>> The latest on a renewed push to allow Chicago police to declare snap curfews.

The Department of Justice says it's investigating the city's hiring practices and veteran Illinois lawmaker is ousted from his committee chairmanship after upsetting party leaders here with all that and more is our spotlight.

Politics team had a Sharon and Nick Blumberg So So as we heard the top of the show, the City Council's Public Safety Committee voting 10 to 7 to send this revised plan to give the Chicago police the power to impose a curfew that is going the full City council tomorrow for final vote.

Call a snap curfew.

Heather, what changed?

>> Well, the original proposal required police Superintendent Larry Snelling and Deputy Mayor Gary in gate would to agree that they needed to declare a snap cute curfew to prevent a teen gathering from getting out of hand.

That changed in the version that advance through the committee today.

Now, Larry Snelling has the unilateral power to to determine the snap curfew and that caused Alderman Jason Ervin, a member of City Council's Black caucus to pull his support.

He was actually a co sponsor of this measure saying that that concentrates too much power in one person's hand tomorrow.

But tomorrow's vote I expect will be very close.

Yeah, sounds like it's going to be a contentious one because despite a pulling his support, it still passed.

>> 10 to 7.

That is a relatively narrow victory in a committee vote.

Also the Public Safety Committee has a lot of the City council's most conservative her self-proclaimed pro police, older people.

>> So its fate will really just depend tomorrow on how many members of the progressive caucus can bring members of the black caucus to their side and reject this measure.

Yeah, obviously a lot of folks, including the mayor have raised questions about the constitutionality of this.

But just from a purely, you know, sort of policy perspective.

It's interesting to see this revised proposal move away from a power sharing model.

You have to imagine that's going to be a big factor.

>> Not just for bin, but for a lot of other alders as they're considering their votes.

Yeah, I was surprising when also so Mayor Brandon Johnson fiercely defending his decision to appoint what he says is the quote, most racially diverse cabinet in Chicago history.

This is, of course.

>> A day after the Trump administration announces that the DOJ has launched an investigation to see if city officials are engaging in a pattern of practice or discrimination based on race.

Here's a little of what the mayor had to say about that at a news conference this morning.

>> My administration reflects the country reflects the city.

His administration reflects the country club.

We're not going to be intimidated by the tyranny that's coming from the federal government.

The diversity of our cities, our strength.

>> And so when people.

Heather, what prompted this investigation from the DOJ?

Well, Mayor Brandon Johnson has been making a point to appear at.

>> Many local churches on the South side and he spoke Bishop Brays.

church in Woodland and he is has been for that whole 2 years.

He's in office, but very proud of how many black people are in leadership positions at City Hall.

There was nothing different that he said last night that he hadn't said 6 months ago or 9 months ago or year ago.

But what's different, of course, the Trump administration's crackdown on so-called dei diversity, equity inclusion.

They heard Mayor Johnson statements and said, Whoa, is that racial discrimination against white people.

And that's what prompted the Department of Justice's civil rights decision to loss this probe saying essentially that they suspect that Brandon Johnson has violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which of course, was the legislation but ensured that Jim Crow was no longer the law of the land in southern states.

You have to wonder whether Trump officials are really just watching the mayor and I'm sure other, you know, big city Democratic mayors.

>> Very closely because this was not the kind of comment that made national news.

This was not getting splashed on.

Exactly.

So, you know, certain informal chat like this.

It seems they have him under a microscope and you have to imagine he is not the only one.

Well, they also have the help of social media.

They of this immediately a sort of made the rounds of all of the X account, the quote, end Wokeness account almost immediately posted what the mayor said and we've seen time and time again, the Trump administration taking their cues from conservative influencers and people active specifically on X, formerly known as Twitter.

And this is another example of something that's risen to the sort of attention of the social media world that was quickly jumped on by the Trump administration.

Nic, you're heading to Springfield next week as the Illinois General Assembly.

They've got to hammer out this budget by the May 31st deadline.

Of course, we know money is tight.

>> What are you expecting to see next week?

Absolutely.

And that's going to be a huge factor as we've been talking about on the show, you know, 500 million dollars in revenues revised down.

That makes an already tough budget year.

Even tougher.

And I think a lot of reporters and probably a lot of politicians themselves are going to be paying close attention to just how long this process takes, just how late they walk it up to the deadline we've seen in many years past even easier budget years that this process to put together a spending plan and a revenue plan can take a long time and also to get both those plans past.

We saw last year it took several rounds of voting to have enough members present enough, you know, Dems present because some of them peeled off to get that spending plan passed.

We've heard from leadership that they think they've got the process more buttoned-up this year.

They think it's not going to be quite so difficult to make sure all those votes are actually physically present when needed.

But I think a lot of folks are going to be looking at both the, you know, sort of the revenue and spending how that all comes together, as well as the logistics of the process.

How do we think some of the Chicago land priorities are going to fare, of course, like transit funding money from CPS?

Because, you know, they're asking for more as usual.

They are in.

In fact, Chicago teachers, union members are going back down to Springfield.

They've been down several times and heading down again yesterday to the to lobby and lobby lawmakers and rally among the things they're calling for is additional funding for CPS.

I think a lot of observers say any additional money from the city or state to help CPS with that reported 500 million dollar deficit is pretty unlikely.

As for transit, it's it's still a big lift.

They're looking both at governance reform and they started to take a harder look at some of the revenue issues here.

They've been meeting regularly just couple days ago.

You the stakeholders and lawmakers put their heads together on this.

So there does seem to be a bit more optimism on the transit side of things that this is something that could get resolve this month that they're not necessarily going to kick it down the road to veto session in the fall.

But I will be as curious as anybody to see where that goes ensuring this is something that we also discussed just last night here on the show, as you said, with senators Senator Dwight Representative La Shawn Ford okay.

So the Senate race U.S. Representative Lauren Underwood.

She says that she is not running to replace.

>> Senator Durbin, Heather, did she say why?

What did she say about why won't she says she wants to stay in the house and to help Democrats reclaim the House.

She is a member of the Democratic leadership in her job in this upcoming midterm cycle will be to recruit candidates who can run for seats now held by Republicans and win those seats back because >> everybody's talking about the big budget debate in Washington right now.

Republicans only have a 5 vote majority in so a lot of these contests greats will determine who controls the house after the 26 elections and warned Underwood says she can have a bigger impact and do a better job of standing up to Trump rather than jumping into already crowded center.

course, she responded to some speculation yesterday about whether or not the governor had an influence.

What is she No, not not so And the governor has said I I wasn't trying to push her out of the race, although he firmly behind Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton, as is Senator Tammy Duckworth.

So nobody thinks he sort of objective in this race, but he doesn't necessarily want to get crosswise with representative underway.

Not so much know.

All Nick veteran, Illinois lawmaker Fred Crespo from Hoffman Estates.

He's been ousted from his committee chairmanship after upsetting Democratic leadership.

>> What did he do to earn that?

I will this is the second year in the row.

He is that, you know, fiscally conservative Democrat and he again, was putting together a more FIS, what he sees as a more fiscally conservative spending not necessarily making cuts, but withholding funding in this upcoming budget for, you know, certain.

>> Of the different budget buckets in the budget there to try and preserve things.

He says, you know, like health insurance for folks who most need it.

But, you know, to hear state, state House leader Chris Welch, tell it, it wasn't just that Crespo was coming up with potentially alternative plans, us that he wasn't communicating.

He was not doing his job.

You know, as a member as a committee, we