknowledged that he has not met with the team, nor has he finalized the financing for either for the $3.2 billion dome or the $600 million in state money needed just to ready the site for development.

* Tribune | Chicago weather: High winds, strong storms and possibility of tornadoes this weekend: A line of severe thunderstorms capable of producing “destructive winds” with gusts of 70 mph or higher is forecasted to move across the area late Friday evening into the early overnight hours, said Todd Kluber, a meteorologist with Chicago’s NWS. A few brief tornadoes are also possible, he said. “We cannot rule out some tornadoes,” Kluber said. “The conditions are a little bit less favorable as we go northeastward with this line of storms into the Chicago area but still can’t keep our guard down.”

* Crain’s | Trump administration targets University of Chicago over DEI: The University of Chicago is the latest Illinois college to find itself under scrutiny by the Trump administration. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced today it opened investigations into 45 universities for alleged racial discrimination as part of the Trump administration’s effort to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

*** National ***

* NYT | Young Democrats’ Anger Boils Over as Schumer Retreats on Shutdown: Younger Democrats are chafing at and increasingly complaining about what they see as the feebleness of the old guard’s efforts to push back against President Trump. They are second-guessing how the party’s leaders — like Mr. Schumer, who brandishes his flip phone as a point of pride — are communicating their message in the TikTok era, as Republicans dominate the digital town square. And they are demanding that the party develop a bolder policy agenda that can answer the desperation of tens of millions of people who are struggling financially at a time when belief in the American dream is dimming.

* WaPo | Arlington Cemetery website scrubs links about Black and female veterans: A cemetery spokesperson confirmed Friday that it removed internal links directing users to webpages listing the dozens of “Notable Graves” of Black, Hispanic and female veterans and their spouses. On these pages, users could read short biographies about the people buried in the cemetery, including Gen. Colin L. Powell, the youngest and first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs; Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first Black man to sit on the high court; and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is buried alongside her husband, Martin Ginsburg, an Army veteran.

* NBC | Publisher stands behind ex-Facebook employee’s book, rebuffing Meta: Book publisher Macmillan said on Thursday it would continue promoting a book written by a former Facebook employee who is now critical of the tech company, despite a statement by Meta that the book should not have been published and an order by an arbitrator for the author to retract claims she had made that were “disparaging, critical or otherwise detrimental.” The book, “Careless People” by Sarah Wynn-Williams, was published Tuesday, and it covers the six-plus years when Wynn-Williams worked at the social media giant. She oversaw Facebook’s government relations for entire continents and had direct contact with executives including CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

* The Independent | March megastorm may bring blizzards, tornadoes, flooding and even fires across much of US:More than 100 million people in the U.S. will be in the path of an intense March storm starting Friday as the sprawling multi-day system threatens fires, blizzards, tornadoes, and flooding as it tracks eastward across the Great Plains. Scientists said the storm’s strength and potential for far-reaching impacts is notable, but its timing isn’t particularly unusual. Extreme weather can pop up in spring because storms feed on big temperature differences between the warmth that’s starting to show up and the lingering chill of winter.