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Two of the biggest names in R&B music history — Bobby Brown and Keith Sweat — will square off in the next Verzuz battle.

Their battle, sponsored by Essence — an African American women’s lifestyle magazine — is scheduled at 7 p.m. Thursday via Instagram, the Triller app, the Fite TV app, and Essence.com.

The duo, who have hit records spanning decades, are often seen in the pantheon of the genre’s history in terms of success and influence.

Brown, a Boston native, came to prominence first as a member of the R&B group New Edition, signing lead on the 1983 song, “Candy Girl,” as well as “Jealous Girl” and “Mr. Telephone Man,” among others.

Following his exit from the group, Brown launched his solo career in 1986 with “King of Stage,” his debut album, which produced “Girlfriend,” a Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping song. Brown’s career took off with the seven-time platinum album “Don’t Be Cruel,” which consisted of five Billboard Hot R&B chart-topping singles “My Prerogative,” “Roni,” “Rock Wit’cha,” “Every Little Step,” and “Don’t Be Cruel.”

Brown’s other hits include “Humpin’ Around,” “On Our Own” from the “Ghostbusters II” soundtrack, and “Thug Lovin’ “with Ja Rule, among others.

He also frequently collaborated with Verzuz battle contestant, producer Teddy Riley, who is credited with being one of the pioneers of “New Jack Swing,” an R&B and hip-hop hybrid popularized by the aforementioned Brown, Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige, New Edition, Bell Biv Devoe, Janet Jackson, Guy, Jodeci, and R.Kelly and Public Announcement, among many others.

SiriusXM

Sweat, a Harlem, New York, native, who has 13 solo albums, has garnered hit singles including “Make It Last Forever,” “Nobody,” “I Want Her,” “Make You Sweat,” “I’ll Give All My Love to You,” “Merry Go Round,” “Don’t Stop Your Love,” and “Twisted,” among many others.

During his first seven solo albums, Sweat, at best, went four-times platinum (“Keith Sweat”), and at worst, “Didn’t See Me Coming,” went gold.

Sweat, a 2013 Soul Train Lifetime Achievement Award winner, later found success with R&B supergroup LSG, consisting of Levert member Gerald Levert, Sweat, and New Edition member Johnny Gill, with “Levert.Sweat.Gill,” a double-platinum album. Sweat is also credited with discovering R&B groups “Silk” and “Kut Klose,” who garnered success with hit singles “Freak Me” and “I Like.”

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When Bill Cosby was convicted in 2018 of drugging and molesting a woman, Lisa Christie told her husband that she thought the comedian once known as “America’s Dad” would die in jail.

But on Wednesday, Cosby, 83, was released from prison after Pennsylvania’s highest court threw out his sexual assault conviction, leaving victims feeling shocked and discouraged.

“Some people say this … was a partial justice. No, it’s kind of erasing everything that was just done as if it didn’t happen,” Christie told the Chicago Sun-Times in a phone interview Wednesday . “… There’s been a huge injustice.”

Christie, a former Mrs. America-turned-evangelist, came forward with allegations in 2015 that Cosby flew her to Chicago and then threatened her career after she refused to sleep with him. Before that, she said she viewed Cosby as a father figure, who made her an extra on his show and took her to Jell-O commercial shoots.

“He was like a dad to me, literally. I knew him for almost two years, and he kind of replaced — my dad was always busy working, and so he kind of understood that, and he filled in the gaps there and took advantage of that,” Christie said.

Christie, 52, acknowledged that many of the other victims are still angry about what happened to them, though she has forgiven Cosby, leaving the punishment to God.

“God’s bigger,” she said.

Still, Christie, who lives in western New York, was shocked to hear Crosby was released after serving nearly three years of a three- to 10-year sentence for drugging and violating Temple University sports administrator Andrea Constand in 2004 following the court’s ruling that the prosecutor who brought the case was bound by his predecessor’s agreement not to charge Cosby.

“I hope that he had some kind of change, but so far, he won’t come forward and say anything. To me, that’s very narcissistic; no empathy for any of the victims, because if he’s truly changed in his prison time, he would have came out and said something,” Christie said.

Instead, Cosby thanked his supporters in a social media post Wednesday night hours after he flashed the V-for-victory sign to a helicopter overhead as he trudged into his suburban Philadelphia home.

“That’s very sad,” Christie said. “That’s like a slap in the face to every single victim he’s ever had.”

The former “Cosby Show” star — the first celebrity tried and convicted in the #MeToo era — had no comment as he arrived home earlier in the day and just smiled and nodded later at a news conference outside, where his lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, said: “We are thrilled to have Mr. Cosby home.”

“He served three years of an unjust sentence, and he did it with dignity and principle,” she added.

AP

In a statement, Constand and her lawyers called the ruling disappointing, and they, like many other advocates, expressed fear that it could discourage sexual assault victims from coming forward. “We urge all victims to have their voices heard,” they added.

Cosby was arrested in 2015, when a district attorney armed with newly unsealed evidence — the comic’s damaging deposition in a lawsuit brought by Constand — filed charges against him just days before the 12-year statute of limitations was about to run out.

But the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said Wednesday that District Attorney Kevin Steele, who made the decision to arrest Cosby, was obligated to stand by his predecessor’s promise not to charge Cosby, though there was no evidence that agreement was ever put in writing.

Justice David Wecht, writing for a split court, said Cosby had relied on the previous district attorney’s decision not to charge him when the comedian gave his potentially incriminating testimony in Constand’s civil case.

The court called Cosby’s subsequent arrest “an affront to fundamental fairness, particularly when it results in a criminal prosecution that was forgone for more than a decade.” It said justice and “fair play and decency” require that the district attorney’s office stand by the decision of the previous DA.

The justices said that overturning the conviction and barring any further prosecution “is the only remedy that comports with society’s reasonable expectations of its elected prosecutors and our criminal justice system.”

Cosby was promptly set free from the state prison in suburban Montgomery County and driven home.

“What we saw today was justice, justice for all Americans,” said another Cosby attorney, Andrew Wyatt. “Mr. Cosby’s conviction being overturned is for the world and all Americans who are being treated unfairly by the judicial system and some bad officers.”

Bonjean said Cosby was “extremely happy to be home” and “looks forward to reuniting with his wife and children.” Several supporters outside yelled, “Hey, hey, hey!” — the catchphrase of Cosby’s animated Fat Albert character — which brought a smile from him.

He later tweeted an old photo of himself with his fist raised and eyes closed, with the caption: “I have never changed my stance nor my story. I have always maintained my innocence. Thank you to all my fans, supporters and friends who stood by me through this ordeal. Special thanks to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for upholding the rules of law.”

In a statement, Steele, the district attorney, said Cosby went free “on a procedural issue that is irrelevant to the facts of the crime.” He commended Constand for coming forward and added: “My hope is that this decision will not dampen the reporting of sexual assaults by victims.”

“I am furious to hear this news,” actor Amber Tamblyn, a founder of Time’s Up, an advocacy group for sex-crime victims, said on Twitter. “I personally know women who this man drugged and raped while unconscious. Shame on the court and this decision.”

But “Cosby Show” co-star Phylicia Rashad tweeted: “FINALLY!!!! A terrible wrong is being righted — a miscarriage of justice is corrected!”

She sent out a second tweet offering her full support of sexual assault survivors.

“My post was in no way intended to be insensitive to their truth. Personally, I know from friends and family that such abuse has lifelong residual effects. My heartfelt wish is for healing,” Rashad wrote.

Four Supreme Court justices formed the majority that ruled in Cosby’s favor, while three others dissented in whole or in part.

Peter Goldberger, a suburban Philadelphia lawyer with an expertise in criminal appeals, said prosecutors could ask the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for reargument or reconsideration, but it would be a very long shot.

“I can’t imagine that with such a lengthy opinion, with a thoughtful concurring opinion and a thoughtful dissenting opinion, that you could honestly say they made a simple mistake that would change their minds if they point it out to them,” Goldberger said.

Even though Cosby was charged only with the assault on Constand, the judge at his trial allowed five other accusers to testify that they, too, were similarly victimized by Cosby in the 1980s. Prosecutors called them as witnesses to establish what they said was a pattern of behavior on Cosby’s part.

Cosby’s lawyers had argued on appeal that the use of the five additional accusers was improper. But the Pennsylvania high court did not weigh in on the question, saying it was moot, given the finding that Cosby should not have been prosecuted in the first place.

In sentencing Cosby, the trial judge had declared him a sexually violent predator who could not be safely allowed out in public and needed to report to authorities for the rest of his life.

In May, Cosby was denied parole after refusing to participate in sex offender programs behind bars. He said he would resist the treatment programs and refuse to acknowledge wrongdoing even if it meant serving the full 10 years.

The groundbreaking Black actor grew up in public housing in Philadelphia and made a fortune estimated at $400 million during his 50 years in the entertainment industry that included the TV shows “I Spy,” “The Cosby Show” and “Fat Albert,” along with comedy albums and a multitude of television commercials.

The suburban Philadelphia prosecutor who originally looked into Constand’s allegations, Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor, considered the case flawed because Constand waited a year to come forward and stayed in contact with Cosby afterward. Castor declined to prosecute and instead encouraged Constand to sue for damages.

Questioned under oath as part of that lawsuit, Cosby said he used to offer quaaludes to women he wanted to have sex with. He eventually settled with Constand for $3.4 million.

Portions of the deposition later became public at the request of The Associated Press and spelled Cosby’s downfall, opening the floodgates on accusations from other women and destroying the comic’s good-guy reputation and career. More than 60 women came forward to say Cosby violated them.

The AP does not typically identify sexual assault victims without their permission, which Constand has granted.

Cosby, in the deposition, acknowledged giving quaaludes to a 19-year-old woman before having sex with her at a Las Vegas hotel in 1976. Cosby called the encounter consensual.

On Wednesday, the woman, Therese Serignese, now 64, said the court ruling “takes my breath away.”

“I just think it’s a miscarriage of justice. This is about procedure. It’s not about the truth of the women,” she said. Serignese said she took solace in the fact Cosby served nearly three years behind bars: “That’s as good as it gets in America” for sex crime victims.

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Follow Maryclaire Dale on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Maryclairedale

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Back in 2012, just as Black Ensemble Theater was moving into its brand-new home in Uptown, the theater’s founder and CEO, Jackie Taylor, gave an interview to the Reader‘s Tony Adler. “I always knew that the theater company had to be more than just a name, it had to have an asset, it had to have a foundation,” Taylor told Adler. “Owning your own space, having your own theater solidifies you in a way that nothing else can. So when I started thinking about Black Ensemble as an institution that survives my lifetime, I knew that I had to start thinking in terms of transformation and solidification of the business.”

The move toward that transformation and solidification just got a big boost this month with the announcement of a $5 million grant to BET from MacKenzie Scott, the billionaire ex-wife of Amazon honcho Jeff Bezos who has pledged to give away most of her fortune in her lifetime.

Black Ensemble wasn’t the only Chicago-based organization to receive money in the third round of grants (which totaled $2,739,000,000) from Scott. Chicago’s Cultural Treasures, an initiative focused on providing support in many areas for BIPOC-led-and-focused arts and culture organizations, received $8 million, as did Pilsen’s National Museum of Mexican Art. The University of Illinois-Chicago got a whopping $40 million (the largest grant in its history), and Kennedy-King College received $5 million. (A complete list of recipients in this round is available at Scott’s Medium page.)

Now in its 46th year of operation, Black Ensemble, like most theaters, has suffered drastic drops in revenue from the COVID-19 shutdown. So the gift comes at a most opportune time.

“We lost almost two years now of earned revenue. So the grant just came at a very very vital time in our existence,” says Taylor. “Most of the grant is going to allow us to sustain. Well, of course we’ve paid some major bills that we have had for many years and were going in a circle with because we never could get them paid off. And the rest is to be able to survive at least another year on–because ticket sales are not going to just automatically come back to where they were. So we have to plan accordingly. So even though $5 million sounds like a lot, I sure wish it was 10.” Or, as Scott wrote, “Would [these organizations] still benefit from more (more advocates, more money, more volunteers)? Yes.”

The grants from Scott came without an application process, and are not earmarked to particular programs within an organization. That perceived lack of transparency has come under some criticism in the philanthropic world. A New York Times article quoted Maribel Morey, founding executive director of the Miami Institute for the Social Sciences. “MacKenzie Scott is a private citizen, but she is playing a public role . . . Much as a judge has to explain their logic, or a senator has to answer to their constituents, a philanthropist owes it to the public to explain how and why they came to their decisions.”

Scott wrote, “Because we believe that teams with experience on the front lines of challenges will know best how to put the money to good use, we encouraged them to spend it however they choose.” She and her advisers chose “286 high-impact organizations in categories and communities that have been historically underfunded and overlooked.”

For Taylor, a major goal is to move closer to finishing the company’s long-planned second stage at the Black Ensemble Theater and Cultural Center. While they still need more funds to complete the transformation of the upstairs space, Taylor sees that second stage as an incubator, and one that is closer to being a reality, thanks to Scott’s grant.

“I’d like it to be, first of all, a place for challenging youth,” notes Taylor. “A place where young people are running it, writing for it, and doing all the things that you need to do to keep a theater running. I want it to be a place where new audiences are developed, so that we keep our main audience happy on our mainstage, and then we start developing other audiences–younger audiences, maybe audiences that are not into musicals, but will have all kinds of different theater genres going on in that theater.”

Victory Gardens announces playwrights ensemble

For most of its 47 years, Victory Gardens Theater has fostered new writing through its playwrights ensemble. But the departures of former artistic director Dennis Zacek in 2011 and in 2020 of his successor, Chay Yew, led to disruptions and bad blood, with the ensemble feeling shut out of the leadership decisions made by the theater’s board. The ensemble Zacek had put together was put on emeritus status by Yew shortly after his arrival, while the ensemble Yew had in place resigned en masse in protest of the board naming then-executive director Erica Daniels to replace Yew as “executive artistic director.” Daniels resigned shortly after the ensemble announced their departure.

But current VG artistic director Ken-Matt Martin (whose appointment was announced in March) has taken steps to avoid some of the pitfalls of the past. Last week, the company named four playwrights as the current ensemble cohort: Marisa Carr, Keelay Gipson, Isaac Gomez, and Stacey Rose.

Gomez is well known to Chicago audiences from plays such as La Ruta at Steppenwolf and The Leopard Play, or Sad Songs for Lost Boys at Steep, and is a former literary manager for Victory Gardens. The other three haven’t been as widely produced in Chicago, but they have lengthy resumes around the nation.

Carr, a native of Milwaukee whose work has been produced at Milwaukee Rep and the Guthrie in Minneapolis, among many other places, is also a cofounder and former artistic director of the Twin Cities’ Turtle Theater Collective, which focuses on contemporary work by Native artists. She is Turtle Mountain Ojibwe from the Turtle clan. In an interview in March, Martin expressed a desire to bring more Native and Indigenous voices into the company. When I talked to him this week, he noted that Carr “will be one of many Native artists over the coming years.”

Rose is from Charlotte, North Carolina, and like Carr, has spent time with work in development through the Goodman Theatre’s playwrights’ unit. Gipson is based in New York, and like the rest of the new ensemble, he’s received commissions, productions, and residencies from many theaters.

For Martin, a key element to bringing in the new playwrights came out of his ongoing “listening tour” with Victory Gardens artists and staff members, past and present, including emeritus members of the playwrights ensemble.

“One of the biggest things in talking to members of the original playwrights ensemble, as well as folks who were from Chay’s era, was getting a deeper understanding of the kind of lack of structure and guarantees and everything else that had previously existed,” says Martin. He and literary manager Kat Zukaitis, whom he credits as a vital part of the decision-making process for selecting the new ensemble, wanted to make sure that the playwrights had access to board meetings, “so that these artists also have a deep opportunity to feel more engaged and aware of what’s actually happening in the rooms where the decisions get made.” Martin also credits Victory Gardens resident directors Lili-Anne Brown and Jess McLeod for the input and advocacy they’ve provided.

The new ensemble will also play a role in the selection of Victory Gardens’s acclaimed Ignition festival of new work, which will probably return sometime in the 2022 season.

Says Martin, “From them, there’s no sense of ‘We’re competition’ or anything like that, because they have their guaranteed slots. They’re gonna get produced, at least one world premiere, and they’re gonna get an Ignition slot, right? And so it’s beautiful because there’s a sense of community at play,” adding, “It just makes it a more involved process, which means artists feel like they’re not just on the outside of decisions being passed down to them, but they’re involved in the conversations leading up to them.”

The current cohort will also be involved in selecting those who follow them. The current terms for the ensemble expire in 2024. Martin explains, “The reason for that, to be fully transparent, is that I wanted it to be concurrent with my own contract term. So that if and when, hopefully that is a long time from now, I decide to transition or go away or whatever that might be, they will always be transitioning with me.” Which, given the tensions that erupted in the wake of past artistic transitions, seems a prudent step.

But mostly, Martin seems excited about having four more voices to call upon as he embarks on the journey to reopen Victory Gardens after the COVID shutdown. (The next season has yet to be announced.) “Between Jess and Lil and now the four of them, that really is what is making up my larger kind of artistic base of leaders that I get to run things by. I call them all the time, they call me. We throw things at the wall with one another.” v

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SURFSIDE, Florida — Search crews going through the ruins of a Florida condo tower pulled six more bodies from the rubble Wednesday, bringing the number of confirmed dead to 18. It was the highest one-day toll since the building collapsed almost a week ago into a heap of broken concrete.

The number of residents unaccounted stands at 147.

Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava made the announcement at an evening news conference. She said two of the dead were children.

Earlier in the day, crews searching for survivors in the ruins of a collapsed Florida condo tower built a ramp that should allow the use of heavier equipment, potentially accelerating the removal of concrete that “could lead to incredibly good news events,” the state fire marshal said Wednesday.

Since the sudden collapse of the 12-story Champlain Towers South last week in Surfside, rescuers have been working to peel back layers of concrete on the pancaked building without disturbing the unstable pile of debris.

Miami-Dade Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah told family members of those missing Wednesday that a ramp built onto the pile overnight allowed rescuers to use a crane on sections that were not previously accessible. He said that improves the chances of finding new pockets of space in the urgent search for survivors.

“We hope to start seeing some significant improvement in regards to the possibility of (finding) any voids that we cannot see,” Jadallah said.

In an interview with Miami television station WSVN, State Fire Marshal Jimmy Petronis described the ramp as “a Herculean effort” that would allow crews “to leverage massive equipment to remove mass pieces of concrete,” which could lead to good results.

Petronis told The Associated Press that the ramp will allow heavy equipment to get closer to areas where debris needs to be cleared. The new equipment includes a so-called nibbler, a massive machine that has a scissors-like tool at the end of a long arm to cut through concrete and rebar.

Officials have been concerned an underground parking garage could collapse under the weight of heavy equipment, so they decided to build the makeshift limestone ramp, Petronis said. He said dogs are used to check for survivors in the area where the machine works, and then the nibbler is sent in.

“So you can really make some serious rapid headway just because of the sheer hydraulic forces this thing can exert versus a human being with hand tools,” Patronis said.

The cause of the collapse is under investigation. A 2018 engineering report found that the building’s ground-floor pool deck was resting on a concrete slab that had “major structural damage” and needed extensive repairs. The report also found “abundant cracking” of concrete columns, beams and walls in the parking garage.

Just two months before the building came down, the president of its board wrote a letter to residents saying that structural problems identified in the 2018 inspection had “gotten significantly worse” and that major repairs would cost at least $15.5 million. With bids for the work still pending, the building suddenly collapsed last Thursday.

Rescuers still faced enormous obstacles as they spent a seventh day searching for survivors. The pancake collapse of the building has frustrated efforts to reach anyone who may have survived in a pocket of space.

Miami-Dade County Fire Rescue Chief Alan Cominsky said the so-called delayering process is difficult and dangerous.

“We’re working collaboratively as a group to try to attain that goal, and that’s to save someone’s life,” Cominsky said Wednesday. “It’s been tough. I just want to emphasize that. We’re still moving forward. We see the resources coming through. We’re exhausting every avenue here.”

Officials were also worried about the possibility of severe weather interfering with search efforts.

Crews have already had to deal with intermittent bad weather that caused temporary delays in the work, and they are now keeping an eye on two disorganized storm systems in the Atlantic Ocean. The National Hurricane Center said the storms have a chance of becoming tropical systems in the coming days, but it is unclear at this point whether they would pose a threat to the U.S.

Gov. Ron DeSantis said some of the resources in Surfside might have to be removed in case the storms hit any part of Florida. “‘Tis the season and you’ve got to be ready,” he said.

The possibility of severe weather prompted state officials to ask the federal government for an additional search and rescue team. Kevin Guthrie of the Florida Division of Emergency Management said the new team, which would likely come from Virginia, would be on hand if severe weather hits, allowing crews that have been working at the site for days to rotate out.

Authorities said it’s still a search-and-rescue operation, but no one has been found alive since hours after the collapse on Thursday.

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden planned to travel to Surfside on Thursday.

“They want to thank the heroic first responders, search-and-rescue teams and everyone who’s been working tirelessly around the clock, and meet with the families” waiting for word of their loved ones, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday.

Jadallah told family members Wednesday that if they want to meet with Biden, they should respond through an RSVP form from police and fire officials.

Miami-Dade Police Director Freddy Ramirez said he hopes Biden’s visit will be a morale booster for the devastated community.

“We’ve had several challenges from weather, sorrow, pain. And I think that the president coming will bring some unity here for our community, support, like our governor, our mayor, all of us together.”

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Associated Press writers Adriana Gomez Licon in Miami and Freida Frisaro in Fort Lauderdale contributed to this report.

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Rahm Emanuel liked to say there are five chief executive jobs in the nation worth holding: president; governor of California or New York; and mayor of New York or Chicago.

After his successor’s recent losing streak, Emanuel might want to cross mayor of Chicago off that list.

At a time when Lori Lightfoot appears most vulnerable to a potential re-election challenge, the once all-powerful job that made Richard J. Daley a kingmaker has — or is about to — become a shadow of what it was.

Chicago’s mayor will still wear the jacket for Chicago Public Schools. But a Chicago Teachers Union with expanded bargaining rights and a 21-member elected school board — both approved by the Illinois General Assembly over Lightfoot’s strenuous objections — will make it more difficult, it not impossible, for the mayor to make the changes voters demand.

The same goes for violent crime and the Chicago Police Department. There is no more stalling the civilian oversight board recommended by the Task Force on Police Accountability that Lightfoot co-chaired.

The civilian oversight board is likely to have the final say on police policy and be empowered to take a vote of no-confidence in the police superintendent that would trigger a similar City Council vote. The only question is whether Chicago voters will approve a binding referendum giving the oversight board even more power.

Adding to the mayor’s headaches are a tidal wave of police retirements and a firefighters pension bill that, Lightfoot claims, will saddle beleaguered Chicago taxpayers with $850 million in potential costs by 2055, setting the stage for a parade of future property tax increases.

Not to mention an emboldened Council that just handed the mayor her first defeat — on a 25-24 vote — on the issue that has divided Lightfoot and Council members since her inauguration: aldermanic prerogative.

“If the trend continues, there will be a period of the mayor being scapegoated for things that they’re no longer really responsible for or in charge of. It’s gonna be very difficult for anybody that is the mayor,” given those changes, said Pat O’Connor, a former 40th Ward alderman who served as Council floor leader under Emanuel and his predecessor, Richard M. Daley.

“In Chicago, we’re used to the mayor being in charge. In a lot of cities throughout the country, the mayor really isn’t in charge. They cut ribbons. They put forth ideas. But they don’t really perform the job of control.”

O’Connor pointed to the changed dynamic in Springfield after the departure of two top Chicago Democrats who were among city’s strongest champions: longtime House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton.

Madigan was forced out by the Commonwealth Edison bribery scandal that triggered the indictment of two close political operatives. He has not been charged and has denied wrongdoing.

“In the past, you could count on Springfield to help the mayor of Chicago. In the past, you could look at people to be supportive of trying to make the streets safer and trying to be supportive of police. And now, all of that is turned on its head,” O’Connor said.

“So a mayor coming in … is gonna have a difficult time getting their policies in place without a Council that’s willing to work with them and without a Springfield that’s willing to go the extra mile for the city, as it pretty much always did in the past.”

Democratic political consultant Peter Giangreco said it’s still early to know just how vulnerable Lightfoot really is and what impact the diminished role of the office — what one political insider called “the incredible shrinking mayor” — will have on possible mayoral challengers.

“If the mayor eventually … will have almost no say in the schools and you’ve got a potential position where they also can’t appoint the police [superintendent], the job becomes a glorified Streets and San commissioner job,” said Giangreco, who advised Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza’s 2019 mayoral campaign.

“Everything flows from public safety and education. If the mayor’s ability to affect those things continues to be restricted or taken away, it makes the job tougher to do and less appealing to run for.”

O’Connor, who spent many years as chairman of the Council’s Education Committee, argued the teachers union has been “pretty much running” CPS for a while, forcing the seven-member board appointed by the mayor to “play defense.”

That was evident when Lightfoot was forced to give away the store — at a cost of $1.5 billion over five years — to end the 11-day strike in 2019 by a union that had backed County Board President Toni Preckwinkle over Lightfoot in the mayoral election.

“It’s a tough way to run a system when, essentially, you’re trying to hold on as opposed to implement policy. But, at least you’re on the field when you’re playing defense. When you’re in the stands, it’s much harder to figure out how to impact the game,” O’Connor said of the elected, 21-member board.

Lightfoot campaigned as a staunch proponent of an elected school board, only to repeatedly block what she called an “unwieldy” bill tripling the size of the board to 21 members, with a president elected citywide.

“During the campaign, that was a very strong part of her pitch. To say, ‘Now that I’m here, I see more clearly and this is a bad idea,’ the horse was way out of the barn,” O’Connor said.

“But again, the relationship that previously existed between the mayor’s office and the state Legislature and the governor would pretty much have prevented those things from happening. And that relationship seems to be non-existent at this point.”

Lightfoot also campaigned on a promise to give a civilian oversight board the power to fire the police superintendent and also have the final say over police policy.

She hasn’t delivered on that promise, either — and blocked pending ordinances that would do what she said she would do. When she finally offered her own version of civilian oversight, it reserved those decision-making powers for the mayor.

“People felt double-crossed. Because of what the City Council and the Legislature thought of her, they’re sticking it to her,” the political observer said.

“Now, Chicago will have to live with the consequences of a weakened mayor. They have taken an important position and stripped it of its capacity to effect change.”

The mayor’s frayed relationship with the Council has been evident since her inauguration. But it came into sharp relief during the angry confrontation between Lightfoot and Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th) last week.

Lightfoot could not contain her anger after Taylor joined Ald. Ray Lopez (15th) in a parliamentary maneuver to delay Lightfoot’s appointment of Celia Meza as corporation counsel. They did it to protest the Law Department’s treatment of Anjanette Young, the woman whose home was raided by Chicago police officers who had the wrong address.

Taylor has since likened Lightfoot to a “bully” and said she wouldn’t speak to her until she apologizes.

“Who stands up to her? This is not the first time she did this to somebody. She does this all the time, and people let her get away with it,” Taylor has told the Sun-Times.

“It’s a ‘no.’ How many times do you keep letting a bully bully you? Clearly, this is bullying.”

Since that confrontation and the 25-24 vote to strip away from Lightfoot’s pandemic relief package that portion of the mayor’s ordinance that eliminates aldermanic control over sign permits, aldermen clearly smell political blood in the water.

In a letter to the mayor, 22 aldermen demanded that she “honor and consistently follow” Council rules of procedure, citing numerous occasions when Lightfoot made parliamentary rulings contradicting those rules.

Demands for the Council to hire its own legal counsel and its own parliamentarian are also gaining steam.

All that spells potential trouble when it comes to determining how $1.9 billion in federal coronavirus relief funds will be spent. That will be wrapped into Lightfoot’s unveiling of the 2022 city budget, which the mayor has moved to September — a month early.

In Round One of the 2019 mayoral election, Lightfoot finished first in a crowded field of 14 enticed by Emanuel’s decision to call it quits.

Lightfoot had languished in the single digits until Jan. 3, 2019, when the first round of federal charges were filed against Ald. Edward Burke (14th).

Preckwinkle’s mayoral campaign acknowledged that day she had received a $10,000 campaign contribution Burke allegedly muscled from a Burger King franchise owner. The Preckwinkle campaign said she knew nothing about the alleged shakedown and returned the contribution because it exceeded legal limits.

Preckwinkle tried desperately to distance herself from Burke — returning the money she raised at his house and using her position as Cook County Democratic Party chair to strip Burke of his role as head of judicial slate-making.

It didn’t work. In Round 2, Lightfoot swept all 50 wards.

This time around, the mayoral field is almost certain to be smaller — at least in part due to those soon-to-be-diminished mayoral powers.

Among the possible challengers are: former Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan; Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th); Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd); City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin; U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.); CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates; and City Clerk Anna Valencia, now running for Illinois secretary of state.

“Mayor Lightfoot has been given the benefit of the doubt for a while because of COVID. As the city recovers, there’s gonna be a re-focusing on her ability to get public safety under control. To do the two things that people want: Keep them safe in their homes and reform the police so these shootings of particularly Black and Brown young people come to an end,” Giangreco said.

“It’s tough to pull off. This is not just a Chicago problem. … We’ll see it play out in mayor’s races all over the country. That trying to enact racial justice reforms in the face of a nationwide spike in homicides is really, really tough. It gets tougher if the structure of government ties the mayor’s hands.”

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PHILADELPHIA — Pennsylvania’s highest court threw out Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction and released him from prison Wednesday in a stunning reversal of fortune for the comedian once known as “America’s Dad,” ruling that the prosecutor who brought the case was bound by his predecessor’s agreement not to charge Cosby.

Cosby, 83, flashed the V-for-victory sign to a helicopter overhead as he trudged into his suburban Philadelphia home after serving nearly three years of a three- to 10-year sentence for drugging and violating Temple University sports administrator Andrea Constand in 2004.

The former “Cosby Show” star — the first celebrity tried and convicted in the #MeToo era — had no comment as he arrived, and just smiled and nodded later at a news conference outside, where his lawyer Jennifer Bonjean said: “We are thrilled to have Mr. Cosby home.”

“He served three years of an unjust sentence and he did it with dignity and principle,” she added.

AP

In a statement, Constand and her lawyers called the ruling disappointing, and they, like many other advocates, expressed fear that it could discourage sexual assault victims from coming forward. “We urge all victims to have their voices heard,” they added.

Cosby was arrested in 2015, when a district attorney armed with newly unsealed evidence — the comic’s damaging deposition in a lawsuit brought by Constand — filed charges against him just days before the 12-year statute of limitations was about to run out.

But the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said Wednesday that District Attorney Kevin Steele, who made the decision to arrest Cosby, was obligated to stand by his predecessor’s promise not to charge Cosby, though there was no evidence that agreement was ever put in writing.

Justice David Wecht, writing for a split court, said Cosby had relied on the previous district attorney’s decision not to charge him when the comedian gave his potentially incriminating testimony in Constand’s civil case.

The court called Cosby’s subsequent arrest “an affront to fundamental fairness, particularly when it results in a criminal prosecution that was forgone for more than a decade.” It said justice and “fair play and decency” require that the district attorney’s office stand by the decision of the previous DA.

The justices said that overturning the conviction and barring any further prosecution “is the only remedy that comports with society’s reasonable expectations of its elected prosecutors and our criminal justice system.”

Cosby was promptly set free from the state prison in suburban Montgomery County and driven home.

“What we saw today was justice, justice for all Americans,” said another Cosby attorney, Andrew Wyatt. “Mr. Cosby’s conviction being overturned is for the world and all Americans who are being treated unfairly by the judicial system and some bad officers.”

Bonjean said Cosby was “extremely happy to be home” and “looks forward to reuniting with his wife and children.” Several supporters outside yelled, “Hey, hey, hey!” — the catchphrase of Cosby’s animated Fat Albert character — which brought a smile from him.

He later tweeted an old photo of himself with his fist raised and eyes closed, with the caption: “I have never changed my stance nor my story. I have always maintained my innocence. Thank you to all my fans, supporters and friends who stood by me through this ordeal. Special thanks to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for upholding the rules of law.”

In a statement, Steele, the district attorney, said Cosby went free “on a procedural issue that is irrelevant to the facts of the crime.” He commended Constand for coming forward and added: “My hope is that this decision will not dampen the reporting of sexual assaults by victims.”

“I am furious to hear this news,” actor Amber Tamblyn, a founder of Time’s Up, an advocacy group for sex-crime victims, said on Twitter. “I personally know women who this man drugged and raped while unconscious. Shame on the court and this decision.”

But “Cosby Show” co-star Phylicia Rashad tweeted: “FINALLY!!!! A terrible wrong is being righted — a miscarriage of justice is corrected!”

Four Supreme Court justices formed the majority that ruled in Cosby’s favor, while three others dissented in whole or in part.

Peter Goldberger, a suburban Philadelphia lawyer with an expertise in criminal appeals, said prosecutors could ask the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for reargument or reconsideration, but it would be a very long shot.

“I can’t imagine that with such a lengthy opinion, with a thoughtful concurring opinion and a thoughtful dissenting opinion, that you could honestly say they made a simple mistake that would change their minds if they point it out to them,” Goldberger said.

Even though Cosby was charged only with the assault on Constand, the judge at his trial allowed five other accusers to testify that they, too, were similarly victimized by Cosby in the 1980s. Prosecutors called them as witnesses to establish what they said was a pattern of behavior on Cosby’s part.

Cosby’s lawyers had argued on appeal that the use of the five additional accusers was improper. But the Pennsylvania high court did not weigh in on the question, saying it was moot, given the finding that Cosby should not have been prosecuted in the first place.

In sentencing Cosby, the trial judge had declared him a sexually violent predator who could not be safely allowed out in public and needed to report to authorities for the rest of his life.

In May, Cosby was denied parole after refusing to participate in sex offender programs behind bars. He said he would resist the treatment programs and refuse to acknowledge wrongdoing even if it meant serving the full 10 years.

The groundbreaking Black actor grew up in public housing in Philadelphia and made a fortune estimated at $400 million during his 50 years in the entertainment industry that included the TV shows “I Spy,” “The Cosby Show” and “Fat Albert,” along with comedy albums and a multitude of television commercials.

The suburban Philadelphia prosecutor who originally looked into Constand’s allegations, Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor, considered the case flawed because Constand waited a year to come forward and stayed in contact with Cosby afterward. Castor declined to prosecute and instead encouraged Constand to sue for damages.

Questioned under oath as part of that lawsuit, Cosby said he used to offer quaaludes to women he wanted to have sex with. He eventually settled with Constand for $3.4 million.

Portions of the deposition later became public at the request of The Associated Press and spelled Cosby’s downfall, opening the floodgates on accusations from other women and destroying the comic’s good-guy reputation and career. More than 60 women came forward to say Cosby violated them.

The AP does not typically identify sexual assault victims without their permission, which Constand has granted.

Cosby, in the deposition, acknowledged giving quaaludes to a 19-year-old woman before having sex with her at a Las Vegas hotel in 1976. Cosby called the encounter consensual.

On Wednesday, the woman, Therese Serignese, now 64, said the court ruling “takes my breath away.”

“I just think it’s a miscarriage of justice. This is about procedure. It’s not about the truth of the women,” she said. Serignese said she took solace in the fact Cosby served nearly three years behind bars: “That’s as good as it gets in America” for sex crime victims.

___

Follow Maryclaire Dale on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Maryclairedale

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Lucas Giolito took issue with Josh Donaldson’s antics as he crossed home plate after hitting a home run against him Tuesday night.

On Wednesday, Donaldson fired back against the White Sox right-hander. He even had some spicy words for Sox TV postgame host Ozzie Guillen.

“He calls me classless,” Donaldson said of Giolito. “I didn’t think I was showing him up during the game. I was talking to my bench.”

Donaldson appeared to yell “It’s not sticky anymore” while rubbing his hands together as he crossed the plate, an obvious dig at Giolito in the wake of Major League Baseball’s crackdown on pitchers’ use of sticky substances. Donaldson has been outspoken about pithers using it for some time.

“He’s a [bleeping] pest,” Giolito said after the Sox’ 7-6 win Tuesday, in which Giolito pitched six-plus innings of three-run ball to earn the win. “That’s kind of a classless move. If you’re going to talk s—, talk s— to my face. Don’t go across home plate and do all that, just come to me.”

Donaldson said he later talked face to face with Giolito and said Giolito didn’t say much to him.

“He said he thought it was annoying,” Donaldson said. “I said, ‘So what? I’m on the opposing team. What do you care about me? I’m in your face, I’m telling you what I think. What do you have to say about that?”

Donaldson said Giolito didn’t respond.

During the postgame show on NBC Sports Chicago Tuesday, Guillen said the Sox should throw at Donaldson. On Wednesday, Donaldson took issue, going so far as to mention Guillen’s career numbers and Guillen’s comments about Fidel Castro in 2012.

“And I got Ozzie Guillen talking s— on the air saying that, ‘I’d let one go, hit him in the ribs,’ ” Donaldson said. “Ozzie Guillen, you were a career .700 OPS hitter, man. You were a three-time All-Star and you had an under .700 OPS. My worst season in the big leagues is 150 points higher than that. This is also coming from the man that said he loves Fidel Castro. That’s who we’re taking advice from? What are we doing around here?

“Hey, I’m trying to make the game fair. I didn’t make the rules.”

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Nearly 16 months into the pandemic, COVID-19 is still finding insidious new ways to invade and devastate the human body.

Front of mind for public health officials in Chicago and beyond is the Delta variant of the coronavirus, which already accounts for more than 20% of new cases across the United States and “is likely to be our dominant strain here in the next couple of months,” according to Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady.

Overall case counts have bottomed out across Illinois as 69% of eligible residents have gotten at least one vaccine dose, but Gov. J.B. Pritzker is pleading for remaining unvaccinated residents to get a life-saving jab because Delta surges in other countries “are a harbinger of what could happen here.”

It’s hard to say how bad a wave of Delta variant cases could get, but experts say the solution is simple: Get more shots into arms.

Here’s a quick rundown of the latest focus of the pandemic, why experts are so concerned about it, and what it means for Illinois residents:

Where did the Delta variant come from?

It was termed the B.1.617.2 variant when it was first detected late last year in India, where it now makes up the vast majority of cases in that nation’s ongoing, devastating surge.

It’s one of the thousands of variants that form through genetic mutation while the virus has replicated billions of times, according to Dr. Michael Angarone, an associate professor of medicine and infectious disease specialist at Northwestern Medicine.

“As they replicate, that genetic material makes mistakes. It’s like if you type too fast, you’re going to miss a letter,” Angarone said.

Why is it dangerous?

Most variants are inconsequential, but some — like Delta — have proven to spread more easily. That’s what landed it on the list of several “variants of concern” highlighted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Delta variant is unique because its so-called spike proteins allow it to more strongly latch onto cells in the respiratory and circulatory systems, Angarone said.

The previously identified U.K. variant of the virus, which now makes up the majority of cases in the U.S., was about twice as infectious as the original form of the virus that swept the globe. The Delta variant could be up to 60% more infectious on top of that.

“It spreads so easily, even potentially outdoors,” said University of Chicago epidemiologist Dr. Emily Landon. “It’s a huge problem for unvaccinated individuals.”

Angarone said experts are most concerned about a variant springing from a variant, which hasn’t yet happened on a large scale. “That’s when you start to get big changes in how the virus operates — can it bypass the vaccine immunity?”

So do COVID-19 vaccines protect against the Delta variant?

Yes, though they’re slightly less effective against it. Research has shown the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are about 88% effective in preventing Delta cases, compared to 95% efficacy against the original strain of the virus. Another study suggested a similarly slight decrease in effectiveness for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

“Either way, the vaccines are still going to help protect people from ending up in the hospital,” Landon said.

Does the Delta variant make people more sick?

Some research has suggested the strain causes more severe symptoms and potentially a new one — hearing loss — but that’s still being studied.

How many Delta cases have been detected in Illinois?

The Illinois Department of Public Health has identified 103 cases, but that’s only a sliver of the actual total. Just a small fraction of positive cases are evaluated to see if they’re a variant case. From that figure, experts can extrapolate that there are “way more cases,” Landon said, likely thousands.

“The question is, will it take a foothold? Probably, among unvaccinated individuals,” she said.

I’m fully vaccinated. Should I be worried?

Probably not, unless you’re in a largely unvaccinated community that sees a severe outbreak.

That means it’s unlikely there’ll be a massive statewide surge in cases like the early months of the pandemic, not to mention the vicious resurgence Illinois suffered last fall.

“The vaccines are the walls that keep things contained,” Landon said. “But can one community become completely decimated by the Delta variant, in a neighborhood, in a church? Absolutely. Some areas are going to blow up. Will it overwhelm our health care system? Probably not.”

Angarone said even with the dangerous variants, COVID-19 will more likely end up “kind of like influenza, with a substantial number of people who get really sick, but nowhere near what we saw in early and mid periods of the pandemic.”

“What’s probably going to happen is we have enough immunity to protect most people, but see patches of outbreaks. But this pandemic has taught us that our crystal ball predictions are often wrong,” Angarone said.

How the Delta virus plays out in the U.K. over the next few weeks “will be telling,” he added.

I’ve already recovered from COVID-19. Should I be worried?

Very much so, if you’re not vaccinated. “These specific variants are especially suited to overcome immunity from a recovery,” Landon warned. “You’re certainly less protected.”

Does this mean I should keep masking up, even though the CDC has said it’s generally OK for fully vaccinated people to go maskless?

You’re not required to in Chicago or elsewhere in Illinois in most situations — but it couldn’t hurt.

The World Health Organization updated its guidance last week recommending vaccinated people keep wearing masks to help stem the Delta spread, but Arwady, Chicago’s health commissioner, said the city is sticking with the looser CDC guidelines because the virus is “in very good control locally, even with the Delta here.”

Landon said there’s “no black and white when it comes to prevention, but if we all wore masks inside, it would be much less likely to spread. I think wearing masks inside would be prudent right now. It’s probably not essential, but I wouldn’t throw away your mask yet. Keep thinking about your fellow man.”

What else should I do to help keep the Delta variant at bay?

The golden rules of the pandemic still stand.

“We have to use our sense of what we’re doing and who we’re going to be around,” Angarone said. “Wearing a mask and keeping distance — it’s still very helpful and will apply until we get this completely under control. And our most powerful tool is getting more people vaccinated.”

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Rahm Emanuel liked to say there are five chief executive jobs in the nation worth holding: president; governor of California or New York; and mayor of New York or Chicago.

After his successor’s recent losing streak, Emanuel might want to cross mayor of Chicago off that list.

At a time when Lori Lightfoot appears most vulnerable to a potential re-election challenge, the once all-powerful job that made Richard J. Daley a kingmaker has — or is about to — become a shadow of what it was.

Chicago’s mayor will still wear the jacket for Chicago Public Schools. But a Chicago Teachers Union with expanded bargaining rights and a 21-member elected school board — both approved by the Illinois General Assembly over Lightfoot’s strenuous objections — will make it more difficult, it not impossible, for the mayor to make the changes voters demand.

The same goes for violent crime and the Chicago Police Department. There is no more stalling the civilian oversight board recommended by the Task Force on Police Accountability that Lightfoot co-chaired.

The civilian oversight board is likely to have the final say on police policy and be empowered to take a vote of no-confidence in the police superintendent that would trigger a similar City Council vote. The only question is whether Chicago voters will approve a binding referendum giving the oversight board even more power.

Adding to the mayor’s headaches are a tidal wave of police retirements and a firefighters pension bill that, Lightfoot claims, will saddle beleaguered Chicago taxpayers with $850 million in potential costs by 2055, setting the stage for a parade of future property tax increases.

Not to mention an emboldened Council that just handed the mayor her first defeat — on a 25-24 vote — on the issue that has divided Lightfoot and Council members since her inauguration: aldermanic prerogative.

“If the trend continues, there will be a period of the mayor being scapegoated for things that they’re no longer really responsible for or in charge of. It’s gonna be very difficult for anybody that is the mayor,” given those changes, said Pat O’Connor, a former 40th Ward alderman.

“In Chicago, we’re used to the mayor being in charge. In a lot of cities throughout the country, the mayor really isn’t in charge. They cut ribbons. They put forth ideas. But they don’t really perform the job of control.”

O’Connor pointed to the changed dynamic in Springfield after the departure of two top Chicago Democrats who were among city’s strongest champions: longtime House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton.

Madigan was forced out by the Commonwealth Edison bribery scandal that triggered the indictment of two close political operatives. He has not been charged and has denied wrongdoing.

“In the past, you could count on Springfield to help the mayor of Chicago. In the past, you could look at people to be supportive of trying to make the streets safer and trying to be supportive of police. And now, all of that is turned on its head,” O’Connor said.

“So a mayor coming in … is gonna have a difficult time getting their policies in place without a Council that’s willing to work with them and without a Springfield that’s willing to go the extra mile for the city, as it pretty much always did in the past.”

Democratic political consultant Peter Giangreco said it’s still early to know just how vulnerable Lightfoot really is and what impact the diminished role of the office — what one political insider called “the incredible shrinking mayor” — will have on possible mayoral challengers.

“If the mayor eventually … will have almost no say in the schools and you’ve got a potential position where they also can’t appoint the police [superintendent], the job becomes a glorified Streets and San commissioner job,” said Giangreco, who advised Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza’s 2019 mayoral campaign.

“Everything flows from public safety and education. If the mayor’s ability to affect those things continues to be restricted or taken away, it makes the job tougher to do and less appealing to run for.”

O’Connor, who spent many years as chairman of the Council’s Education Committee, argued the teachers union has been “pretty much running” CPS for a while, forcing the seven-member board appointed by the mayor to “play defense.”

That was evident when Lightfoot was forced to give away the store — at a cost of $1.5 billion over five years — to end the 11-day strike in 2019 by a union that had backed County Board President Toni Preckwinkle over Lightfoot in the mayoral election.

“It’s a tough way to run a system when, essentially, you’re trying to hold on as opposed to implement policy. But, at least you’re on the field when you’re playing defense. When you’re in the stands, it’s much harder to figure out how to impact the game,” O’Connor said of the elected, 21-member board.

Lightfoot campaigned as a staunch proponent of an elected school board, only to repeatedly block what she called an “unwieldy” bill tripling the size of the board to 21 members, with a president elected citywide.

“During the campaign, that was a very strong part of her pitch. To say, ‘Now that I’m here, I see more clearly and this is a bad idea,’ the horse was way out of the barn,” O’Connor said.

“But again, the relationship that previously existed between the mayor’s office and the state legislature and the governor would pretty much have prevented those things from happening. And that relationship seems to be non-existent at this point.”

Lightfoot also campaigned on a promise to give a civilian oversight board the power to fire the police superintendent and also have the final say over police policy.

She hasn’t deliver on that promise, either — and blocked pending ordinances that would do what she said she would do. When she finally delivered her own version of civilian oversight, it reserved those decision-making powers to the mayor.

“People felt double-crossed. Because of what the City Council and the Legislature thought of her, they’re sticking it to her,” the political observer said.

“Now, Chicago will have to live with the consequences of a weakened mayor. They have taken an important position and stripped it of its capacity to effect change.”

The mayor’s frayed relationship with the Council has been evident since her inauguration. But it came into sharp relief during the angry confrontation between Lightfoot and Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th) last week.

Lightfoot could not contain her anger after Taylor joined Ald. Ray Lopez (15th) in a parliamentary maneuver to delay Lightfoot’s appointment of Celia Meza as corporation counsel. They did it to protest the Law Department’s treatment of Anjanette Young, the woman whose home was raided by Chicago police officers who had the wrong address.

Taylor has since likened Lightfoot to a “bully” and said she wouldn’t speak to her until she apologizes.

“Who stands up to her? This is not the first time she did this to somebody. She does this all the time, and people let her get away with it,” Taylor has told the Sun-Times.

“It’s a ‘no.’ How many times do you keep letting a bully bully you? Clearly, this is bullying.”

Since that confrontation and the 25-24 vote to strip away from Lightfoot’s pandemic relief package that portion of the mayor’s ordinance that eliminates aldermanic control over sign permits, aldermen clearly smell political blood in the water.

In a letter to the mayor, 22 aldermen demanded that she “honor and consistently follow” Council rules of procedure, citing numerous occasions when Lightfoot made parliamentary rulings contradicting those rules.

Demands for the Council to hire its own legal counsel and its own parliamentarian are also gaining steam.

All that spells potential trouble when it comes to determining how $1.9 billion in federal coronavirus relief funds will be spent. That will be wrapped into Lightfoot’s unveiling of the 2022 city budget, which the mayor has moved to September — a month early.

In Round One of the 2019 mayoral election, Lightfoot finished first in a crowded field of 14 enticed by Emanuel’s decision to call it quits.

Lightfoot had languished in the single digits until Jan. 3, 2019, when the first round of federal charges were filed against Ald. Edward Burke (14th).

Preckwinkle’s mayoral campaign acknowledged that day she had received a $10,000 campaign contribution Burke allegedly muscled from a Burger King franchise owner. The Preckwinkle campaign said she knew nothing about the alleged shakedown and returned the contribution because it exceeded legal limits.

Preckwinkle tried desperately to distance herself from Burke — returning the money she raised at his house and using her position as Cook County Democratic Party chairwoman to strip Burke of his role as head of judicial slate-making.

It didn’t work. In Round 2, Lightfoot swept all 50 wards.

This time around, the mayoral field is almost certain to be smaller — at least in part due to those soon-to-be-diminished mayoral powers.

Among the possible challengers are: former Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan; Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th); Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd); City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin; U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.); CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates; and City Clerk Anna Valencia, now running for Illinois secretary of state.

“Mayor Lightfoot has been given the benefit of the doubt for a while because of COVID. As the city recovers, there’s gonna be a re-focusing on her ability to get public safety under control. To do the two things that people want: Keep them safe in their homes and reform the police so these shootings of particularly Black and Brown young people come to an end,” Giangreco said.

“It’s tough to pull off. This is not just a Chicago problem. … We’ll see it play out in mayor’s races all over the country. That trying to enact racial justice reforms in the face of a nationwide spike in homicides is really, really tough. It gets tougher if the structure of government ties the mayor’s hands.”

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PHILADELPHIA — Pennsylvania’s highest court threw out Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction and released him from prison Wednesday in a stunning reversal of fortune for the comedian once known as “America’s Dad,” ruling that the prosecutor who brought the case was bound by his predecessor’s agreement not to charge Cosby.

Cosby, 83, flashed the V-for-victory sign to a helicopter overhead as he trudged into his suburban Philadelphia home after serving nearly three years of a three- to 10-year sentence for drugging and violating Temple University sports administrator Andrea Constand in 2004.

The former “Cosby Show” star — the first celebrity tried and convicted in the #MeToo era — had no comment as he arrived, and just smiled and nodded later at a news conference outside, where his lawyer Jennifer Bonjean said: “We are thrilled to have Mr. Cosby home.”

“He served three years of an unjust sentence and he did it with dignity and principle,” she added.

AP

Cosby was arrested in 2015, when a district attorney armed with newly unsealed evidence — the comic’s damaging deposition in a lawsuit brought by Constand — filed charges against him just days before the 12-year statute of limitations was about to run out.

But the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said Wednesday that District Attorney Kevin Steele, who made the decision to arrest Cosby, was obligated to stand by his predecessor’s promise not to charge Cosby, though there was no evidence that agreement was ever put in writing.

Justice David Wecht, writing for a split court, said Cosby had relied on the previous district attorney’s decision not to charge him when the comedian gave his potentially incriminating testimony in Constand’s civil case.

The court called Cosby’s subsequent arrest “an affront to fundamental fairness, particularly when it results in a criminal prosecution that was forgone for more than a decade.” It said justice and “fair play and decency” require that the district attorney’s office stand by the decision of the previous DA.

The justices said that overturning the conviction and barring any further prosecution “is the only remedy that comports with society’s reasonable expectations of its elected prosecutors and our criminal justice system.”

Cosby was promptly set free from the state prison in suburban Montgomery County and driven home.

“What we saw today was justice, justice for all Americans,” said another Cosby attorney, Andrew Wyatt. “Mr. Cosby’s conviction being overturned is for the world and all Americans who are being treated unfairly by the judicial system and some bad officers.”

Bonjean said Cosby was “extremely happy to be home” and “looks forward to reuniting with his wife and children.” Several supporters outside yelled, “Hey, hey, hey!” — the catchphrase of Cosby’s animated Fat Albert character — which brought a smile from him.

In a statement, Steele said Cosby went free “on a procedural issue that is irrelevant to the facts of the crime.” He commended Constand for coming forward and added: “My hope is that this decision will not dampen the reporting of sexual assaults by victims.”

Constand and her lawyer did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

“FINALLY!!!! A terrible wrong is being righted — a miscarriage of justice is corrected!” the actor’s “Cosby Show” co-star Phylicia Rashad tweeted.

“I am furious to hear this news,” actor Amber Tamblyn, a founder of Time’s Up, an advocacy group for victims of sexual assault, said on Twitter. “I personally know women who this man drugged and raped while unconscious. Shame on the court and this decision.”

Four Supreme Court justices formed the majority that ruled in Cosby’s favor, while three others dissented in whole or in part.

Peter Goldberger, a suburban Philadelphia lawyer with an expertise in criminal appeals, said prosecutors could ask the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for reargument or reconsideration, but it would be a very long shot.

“I can’t imagine that with such a lengthy opinion, with a thoughtful concurring opinion and a thoughtful dissenting opinion, that you could honestly say they made a simple mistake that would change their minds if they point it out to them,” Goldberger said.

Even though Cosby was charged only with the assault on Constand, the judge at his trial allowed five other accusers to testify that they, too, were similarly victimized by Cosby in the 1980s. Prosecutors called them as witnesses to establish what they said was a pattern of behavior on Cosby’s part.

Cosby’s lawyers had argued on appeal that the use of the five additional accusers was improper. But the Pennsylvania high court did not weigh in on the question, saying it was moot, given the finding that Cosby should not have been prosecuted in the first place.

In New York, the judge at last year’s trial of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, whose case helped sparked the #MeToo movement in 2017, let four other accusers testify. Weinstein was convicted and sentenced to 23 years in prison.

In sentencing Cosby, the trial judge had ruled him a sexually violent predator who could not be safely allowed out in public and needed to report to authorities for the rest of his life.

In May, Cosby was denied parole after refusing to participate in sex offender programs behind bars. He said he would resist the treatment programs and refuse to acknowledge wrongdoing even if it meant serving the full 10 years.

The groundbreaking Black actor grew up in public housing in Philadelphia and made a fortune estimated at $400 million during his 50 years in the entertainment industry that included the TV shows “I Spy,” “The Cosby Show” and “Fat Albert,” along with comedy albums and a multitude of television commercials.

The suburban Philadelphia prosecutor who originally looked into Constand’s allegations, Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor, considered the case flawed because Constand waited a year to come forward and stayed in contact with Cosby afterward. Castor declined to prosecute and instead encouraged Constand to sue for damages.

Questioned under oath as part of that lawsuit, Cosby said he used to offer quaaludes to women he wanted to have sex with. He eventually settled with Constand for $3.4 million.

Portions of the deposition later became public at the request of The Associated Press and spelled Cosby’s downfall, opening the floodgates on accusations from other women and destroying the comic’s good-guy reputation and career. More than 60 women came forward to say Cosby violated them.

The AP does not typically identify sexual assault victims without their permission, which Constand has granted.

Cosby, in the deposition, acknowledged giving quaaludes to a 19-year-old woman before having sex with her at a Las Vegas hotel in 1976. Cosby called the encounter consensual.

On Wednesday, the woman, Therese Serignese, now 64, said the court ruling “takes my breath away.”

“I just think it’s a miscarriage of justice. This is about procedure. It’s not about the truth of the women,” she said. Serignese said she took solace in the fact Cosby served nearly three years behind bars: “That’s as good as it gets in America” for sex crime victims.

Follow Maryclaire Dale on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Maryclairedale

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