Trans Covenant School Shooter Made Pros-And-Cons List Before Massacre

Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/31/2025 – 19:45

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trans-covenant-school-shooter-made-pros-and-cons-list-massacre 

LAS VEGAS — Devon Dampier threw for 310 yards and two touchdowns and ran for 148 yards and three scores, and No. 15 Utah won the Las Vegas Bowl in Morgan Scalley’s first game as coach, beating Nebraska 44-22 on Wednesday in the Las Vegas Bowl.

Scalley was expected to be the Utes’ coach beginning after this game, but Michigan hired Kyle Whittingham on Friday, prompting a quicker change.

For Dampier, the question now is whether the junior will return to Salt Lake City or enter the transfer portal and maybe even follow his old coach to Michigan.

This game was considered a sort of audition for Nebraska freshman quarterback TJ Lateef, who passed for 182 yards and had a touchdown each throwing and running. Mekhi Nelson rushed for 88 yards and a TD on 12 carries, but only 16 yards after the first quarter.

Utah (11-2) reached 11 victories for just the fourth time in program history and the first time since 2019. The Utes improved their bowl record to 18-9, including 5-2 in the Las Vegas Bowl. They also won two Pac-12 championships at Allegiant Stadium.

The Utes outgained Nebraska (7-6), 535 yards to 343. They rushed for 225 yards, giving the Utes a school-record 3,462 for the season. Their four rushing touchdowns gave the Utes 41 for the season, another program record.

Utah turned around the game in the second period by outscoring Nebraska 17-0 and outgaining the Huskers 198-17. Nebraska had led 14-7 after the first quarter.

This was Nebraska’s 30th consecutive loss to an Associated Press-ranked opponent, second to Rutgers’ 43-game skid. Coach Matt Rhule has lost 20 straight games to ranked teams, including 0-11 at Baylor.

An announced crowd of 38,879 watched the game, a record since this bowl moved to Allegiant Stadium following the 2019 season. The previous record was 32,515 for Wisconsin’s 20-13 victory over Arizona State in 2021. It’s the ninth-highest attendance for this bowl, which used to be at Sam Boyd Stadium.

The takeaway

Nebraska: The Huskers looked as if they would run all over Utah, rushing 13 times for 94 yards in the first quarter in taking a 14-7 lead. They rushed six times for a yard in the second period as Utah took control.

Utah: Tight ends J.J. Buchanan and Dallan Bentley combined to catch 10 passes for 182 yards and two touchdowns. The game was a homecoming for Buchanan, who is from the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson.

Up next

Nebraska: Will host Ohio on Sept. 5 in the first of two games against Mid-American Conference teams and the third against an FCS school.

Utah: Will host Idaho on Sept. 3 in what should be an easy tune-up for the season.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/31/utah-nebraska-las-vegas-bowl/ 

ORLANDO, Fla. — Arch Manning made big plays with his arm and his legs Wednesday in the Citrus Bowl, throwing two touchdown passes and putting it away with a 60-yard scoring run in a 41-27 victory that ended a rough month for No. 14 Michigan.

Manning was an easy choice as the Citrus Bowl MVP, and that was before he burst up the middle on his 60-yarder that gave the Longhorns (10-3) a 38-27 lead, the first time all game either team led by more than one score.

Manning was 21 of 34 for 221 yards passing, and he ran nine times for 155 yards.

He delivered a perfect throw to Kaliq Lockett on a 30-yard TD for a 31-27 lead, the first time Texas led since a field goal on its opening drive.

That was one play after he scrambled 15 yards for a first down on fourth-and-2. Manning twice converted on fourth down with clutch runs, both times extending drives that led to touchdowns.

Kyle Whittingham, who arrived in Orlando on Saturday to start meeting with players, watched from the box at the Citrus Bowl. The longtime Utah coach takes over a Michigan team (9-4) that produced a strong running game and played tough on defense despite missing its top two defenders, who opted out of the game.

But there was no answer for Manning, who accounted for about 80% of the Longhorns’ offense.

Bryce Underwood, Michigan’s freshman quarterback, kept the Wolverines in the game until a pair of late interceptions sealed it. He was 23 of 42 for 199 yards and two touchdowns, along with three interceptions in the last 18 minutes of the game.

Underwood, who ran for 77 yards, scampered for a 5-yard touchdown run by diving to touch the pylon, giving Michigan its last lead at 27-24 with just under 11 minutes to go.

His pass was intercepted by Ty’Anthony Smith over the middle after Texas had taken the lead, and Smith picked him off along the sideline on the next drive.

Biff Poggi lost for the first time as Michigan’s interim coach. Poggi coached victories over Nebraska and Central Michigan when former coach Sherrone Moore served a two-game suspension related to the sign-stealing scandal from 2023.

Moore was fired three weeks ago for having an extramarital affair with a staffer, and he was arrested and charged with three crimes later in the day for breaking into the woman’s home.

Whittingham brings a history of toughness and discipline from his 21 years at Utah, which Michigan hopes can go a long way toward bringing some stability to a culture in chaos.

The takeaway

Michigan: Bryson Kuzdzal gave Michigan strength in the running with 82 hard-earned yards on 20 carries. He converted first downs on fourth-and-short on three occasions.

Texas: While Manning ran the show for the Longhorns, they got great production from freshman running back Christian Clark, who had one touchdown and rushed for 105 yards on 20 carries. Texas was without its leading three rushers, all of whom are entering the transfer portal.

Too much yellow

The field only looked like it was sprinkled with Cheez-It crackers from the bowl sponsor. Michigan and Texas combined for 21 penalties. The most devastating for Michigan was a blind side block on a second-and-2 from the Texas 10. Underwood threw an interception two plays later.

Up next

Michigan: New coach Kyle Whittingham fills out his staff. The Wolverines open at home Sept. 5 against Western Michigan.

Texas: Opens at home Sept. 5 against Texas State.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/31/citrus-bowl-michigan-texas-arch-manning/ 

Elgin residents can plunge into the new year at the Adventure Island water park and lap pool at The Edward Schock Centre, which are reopening Monday after being closed since Dec. 15 for improvements and maintenance.

“The work being done was in preparation for the replacement of the 3-meter diving board at Adventure Island,” said Steve Gard, Elgin’s senior recreation supervisor for aquatics.

During the three-week closure, workers repainted several high-use areas, including pool locker rooms, family changing rooms and the pool lobby, and did routine maintenance and deep cleaning throughout the facility that couldn’t be completed if the pools were open, Gard said.

Adventure Island, the indoor pool facility at The Edward Schock Centre of Elgin, underwent deep cleaning, maintenance work and painting during the three weeks it was closed. It will reopen to the public Monday, Jan. 5, 2025. (City of Elgin)

The aquatics project is part of the city of Elgin’s ongoing effort to invest in safety improvements and replace infrastructure at some of its most heavily used recreational facilities, he said. The work aligns with a related project at Wing Park Pool, where the 3-meter high dive is also being replaced.

“Most groundwork at Wing Park Pool is complete, with installation of the new high dive expected in late spring, weather permitting,” Gard said.

The original cost estimate for the Adventure Island 3-meter high-dive replacement was $185,006, he said. However, final costs are still being determined due to the need for additional structural repairs identified during construction.

The Schock Centre has been open since November 2002 and is a multipurpose facility. The most recent comparable closure to its aquatics operations was in 2017, Gard said. At that time, the facility underwent significant renovations, including interior upgrades, improved lighting and enhanced accessibility features.

In addition to the newly painted interior spaces, “deep cleaning completed by staff during this time have helped create a cleaner, brighter and more welcoming facility,” Gard said.

After being closed for three weeks so that deep cleaning, repainting and maintenance work could be done, Adventure Island water park reopens Monday at The Edward Schock Centre of Elgin. (City of Elgin)

As for the new 3-meter diving board, slated to be installed later in January, Gard said the new design includes stair access instead of a vertical ladder, providing a safer and more user-friendly way to reach the diving platform.

Adventure Island and the lap pool are scheduled to reopen at 5 a.m. Monday and will resume their regular operating schedule. Later in January, patrons may experience temporary closures of up to four lap pool lanes while crews install the new high dive.

For more information and the Adventure Island schedule, go to elginil.gov/284/Adventure-Island-Lap-Pool.

Mike Danahey is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/31/pool-adventure-lap-elgin-reopen-schock/ 

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/31/daily-horoscope-for-january-01-2026/ 

Trump Pulls National Guard Out Of Chicago, Los Angeles & Portland

Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/31/2025 – 19:00

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trump-pulls-national-guard-out-chicago-los-angeles-portland 

No sooner had John F. Kennedy’s granddaughter died of leukemia at age 35, than President Donald Trump got busy dusting off previous social media posts to cast shade at her bereaved family.

Though he didn’t mention the late Tatiana Schlossberg by name or reference her death, Trump harvested screenshots of his supporters’ posts belittling the famous family after his newly handpicked board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts voted to tack the president’s name onto the venue.

The Kennedy family announced Schlossberg’s death on Tuesday from a rare form of leukemia with the simple message, “Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning. She will always be in our hearts.”

Tatiana Schlossberg, the daughter of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg, addresses an audience during the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award ceremony, at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, Oct. 29, 2023. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

Schlossberg had written poignantly about her diagnosis and treatment in The New Yorker in November, a powerful account of a year-long journey that paralleled her cousin Robert Kennedy Jr.’s attack on the nation’s public health system as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

As condolences poured in, Trump, reportedly miffed at the raft of performance cancellations in the wake of the board’s Dec. 18 name change, pulled supporters’ social media posts out of mothballs and onto Truth Social. He re-upped such gems as, “The Kennedy Family have LONG neglected the Kennedy Center, btw. They don’t raise money for it. They never show up. And the only Kennedy who has been there recently is a member of Trump’s cabinet,” and, “The Trumps have always been supporters of the arts. The Kennedys are supporters of the Kennedys.”

New signage, The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center For The Performing Arts, is unveiled on the Kennedy Center, Friday, Dec. 19, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

The Kennedys themselves were especially vocal during the public backlash against the institution’s name change, given that Congress had dedicated it as a living memorial to JFK after the president’s 1963 assassination.

CNN’s Jake Tapper and others led the excoriation charge against Trump’s posts.

“In the early afternoon, ET, the Kennedy family announced that JFK’s granddaughter Tatiana Schlossberg had died from cancer,” the anchor wrote on X. “A few hours later, President Trump re-posted some social media garbage attacking the Kennedy family.”

Barely a month earlier, Trump had blamed movie director Rob Reiner for his own murder.

“On a day when the Kennedy family is grappling with an unimaginable personal loss, Donald Trump chose to use his platform to launch petty, vindictive attacks against them,” Meidas Touch wrote on X. “Yet another stunning display of cruelty and utter lack of basic human decency.”

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/31/trump-attacks-kennedy-family-tatiana-schlossberg-death/ 

School District U-46 is among the taxing bodies finally receiving the Cook County property tax revenue it should have been paid in the fall.

U-46 Executive Director of Finance Robyn Cornelissen said the district received a $19.6 million payment Monday and another for $19.6 million Tuesday but is still waiting on nearly $40 million more paid by property owners who live in the Cook County portion of U-46.

“We receive Cook County payments in the fall and spring of each year based on the tax payment schedule. The first installment (spring) was received on time,” Cornelissen said.

U-46 receives property tax money from the three counties in which its schools are located — Cook, DuPage and Kane. Historically, U-46 receives the majority of the DuPage and Kane County second installment tax payments in September, while Cook County payments typically arrive in August, Cornelissen said,

“Because Kane and DuPage counties represent approximately 63% of the district’s equalized assessed value and their second installment payments have been received as scheduled, these revenues helped mitigate the operational impact of the delayed Cook County payments,” she said.

The district also has been relying on fund balances to cover expenditures while waiting for the Cook County clerk’s office to disburse the tax money. Cornelissen said the district’s strong fund balances, substantial liquidity and extended cash-on-hand position allowed it to maintain operational stability without adverse impact to students, staff or programs.

Last year, U-46 received $73.8 million from Cook County in August 2024, Cornelissen said. That represented 19.7% of the $374.9 million total property tax revenue the district expected for its 2025-26 budget.

U-46 and other Cook County taxing bodies have been waiting months to be given their cut of property tax revenue because there have been issues with the county’s new system from Texas-based Tyler Technology, which handles data between property tax offices, according to the county.

The glitches led to the second installment of annual property tax bills being sent out in October when they’re typically to be paid by Aug. 1. Then, after the tax money came in, county officials struggled with their distribution system to correctly allocate the $8 billion in collected dollars to the county’s hundreds of districts.

Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas’ staff worked over the holiday to build a stopgap solution so that taxing districts would receive about 20% of their money via an ACH, or automated clearinghouse transaction, according to a Dec. 26 news release. About $2.3 billion in emergency funding is being distributed from the county straight into about 500 taxing bodies’ accounts, according to Pappas’ office.

The stopgap measure won’t replace the latest system fix, part of a roughly decade-long upgrade the county undertook with Tyler Technologies, officials said. They will have to go through a “true-up process” after the fix is made to ensure final distributions are correct. Other fixes are still needed to handle refunds and certificates of error.

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s office doesn’t have a statutory role in the property tax system, but her Bureau of Technology maintains the mainframe computers that hold decades of property tax data, according to reports.

In recent weeks, officials discovered Tyler had not been given the correct file to run tests. Pappas blamed the Bureau of Technology, which originally maintained the data on the old system, and faulted Tyler’s past failures in the Friday release.

Preckwinkle’s office said it essentially functions as a waiter and provides what’s asked. The problem “was the responsibility of the treasurer, and no other office,” Preckwinkle’s office said in a statement.

The Chicago Tribune contributed to this report.

Mike Danahey is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/31/u46-property-tax-cook-county/ 

With health care subsidies expiring in the new year, Cook County Health officials and political leaders on Wednesday warned the impact will not only hurt millions of Americans but also affect the county’s bottom line and hospitals around the state.

Congress remains at a stalemate over the future of subsidies for certain households that buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. During the pandemic, Congress expanded eligibility for those subsidies and boosted the tax credit but only through the end of 2025. Millions took advantage at the time and now, with the subsidies expiring, they face the risk of seeing their premiums double without federal help, the local officials warned.

Congressional Democrats prolonged the government shutdown to extend those premium tax credits but failed to secure it. A bipartisan group of House members filed a discharge petition to force a vote on the issue in early January, but Senate Republicans have opposed extending it without changes to reduce the cost to the federal government.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates a simple extension would cost more than $100 billion annually.

But Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who joined CCH medical leaders and U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi at a news conference in the John H. Stroger Hospital Professional Building on Wednesday, warned the cost “would be immediate and personal.”

The expiration will result in “higher premiums, lost coverage, delayed care and growing anxiety about what happens when someone gets sick,” Preckwinkle said. “In Cook County, we know exactly who bears the brunt of these cuts: working families, seniors on fixed incomes, people managing chronic conditions, and communities that have already faced too many barriers to care.”

Average monthly ACA premiums are projected to roughly double, Krishnamoorthi, one of three Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate, said. Of the 360,000 Cook County residents who rely on ACA coverage, 90% of them “depend on these tax credits to afford their coverage.”

Premium tax cuts will remain available for a subset of people, but the level of support will decrease for most. Anyone earning more than 400% of the federal poverty level — or around $63,000 per year for a single person — won’t be eligible for the remaining tax credits.

“Some will need to choose between food on their table and seeing a doctor, or getting a mammogram or a blood test,” said Donnica Austin-Cathey, Stroger’s chief hospital executive. “Some will need to choose between diabetes medication or paying their rent.”

The Affordable Care Act fundamentally changed CCH: more patients were insured and received preventive care, resulting in fewer visits to emergency rooms for expensive chronic conditions. CCH’s mission has been to treat all patients regardless of their ability to pay. That has meant many patients were treated on the county’s dime.

But the ACA allowed CCH to receive payments for insured care and also opened the door to the county running its own Medicaid managed care program, CountyCare, which separately bolstered its budget.

The expiration of those premium subsidies, combined with changes to Medicaid that were part of President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill Act, will partially reverse that, officials said. Hospitals across the state may see more uninsured patients coming to emergency rooms with critical health problems that are more expensive to treat than if patients had had preventive and regular care.

“These costs will not disappear. They are pushed onto hospitals, counties and ultimately, taxpayers,” Krishnamoorthi said.

CCH projects charity care will rise from a pandemic low of $134 million in 2022 to $380 million in 2026.

Preckwinkle said Cook County will continue to welcome all patients and is expanding its outreach “so residents can understand their options, maintain coverage where possible, and transition into CountyCare or other programs when federal support falls away,” and said the county has some reserves to weather the fiscal storm.

Krishnamoorthi said he expects the discharge petition to pass the U.S. House next week.

“At that point, I think the pressure will be on” the Senate to act, he said.

If the Senate approves a deal, he said it is not too late to apply the credits retroactively — but that those who have opted out of insurance coverage entirely because of the cost may be out of luck. In the meantime, he said, “insurance companies absolutely should do whatever it takes to kind of tide people over for as long as they can.”

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/31/as-federal-health-tax-credits-end-chicago-area-leaders-warn-about-costs-to-cook-county-and-illinois-hospitals/ 

Former ComEd lobbyist Michael McClain, a longtime ally and confidant of disgraced former House Speaker Michael Madigan, reported to prison Monday to serve a two-year sentence for his role in what federal prosecutors have described as a sprawling bribery scheme targeting Madigan, federal prison records show.

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate locator, McClain, 78, is being held at a minimum-security prison camp with an adjoining medical facility in Kentucky.

His time in custody begins about 2 ½ years after he was convicted of playing a central role in an arrangement to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars in no-work contracts and other perks to Madigan associates in exchange for the speaker’s help with ComEd’s legislative agenda.

U.S. District Judge Manish Shah sentenced McClain to two years in prison at a July hearing, calling his relationship with Madigan “a criminal alliance” that McClain had taken pains to conceal.

“It’s important for the punishment to reflect the harsh fact that this was corruption,” the judge said.

Prosecutors had originally asked for 70 months in prison, but dramatically reduced that ask to 36 months based on sentences handed down to other defendants in the “ComEd 4” and new information about McClain’s ill health.

Earlier this year, a jury convicted Madigan himself on 10 counts of bribery conspiracy and other corruption charges. Madigan reported in October to a low-security federal prison camp in West Virginia to begin serving his 7 ½ -year sentence on corruption charges. That prison camp is about 350 miles from the facility where McClain is now serving time.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/31/madigan-michael-mcclain-reports-prison/