>> Hello and thanks for joining us on Chicago's tonight.

I'm Nick Blumberg.

Brandis Friedman has the evening off.

Here's what we're looking at.

>> I want to say this clearly.

There were other options your Mayor.

Johnson says the city budget is coming up short on revenue.

We get reaction from all the people.

>> And election system so broken and so vulnerable that no one can possibly defend >> And President Trump doubles down on his claims of mass amounts of election fraud.

What to know about the country's voting security?

First off tonight, the tally of cyclists pariah says cases in Illinois climbs as public health officials struggle to determine the source of the infection.

>> The state says there are now 355 confirmed and probable cases of the illness which causes severe diarrhea, according to the city's public health department.

Chicago seeing 76 confirmed and probable cases as of today with a dozen more under investigation, the Food and Drug Administration announced yesterday that a lab results that found cyclists Poor inlet is supplied by the company Taylor Farms from Mexico was a false positive.

Still, the agency says it has very strong evidence that Taylor Farms shredded lettuce is behind the outbreak.

The company said late last week it would voluntarily remove all iceberg lettuce sourced from central Mexico.

Eviction protections are emerging as a sticking point in the city hall debate over rental housing last month.

Mayor Brandon Johnson now introduce rather the protecting renters ordinance or Then last week, a group of all the people responded with the fair and Accountable.

Illinois rental ordinance or fair.

Well, the 2 should plans share similarities.

The mayor's plan would create just cause eviction protections requiring landlords to provide a valid reason for evictions or at least non renewals.

Today, advocates speaking in support of say the opposing plan would be a step backwards for tenants.

>> Chicago landlords filed 20,000 evictions last year.

Isn't that the housing crisis?

We're trying to solve.

Are these so-called housing providers for the people in crisis?

>> And you can join us tomorrow night for an in-depth discussion with supporters of both ordinances.

Cook County is touting 15 million dollars in funding for storm relief.

County commissioners last week approved the one-time funding package for households dealing with fallout from flooding and other damage caused by major storms in July and August of last year.

Storms for which the federal government tonight half of the money is designated for city residents and half or suburban Cook County residents with up to $2000 in funding available per household.

Meanwhile, the Chicago area remains under an air quality alert with potentially severe thunderstorms expected tonight and into the early morning.

The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency has issued and air pollution Action Day expiring at midnight with the air quality.

Still unhealthy for sensitive groups.

The National Weather Service is tracking a storm system traveling into southeast Illinois, beginning around 07:00PM with damaging winds reported as the greatest possible threat.

But with the welcome benefit of clearing the air of particulates tomorrow on Wednesday, air quality is expected to be moderate.

Up next, what to know about the country's voting security?

>> Chicago tonight is made possible in part by the Alexander and John Nichols family.

The Pope Brothers Foundation.

And the support of these donors.

>> President Donald Trump renews his claims about threats to election security and integrity as the midterm elections approach.

In a speech last week, Trump discussed foreign interference, non-citizen voting vulnerabilities in the American election system and reiterated some widely disproven charges.

His administration recently released a trove of heavily redacted documents which Trump says prove his allegations of voter fraud.

Joining us to discuss the issue are Jacob Ron executive director of the Cyber Policy Initiative at the University of Chicago and former acting principal cyber director under the Biden administration and Steven Maynard Caliendo professor of political science and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at North Central College in Naperville.

Thank you both for being here.

We So let's start with this issue of of noncitizens voting.

The Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

He sent letters to the secretaries of state in Pennsylvania and Nevada, New Jersey and California.

He claims that quote, through preliminary reviews of the 4 states records, DHS found there may be as many as 278,000 noncitizens illegally on their state voter rolls.

Stephen, what's your reaction to that claim?

That mean there's there's no foundation for them.

seems like that these were brought about by some.

>> Publicly available materials up to 250,000 voters could be one voter it's a federal crime to register to vote and to add or try to cast a vote.

If you're not a U.S.

citizen, if you're eligible to vote, it's it's very rare.

Doesn't happen very often.

The fact that President Trump took to a primetime address to do this problematic.

But it's also consistent with what he's done really for 10 years in terms of sowing doubt about the security of our election system.

Yeah, I mean that that leads me right to my next question.

You despite all these, you know, these years of claims.

>> They're, you know, is there evidence of widespread non-citizen down?

certainly not.

And it wasn't prior, you know, scholarly work has shown that it's very rare.

And then when the president was in his first term, he had a task force to look into this.

They spent a lot of money and never even issued a final report because he does off that before they had a chance to do so because I didn't find anything.

The president also warned of foreign interference in American elections.

Here's some of what he had to say.

>> Over a period of years, starting during the 2020 election cycle.

The People's Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history resulting in China is elicit acquisition of 220 million us voter files.

What's your reaction to that?

>> Well, I think there's a couple different things going on here.

One is.

Traditional espionage.

The Chinese have conducted espionage on U.S.

elections for decades as many other countries have.

That's not good.

We try and prevent any way we can.

But also generally doesn't stick to.

Change the outcome of an election.

Secondly, by most Intel estimates to date the Chinese really don't favor one political party over the other.

They generally think that both parties are kind of against and they view that getting caught trying to change an election would have worst downside for them than any upside of of getting one party or the other into the White House or Congress.

>> So, you know, if China and other countries are trying to influence the outcome, why are they trying to obtain election information?

Well, I think they're trying to tend the election information for intelligence purposes, too, to find out information on U.S.

citizens.

They're interested and elected officials, intelligence officers, cetera, cetera.

But what the Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians, multiple actors are doing is trying to undermine our face in our electoral process in our institutions that really under pen the citizens franchise with the government.

You know, Stephen, in 2016, you know, you heard a lot from Democrats discussing Russian interference.

You know, today, certainly the you know, the president's and some other Republicans claiming elections are vulnerable.

>> To the politics about around this issue today.

Flip in some I do know that they flip so much.

I mean, what the what the Democrats are arguing about 2016 was that the Russians were involved in in in infiltrating social media to, as Jake mentioned, cause disruption to cause us to have sort of a failing belief in our system.

>> The Democrats claim that they were trying to help Donald Trump win because they thought they would be favorable to them.

That does not necessarily evidence of that.

But but I think it was dangerous about Thursday night was the conflation of foreign involvement in elections like that foreign interference, which is is Jake was sort of suggesting, you know, they're not taking our ballots and changing them.

And so the outcomes are changing.

And so I think just throwing all this together as one big, you know, it's kind of soup and then suggesting that the elections aren't mean, I think we have to be careful about what the implications are for sort of messaging from the White House.

you know, Jake, when you look at our voting infrastructure, what are the vulnerabilities there?

There's significant actually several reports that were released after the president's speech highlight.

>> Vulnerabilities that, by the way, we've known about for nearly a decade.

But nonetheless, still need to be fixed and and I do think both parties are at fault in the sense that Democrats often jump in and say just because Trump said it was wrong and then the administration wants to double down on election interference claims been debunked.

But it seems like nobody's really getting after solving the actual problem, which is better security around our elections.

And that's both of the machines and the government systems like the voter registration databases.

And so on elections rely on.

Yeah, I know this is something you work done quite a bit.

What are some of key remedies there?

Well, there's a few pretty simple ones.

And all of them, by the way, are the cheapest Number one is hand marked paper ballots because of the very least if everything goes wrong, a bunch of humans can go back and hand count every single ballot.

So that's number one.

Number 2, a little bit more technical, but still less expensive is open source voting equipment.

So this would be where anybody can see the code that's in the voting machine of the voting equipment.

Right now, the only people see the code of the bad guys and the vendors.

And we want everybody, including the good guys to be able to see if there's problems that need to be soft measure of transparent.

Exactly end that way.

When somebody says that there's a back door with Venezuela into the voting equipment that everybody can see the code and say is there one or not be able to have transparency on that.

And then finally, we really need to get rid of touch screen voting machines because they cause incredibly long lines, which dramatically affects minority populations.

Student populations, groups that have a higher density in their precincts which are largely are largely urban in certain areas.

Yeah, potential suppression of both.

Exactly.

I think Jake, Jake had a really nice point there about the messenger and in a sense to say it was somebody else making these claims or somebody ask asking these questions, we would receive it differently.

The issue is that the president started work the talking about election interference because he didn't understand how we might have lost an election in 2020 when he talked about Russia hoax first and in 2020.

>> And now he's talking about because he's worried about future elections.

And I think that undermines the real questions there there and the real opportunities we have to do things better.

So the messenger in this case does matter.

Yeah.

Well, you know, Trump also use the speech.

You know, she's advocating for the Save America Act.

This legislation would require proof of citizenship mandate photo ID at the polls impose criminal penalties to election officials if they >> register people who don't present the necessary documents that what what concerns do you have?

What I have so many concerns about one partly because their barriers to people being able to registered voters should be able to.

And I think we're trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist.

This isn't the the the vulnerabilities in the system problem.

This is argument that non-citizens have been voting in ways that are disrupting elections problem, which isn't a problem.

So it's barriers to participation.

But also that last point you made about the election officials could be held criminally.

We have a hard time getting elected officials as it is right that we have a hard time getting people to do this work as it is that in the last thing that they're gonna want to do is put themselves in a position where if there's a mistake made, something happens, they're going to be personally responsible.

I think that would have enough time to talk about how the rhymes with the save act.

But those are Jake.

We've got just about 45 seconds left.

But you know what, what?

What is the barrier?

There was the message not breaking through in a bipartisan manner that there is work to be done to make, you know, to make these these changes that you've suggested for election system.

Sure.

you know, of course it's politics.

And once politics gets in the middle of things.

>> We generally tend to start fighting about politics and not about the problem and I think that if both parties were really kind of focus on actually getting after this, the way that they could, because cyber is often quite non-partisan.

We could solve the problem relatively quickly.

The solutions are not hard and as I said a minute ago that the cheapest solutions out there, those that does have a an added benefit getting folks on board.

All right.

That's where we'll have to leave Jake Brown.

Steven McCallion do thank you very much.

We appreciate can stay with you.

Thank you.

Up next, officials say the city is facing a budget shortfall.

Why that could be and what can be done about it right after this.

Mayor Brandon Johnson says Chicago is staring down a mid-year budget deficit and he's pointing the finger at City Council city officials said last week the city is grappling with an 89 million dollar shortfall.

Revised down from the 130 million dollar figure.

The mayor announced earlier this month last year.

All the people rejected Johnson's proposed head tax on the city's largest companies and instead approved a budget that relied on alternative revenue sources, including selling city debt to private collectors and licensing advertising on city light poles.

So far, Johnson says much of that expected revenue hasn't materialized.

Corporate aligned members of the city Council chose a different direction and adopted there.

>> So-called alternative budget.

And throughout that process, we raise concerns about the assumptions in that plan.

Not to pose for the sake of opposing.

But because Chicagoans deserve honesty about the risks of budgets that rely on fines and fees.

>> But some of people are pushing back on the mayor's narrative and say he's slow rolling the implementation of the new revenues.

Joining us with their thoughts on the city budget are Alderman William Hall who 6th Ward on the city's south side includes parts of Englewood, Chatham and Auburn Gresham and Alderman Scott Waguespack who's 30nd Ward on the city's north side includes part of Winter Park, Lincoln Park and Lake View.

Thank you both for being here.

We appreciate that So when older man wakes back, you're part of the group of alderman who passed the budget over Mayor Johnson's objections.

And you've disputed the mayor's estimate of what's now in 89 million dollar budget deficit.

What do you think the true figure is?

I think it's about 100 million dollar short, but it's 100 million short because the mayor didn't implement the budget that was passed.

And as you recall, he didn't veto that budget.

He basically said >> he was going to move forward with it.

And what we've seen is just a failure to execute what the legislature decided to pass.

And that's where we are at this point.

That's a just a failure of execution by the Johnson administration.

>> So why would he, you know, deep if you see this way, sort of inflate the deficit here?

Well, I think if you are taking care of the pieces of the budget that you're supposed you know, we put a handful of things in there that would help close that budget cap.

If you're not executing those through the budget office, then you're not doing your part to make sure that when the legislator says like they do in every city, here's what we would like to see in the budget.

You have to move forward on those things and they just failed to execute Helderman.

How about that idea that they're somehow slow walking more implementation?

I think number one, let's look Vtt that was something proposing the party again, he take 3300 slot machines and inner cities across the city of Chicago.

>> 2 generated projected revenue.

all due respect.

I don't think that gambling number one, they assume that people will buy debt in the market, which means that those who have the burden of paying parking tickets reason why wasn't so by the way, because people have it so debt collection, gambling and then liquor tax.

So the best that we got and 6 ward in this budget will be liquor gambling and 100 calls to give money.

I think the Chicagoans deserve better.

They deserve dignity and the budget.

doesn't preserve dignity is what we're dealing with right now.

Over 3,000 people, both in the public schools as well as and city government are going to lose their jobs.

And so again, we better then gambling were better than debt collections.

And we definitely better than what has been proposed.

And so we knew again only having 48 hours to look at how do you spend 17 billion dollars?

It was a responsible in the first place again to obstruct is one thing but not have adequate solutions over the entire process.

January was the budget season, not necessarily December 2 days before a threatened check.

Now I want to come back to some of those specific revenue items, but, >> you know, as we're heading into the fall, coming up, you know, faster than we probably will be ready for and heading into another budget season.

How difficult is it to to negotiate and implement a spending plan when as colleague Alderman hadn't put it, you know, there's a deficit of trust.

Well, let me tell you, number one, the budget wasn't funded.

So number 2, essentially at the end what is there to negotiate at this point.

Again, let's look at one of streamlines revenue, which was video gaming.

They say that that would generate at Swansea about a million.

33 100.

That's 3300 slot machines have to be online.

That was not realistic.

Secondly, debt collection was a big deal.

They thought that 90 million dollars would be available by simply calling people would 1, 8, 100 numbers on the a cell phone.

Nobody want to touch our because the people Chicago just don't have it.

So those 2 budget lines of revenue was what they thought would be sufficient enough to balance the budget.

augmented reality.

We haven't seen a dime of that because essentially, again, it was unrealistic.

So the ideas on paper was almost like a check that was written with no money in the bank.

Now everybody's crying about the fact that the check is balancing.

I mean, overnight, expect how about that idea of, you know, selling the unpaid debt, you know, advertising on city, light poles.

You know, the administration says we've been working on this, but we can't find buyers for the dead are advertised.

Advertisers interested city property.

What's your response to that?

I don't think they tried hard enough.

It's very evident that one other cities are doing this.

It you're capable of doing and in Chicago and I'm talking not just in Illinois, but around the United States win.

>> You look at the debt collection.

I know the more mayors out there saying it's immoral to collect some buddies debt from somebody who parked at a fire hydrant or a developer.

Who's not paying their fines or fees.

But those are things that we've been collecting for decades.

Other cities do it too.

And the mayor has basically allowed 1 billion in additional debt to be created here over the last 3 years that he's just not collecting and he's I'm not going to do that because it's immoral.

But if if we can't move forward and say that people have to pay what they for something that they did and I'm not talking about collecting from people who have to have water in their homes.

Nobody has ever said that in their budget coalition.

That is the mayor going out and MISD erecting this entire budget.

We're talking about also collecting from city employees and our sister agencies tens of millions of dollars that the mayor refuses to collect on.

Those are people that CT are CPS at the parks at Tom C H a everybody needs to make sure that if things are going to be fair and equitable, that they're paying for the wrongs that they did well, since the let's be honest.

Let's look at the conditions that every Chicago in an American is facing as well.

We're down 11% on disposable income, meaning that 11% of what people have to spend.

>> They don't have more.

The cost of food is rising.

The cost gas is almost at all-time high.

Affordability is the number one issue that people are facing across the city of Chicago.

How dare we say to people who are down 11% and then to the 3,000 get ready to lose their job pay because you made a mistake.

How many of us have not paid parking?

I'm not justifying again responsibility.

But what I am saying is that where is the compassion?

We've seen grace periods extended.

We see mercy programs.

But at the end of the day, the reason why the debt did not sale is because people knew in the debt market that Chicagoans are broke.

People are hurting the average income in my ward is only $38,000 a year on the one neighborhood is suffered and that one cannot carry the 6.

So Chicagoans don't have the money.

The best that 31 decided to offer to Chicago more pressure to get money that they don't.

Rather than say, give one.

That's just come a complete false.

Nick, I've got a call that out because we've heard this narrative from the mayor over and over and over again.

So what they want what that was going when you look at the details of that thing's not going to say what that's going to be.

they went to market with nobody want to touch point and don't have them because old boys.

Again, it is.

It was for parking tickets.

>> And you're telling me that people should pay their parking.

Know what I'm saying is that even pay his wife deals before it was okay.

Mayor Scott, let's let's not live in a but was unhurt.

Will that's not live in a bubble.

People don't know.

in a bubble?

Again, it's just because the mayor didn't pay his water bill.

That's his business.

But at the end of the day, at I represent award of 47,000 people making on average less than $40,000.

Right?

And there's anybody in other words.

So to penalize people don't have it because they made a mistake, that is responsible way to I want to penalize anybody for that.

We're we're looking at a large tranches of funding that could be had in this budget.

When you look at the business community, the mayor has said we're going to go ahead and put more burden on the business community.

When you look at the ppl millions of dollars.

So I think what we're looking at here is the mayor decided he wasn't going do this project because it was actually a good budget.

We only looked at 2% of the entire budget and he he thought that 98% of you and want to ask, you know, what we heard from Mayor Johnson, you know, in that clip, setting conversation is that said that you and some of his other, you know, critics and city councilor line with corporations rather than the people of the city.

What's your reaction to?

not the case.

I mean, if you look at what he billing for the small businesses, medium and large in the city, it's hundreds of millions more than when he came in.

He's not even going after the people that we've said when we go for debt sale or we go for collections, we were saying they should go after everybody, developers and included and he had a date right before the budget where there's 8 million dollars in uncollected fees from a developer.

He allowed them to go ahead and pass an ordinance or basically go ahead not paying that debt.

So he's not even really taken the effort to get that done.

Okay.

So again, we talk about just one line.

And again, I don't think that 1, 8, 100 numbers calling residents of the Chicago is the best means raising rent revenue.

Secondly, what was not that well, when you sell the debt, they have a right to collect today and their means of collecting dead is typically invasive ignored Andrew number 2, which they have not mentioned was the fact that Vgts.

>> Was a part of their proposal.

They would have had to put 3300 machines online.

actually be correct to the first because the city does collect that every day of the week.

But have different agency.

Gave him a second thing with mentioned is the fact that Vgts was a part of their point teen seconds left down all say that tea is I admit that its 6 million dollars of the entire right.

So at the end day, what what we haven't done is tax and rain in the sweepstakes.

Machines by the thousands.

And but because I to know is the only 2000 people come August 31st will be losing their jobs.

All right.

Take frightening, it Thank you.

We could keep going.

But yes, unfortunately, we are out of time William Hall Alderman Scott Waguespack you.

Thank you both.

We appreciate it.

>> And that's our show for this Monday night.

If you're looking for more context on the complicated issues that matter most to you, sign up for our e-mail newsletter.

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you can do that at W T Tw Dot Com Slash newsletter.

Join us tomorrow night at 5, 30 10.

The battle over renters protections as 2 competing proposals work their way through City Hall.

Now for all of us here in Chicago tonight, I'm Nick Blumberg.

Thank you for watching.

Stay healthy and safe and have a good night.

>> Woes caption he's made possible by Robert a cliff and Clifford law offices, a personal injury law firm, working to preserve the