Senior retired military officers with the American Security Project were in Chicago Thursday to call attention to what they say is a grave national security threat — climate change.
Anti-war activists on Monday morning picketed outside of the Boeing Company's annual shareholders meeting in Chicago, calling on the aerospace company to drop its bid to win the U.S.Navycontract for the next generation carrier-based drone known as the Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) aircraft.
Chicago-based Boeing and three other companies — General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman — are vying to work on the naval drone, which would be able to launch from an aircraft carrier.
Ten protestors with the Anti-War Committee gathered outside of Chicago's Field Museum, where Boeing's shareholders meeting was being held, to urge the company to build something better than "deadly weapons."
U.S. Congressmen Luis Gutierrez (D-IL,4) and Mike Coffman (R-CO,6) are calling on military officials to promptly investigate whether U.S. citizens with undocumented immigrant family members are being barred from enlisting in branches of the Armed Forces.
The two congressmen on Wednesday sent a letter to the secretaries of the Air Force, Army and Navy, urging them to finish a review of the U.S. Armed Services' enlistment policies.
The congressmen, along with 31 other House members, first requested answers about possible exclusionary enlistment rules in a letter they sent to the secretaries on November 21. Illinois Democratic Reps. Bill Foster (11), Mike Quigley (5) and Jan Schakowsky (9) signed on to that letter.
The bipartisan group of 33 congressmen raised concerns about the issue following reports of military recruiters rejecting enlistments from U.S. citizens with spouses and children living illegally in the country.
"There is no reason I can think of why any branch of the military should restrict the military service of individuals based on the immigration status of someone else in their family. None," Gutierrez, chairman of the Immigration Task Force of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said in November. "I want to know where this is happening, why and what is being done to fix it."
A number of civilian military employees in Illinois returned to work Monday thanks to the Pay Our Military Act, which Congress passed just before the government shutdown took effect last Tuesday.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel is teaming up with the U.S. Department of the Navy in the launch of a summer program that will provide intensive science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education to more than 1,000 students in Chicago Public Schools.
Anti-war activists on Monday morning picketed outside of the Boeing Company's annual shareholders meeting in Chicago, calling on the aerospace company to drop its bid to win the 
U.S. Congressmen Luis Gutierrez (D-IL,4) and Mike Coffman (R-CO,6) are calling on military officials to promptly investigate whether U.S. citizens with undocumented immigrant family members are being barred from enlisting in branches of the Armed Forces.