Chicagoans have faced constitutional abuses, soaring costs and political turmoil over the past 12 tumultuous months.
But they also got one of their own to lead the Vatican, plus an occasionally shirtless coach who just might be leading the Bears to big things. So maybe 2025 was a wash?
Take stock of a year that felt like five for the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ journalists who covered it all.
Trump targets Chicago for immigration siege, funding cuts
President Donald Trump’s return to the White House touched nearly every corner of daily life in the city and beyond, affecting no group more than the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who call the Chicago area home.
Bands of federal agents swept through Latino communities, ostensibly targeting the “worst of the worst” criminals for deportation but often rounding up longtime taxpayers whose only crime was crossing the border and sticking around without legal status. U.S. citizens have also been wrongly detained in military-style raids.
How did they choose whom to pick up? Partly by “how they look,” the Border Patrol’s social media-savvy commander Greg Bovino told us.
His agents also marched downtown and into wealthier, whiter neighborhoods, often hurling cans of teargas in defiance of a federal judge’s order and prompting massive protests that stretched from the Broadview ICE facility to Grant Park.
Trump tried to send in the National Guard to quell supposed chaos, but the courts have blocked a military deployment so far, rejecting the administration’s claims about demonstrations that have been overwhelmingly peaceful.
Gov. JB Pritzker, Mayor Brandon Johnson and the state’s other Democratic leaders have grappled with how to hold anyone accountable, let alone keep up with the myriad funding cuts that have been implemented or threatened by the Trump administration.
Those rollbacks have targeted research institutions, transit agencies, Medicaid and other safety nets, plus many school programs and art grants, among others — not to mention our own radio station.
Da Pope
A guy from Dolton becomes the leader of the Catholic world.
These words weren’t on many 2025 bingo cards back in January, but there was South Side Rob emerging with the white smoke from the Sistine Chapel, introducing himself to the world as Pope Leo XIV.
In a year befouled by AI slop, images of the pope wearing a White Sox hat and joining a Sox chant in St. Peter’s Square warranted a second glance. But don’t worry — photos unearthed by the Sun-Times debunked false initial reports the fan formerly known as Robert Prevost had rooted for the Cubs. Sacrilege!
While the pope disagrees with plenty of policies in his home state — like new legislation that will allow terminally ill people to end their lives with a doctor’s prescription — faithful eyes are looking forward to a potential homecoming that would mark Chicago’s first papal visit since John Paul stopped by in 1979.
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s rocky year
The progressive mayor’s second full calendar year in office would’ve been tough enough without the leader of the free world keeping Chicago in his crosshairs. But it wasn’t just Trump giving Johnson a hard time.
There was an emboldened Chicago City Council handing him his biggest loss yet just in time for the holidays, passing a budget without the controversial head tax he wanted to slap on big corporations.
There was the first-ever partially elected school board defying him to deliver another major budget loss, among other CPS headaches. There was mounting tension within the labor movement that carried Johnson to the Fifth Floor. And there was an inspector general grilling him over City Hall’s gift closet.
Dismal poll numbers suggested Johnson could use a fresh start in the new year as much as anyone, especially with 2027 mayoral challengers already sizing up the field.
Ben there, Bears back?
If you weren’t drinking the Bears’ Kool-Aid after new head coach Ben Johnson tore his shirt off — or eating the free Wieners Circle hot dogs that his bare torso earned fans — you probably were after Caleb Johnson’s miracle overtime touchdown throw against the Packers sealed the team’s biggest win in years.
The city might not be in full-on shuffle-mode just yet, but the Bears’ first postseason trip in five years heralded a new era of competitive football rarely seen at Soldier Field.
It was more than enough to distract from the off-field failure of the front office, which recycled a familiar strategy from its stadium playbook by threatening to move to Indiana if Illinois lawmakers don’t give them a property tax break to build a dome in Arlington Heights.
Meanwhile, the Fire found a smooth path to approval for a new South Loop stadium with one simple trick: having their billionaire owner pay for it himself.
The White Sox would love to elbow in next to them at The 78. New chairman-in-waiting Justin Ishbia doesn’t know when or where it’ll happen, but he promised a new home for the South Siders at some point under his stewardship.
Madigan convicted
Ex-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan landed in a federal prison camp, putting an ignominious exclamation mark on his half-century reign over just about every corner of the state’s political world.
The Southwest Side stalwart was finally brought down on wire fraud and bribery conspiracy convictions among others tied to a long-running scheme that saw ComEd pay Madigan allies more than $1 million in exchange for the speaker’s blessing on Springfield legislation benefiting the utility.
The 7 1/2-year sentence and $2.5 million fine marked one of the harshest public corruption sentences Chicago has seen in years. The 83-year-old has appealed in court — and to Trump, in search of a pardon.
Cost-of-living crisis
It got a lot more expensive to get by in ‘25.
Property taxes more than doubled in parts of Cook County. Home insurance rates shot up due to more frequent severe weather. Electric bills surged, thanks to AI data centers sucking up gobs of power that soon could be running low in Illinois.
And while we don’t have to remind you groceries are costing you more — or that tariffs could keep boosting prices — there are plenty of politicians who will be talking about it ad nauseum heading into next year’s primary elections.
Changing of the political guard
About a third of Illinois’ congressional delegation announced they’d give up their seats or seek other ones, setting off the most consequential game of musical chairs in decades among the state’s Democratic power brokers.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin announced he wouldn’t seek a sixth term, joining U.S. Reps. Danny Davis and Jan Schakowsky in calling it a career after lengthy tenures in Washington.
U.S. Reps. Robin Kelly and Raja Krishnamoorthi joined the fray for Durbin’s seat, while dozens of candidates lined up for their House seats and others in the wave that won’t have an incumbent on the ballot in the March 2026 Democratic primary.
Not the case in U.S. Rep. Chuy Garcia’s district, where the progressive icon’s surprise retirement announcement at the last minute positioned his chief of staff to file without any opposition — an old-school Chicago political maneuver that drew national condemnation.
Transit changes
Lawmakers finally got the train out of the station on an overhaul of the Chicago-area public transit system, helping the CTA, Metra and Pace avert a massive fiscal cliff next year.
The agencies will be governed by a new Northern Illinois Transit Authority. You won’t pay more to ride the train or bus, but you will pay a little more in sales tax and probably some more to drive the tollways.
Democrats say it’ll bust those ghost buses and tamp down crime. Republicans call it a misguided bailout. The band of thrill-seeking, L-climbing “subway surfers” probably aren’t worried about it.
Crime falls, but disturbing cases steal spotlight
One bright spot for Johnson’s office was the city’s continuing decline in violent crime, part of a nationwide drop following the COVID-19 pandemic that experts have yet to fully explain.
Chicago saw its lowest summer murder total in 60 years with steady declines in shootings, robberies and carjackings throughout the year.
But you probably couldn’t tell from the way Chicago has been portrayed in conservative media and by President Trump as a crime-ridden hellhole.
That skewed image was further entrenched by several high-profile crimes that drew national attention, including the horrific burning of a woman aboard a Blue Line train; a mass shooting that unfolded beneath the iconic Chicago Theatre marquee during a “teen takeover;” and another that left 18 people hit by gunfire in River North.
Those tragedies and a series of unprovoked Loop “puncher” attacks raised the latest questions about how to shore up mental health resources, how to deal with teenagers — and how judges should treat defendants with lengthy records.
Chicago Police Officer Krystal Rivera’s death
The apparent friendly fire killing of Chicago Police Officer Krystal Rivera during a Chatham foot chase marked the latest line-of-duty tragedy to hit the department.
But questions soon emerged about Carlos Baker, the officer with a lengthy disciplinary history who shot her in the back — and then “ran in the opposite direction and left her to die,” according to a blistering lawsuit filed by Rivera’s mother.
Rivera had ended their romantic relationship after finding out Baker had a live-in girlfriend, and she had threatened to tell the other woman about the infidelity, according to the suit.
Baker’s lawyer denied the allegations. Police said the shooting was accidental. Cook County prosecutors were still reviewing the case.
In other 2025 news …
- The Leo Catholic High School choir crooned its way to a top-four finish on “America’s Got Talent,” ensuring a jam-packed Chicago gig schedule for the foreseeable future.
- Steppenwolf Theatre’s “Purpose” notched the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for best play, for its complex portrayal of an upper-middle-class Black Chicago family.
- The REAL ID deadline finally arrived, for real this time. Kinda. The TSA won’t start charging flyers without them till February. But hey, now you can store it on your phone.
- Congress decided to regulate what local officials had long to rein in, imposing a federal ban on hemp-derived THC products that could wipe out a billion-dollar Illinois industry when it takes effect next fall. Some City Council members want to ban them sooner, though.
- Kennedy Expressway construction finally wrapped up after three years of traffic headaches. Good luck on the Ohio and Ontario street feeders till next spring, though.
- Trump commuted Gangster Disciples co-founder Larry Hoover’s federal sentence, although Gov. Pritzker isn’t sure about wiping the state slate clean.
- Cook County’s justice system entered a new era as Charles Beach ousted Timothy Evans to become chief judge of the Circuit Court, an office that’s now responsible for handling electronic monitoring.
- A pair of snowy owls gave Chicagoans a welcome diversion on the lakefront and gave the latest brood of piping plovers a run for their money as Montrose Point’s most beloved feathered friends.