Midwest
Chicago mayor's office gives inside look at 'gift room' after watchdog report flagged ethical concerns
The City of Chicago recently shared a video of its “gift room” after a watchdog group accused Mayor Brandon Johnson of improperly accepting valuable gifts.
On Wednesday, the city also announced new protocols for receiving gifts, along with a log and video of items currently inside its “gift room.”
The transparency attempt comes after the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) accused Johnson of accepting valuable gifts and failing to report them.
Alleged unreported gifts included jewelry, alcohol, AirPods, designer handbags and size 14 men’s shoes, prompting ethical concerns.
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The Office of the Inspector General accused Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson of improperly accepting designer gifts. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The new protocols, which went into effect on Tuesday, note that officials must report and properly log gifts within 10 days; store gifts in a designated area that can be viewed publicly via video recording quarterly; and donate excess gifts.
The first video log was sent out on Wednesday and featured artwork, clothing, hats and shoes.
The footage attempts to combat OIG claims that Johnson denied internal investigators access to the room where the items were stored during an unannounced inspection in November.
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A written log contains 18 pages of items, along with their location and the organization that donated the gifts.
“These procedures reaffirm the Mayor’s commitment to ethical governance and transparency and ensure prompt disclosure of all gifts received on behalf of the City,” according to a statement from the mayor’s office.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was accused of improperly documenting designer gifts while also blocking access to the City Hall “gift room,” according to a report from the City of Chicago Office of the Inspector General (OIG). (City of Chicago)
Johnson previously accused the inspector general of a “mischaracterization,” while insisting he never personally benefited from any gifts.
The OIG report listed Hugo Boss cuff links, a personalized Montblanc pen, a 2023 U.S. National Soccer Team jersey, a Gucci tote bag, a Kate Spade red purse and Carrucci size 14 shoes from Feb. 2, 2022, through March 20, 2024.
While spotted in the video log, dated Feb. 11, the online log does not account for the tote bag, purse or shoes, as of Wednesday.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was accused of improperly documenting designer gifts while also blocking access to the City Hall “gift room,” according to a report from the City of Chicago Office of the Inspector General (OIG). (City of Chicago)
Other items like the cuff links and pen, while accounted for in the log, do not list the organization or person who donated the gift.
Inspector General for the City of Chicago Deborah Witzburg told Fox News Digital Wednesday night that only some items are visible in the 22-second video, presenting “practical challenges.”
“There are some things visible in the video which are maybe recognizable, but I don’t know that anybody is in a position to look at that video and find the pair of Hugo Boss cuff links or the personalized Montblanc pen,” Witzburg said. “I don’t know that it lends itself to that. I’m not sure whether it’s intended to.”
According to Witzburg, the video does not serve as a substitute for public access, which citizens are entitled to.
She added she is “deeply concerned” about the fact that even gifts logged in the last couple of days have no information about their givers.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was accused of improperly documenting designer gifts while also blocking access to the City Hall “gift room,” according to a report from the City of Chicago Office of the Inspector General (OIG). (City of Chicago)
“That continues to be really problematic,” Witzburg said. “It doesn’t suggest to me that, at least in that regard, we’ve made a lot of progress… We talk a lot about the fact that the City of Chicago operates at this deficit of legitimacy, and that for decades and generations, the city has given no one any reason to afford the government the benefit of the doubt. And that really matters in a situation like this. Perhaps that video shows a room which appropriately contains everything on that list, but I’m not sure that we have given people any reason to think so.”
The concern is that gifts might be given or received with the intention of affecting city government decisions or actions, she explained.
“We can’t have a ‘for sale’ sign on the door to City Hall,” Witzburg said. “The city’s ethics rules contain these requirements on gifts, and there are very clear rules on how to handle gifts accepted on behalf of the city.”
Fox News’ Patrick McGovern, Greg Wehner and Alexis McAdams contributed to this report.
Read the full article from Here
Illinois
Illinois State Police investigating fatal shooting of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez by ICE agents in Franklin Park
Illinois State Police are now investigating federal agents on the front lines of last year’s immigration sweep around Chicago known as “Operation Midway Blitz.”
ISP confirmed they’re investigating the death of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, who was shot “at close range” by a federal agent in Franklin Park last September.
ICE agents said Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, originally from Mexico, was trying to flee when they attempted to stop his vehicle, and he tried to ram agents with his car.
Franklin Park police asked the state police to open the investigation shortly after receiving new information from the Illinois Accountability Commission last week.
The Cook County State’s Attorney says it will play a supportive role in the ISP investigation.
Noah Bontrager is Indiana’s first sub-4-minute high school miler
Noah Bontrager is Indiana’s first sub-4-minute high school miler
Special to IndyStar
TOPEKA, Ind. – Indiana’s first high school boy to run a sub-4-minute mile is not from Indianapolis or its collar counties. Nor from the population centers outside Chicago, Cincinnati or Louisville, Ky.
Noah Bontrager has instead been influenced by the Amish culture of the state’s northeast corner. The 18-year-old lives in Shipshewana and is a senior at Westview High School, enrollment of 343, almost small enough to be in the smallest of Indiana’s four basketball classes.
The LaGrange County school is 15 miles south of the Michigan border, located on County Road 600 W., where horse-drawn buggies clip clop along the pavement. The track is fenced off from farmland. Horses graze nearby, and a cow once delivered a calf in an adjacent pasture, right in the middle of practice.
Running has evolved since 1954, when Roger Bannister first broke the 4-minute barrier at Oxford, England. Now it is a sport of high tech, featuring propulsive supershoes, biomechanic analysis, wavelights for record attempts, and the Strava app tracking workouts,
Yet tech doesn’t break records. Runners do.
This sport rewards simplicity and industriousness, two characteristics of the Amish lifestyle. Bontrager said he marvels at junior high runners who do chores before school, attend classes and track practice, then do more chores after school.
“I like to say they work all day. I think I got that from them,” he said. “And from my mom and dad.”
Bontrager is a Swiss-German Mennonite/Amish family name, originating from the German Bornträger, meaning transporter of liquids.
Noah’s paternal grandmother, Judy Bontrager, died in 2020 after a seven-year fight against pancreatic cancer. She once set trusses on a barn while a softball-sized tumor grew inside her.
Noah’s grandfather, Josey Bontrager, had dyslexia and never learned to read. He started a small-scale manufacturing business, Shipshewana Hardwoods, in the early 1970s. He built it into a company that became PalletOne, which was acquired for $232 million in 2020. Noah’s father, Lyle, still speaks Dutch to the grandfather.
“How do you build a multimillion-dollar business when you can’t read. How do you do that?” said Lyle, who is Westview’s cross-country coach.
“Stuff like that is ingrained inside of him somewhere. Just determination and grit.”
How Noah Bontrager became Indiana’s first high school boy to run a sub-4-minute
During the 2000s, other Indiana boys had ambitions to run a sub-4-minute mile: Austin Mudd, Cole Hocker, Lucas Guerra, Kole Mathison, Martin Barco. None made it, with Mudd’s outdoor 4:01.83 standing as a state record since 2011.
Bontrager had thought about it for a couple of years. At state last year, he set a 1,600-meter meet record of 4:02.60, equivalent to a 4:04.02 mile. Yet it was startling when he actually broke through.
For one thing, he was ill at the end of cross-country season, finishing second at state, behind Springs Valley’s Calvin Seitz. Bontrager was 43rd in the Brooks nationals Dec. 13 at San Diego – close to last place – and was 78 seconds behind winner Jackson Spencer of Herriman, Utah. It was such a pitiable run that Spencer consoled Bontrager afterward.
For another, Bontrager said skeptics didn’t think he should run the mile March 15 at the New Balance indoor nationals.
“Really, the mile? You should do the two-mile,” they told him.
Bontrager, a drummer, had a concert on Friday of the two-mile and declined to abandon Westview’s band. He would chase the dream on Sunday. Except when he arrived in Boston, meet officials told him he might not be racing the top milers. Maybe the second-to-last heat, they said.
One runner dropped out, and Bontrager was in the fast heat. He was all-in.
He was in third with 400 meters left, then seized the lead by running the last two laps in 58.57 seconds. Usually undemonstrative, Bontrager thrust his right index finger in the air as he broke the tape. His time – 3 minutes, 59.48 seconds – was a meet record and made him No. 7 on the all-time high school indoor list.
Sitting with his father in a restaurant afterward, enjoying a “juicy hamburger,” he was still processing it all.
“I was kind of in shock, even three hours after,” he said.
Perhaps more shocking?
In three subsequent meets, all in the Indianapolis area, Bontrager has sent vibes that sub-4:00 is just one step on a long journey. He could be on a world stage as soon as August.
Multi-sport athlete
Growing up, Bontrager was immersed in running culture but wasn’t confined to that. He played youth basketball and baseball, including a travel team with the latter. His peers went on to reach the Class 2A state basketball title game this year and baseball semistate last year.
“I do actually have hand/eye coordination, unlike the stereotypical runner,” he said.
His parents, Lyle and Erin, are former runners who were track coaches at the junior high. Noah discovered he was better at running than at other sports. Running was “the norm,” he reasoned. At Westview, it was.
Westview’s track coach, Matt Jones, and Lyle Bontrager are cousins.
Jones was seventh in the 1988 state cross-country meet, leading the Warriors to fifth as a team. Besides coaching, he is an electrician in the recreational vehicle industry and farms 350 acres.
Another Westview runner, Andrew Begley, was a four-time state champion in the mid-1990s before joining NCAA championship teams at Arkansas. Westview was third in the state in cross-country in 2017, behind champion Carmel, whose enrollment was 13 times greater.
And when Bontrager was an eighth-grader, he helped Westview win a state title in middle-school cross-country.
“Jumping the fence” is a phrase used to describe an Amish person, often a teenager, leaving the lifestyle to live in the modern world. Following the 1972 Supreme Court ruling in Wisconsin v. Yoder, Amish children are exempt from compulsory high school attendance.
Noah and three siblings were not raised Amish. Their Christian faith remains foundational, even though the parents attend one church and Noah another.
“He will give glory to God for the gift he’s been given,” his mother said.
No one in the family has graduated from college. Noah is committed to Notre Dame. His brother, Cole, 19, who ran 1,600 meters in 4:32 in high school, is a freshman at Rose-Hulman Institute.
Outsprinting the treadmill
Determination and grit – and talent – aren’t solely responsible for Noah Bontrager’s rise. Although his father and Jones are eager for him to join a sophisticated regimen at Notre Dame, it would be hard to identify better high school coaching.
No wonder Bontrager said he trusts in the training.
He runs perhaps 55 miles a week in the fall, 45 in the spring. He doesn’t do junk miles – i.e. slow runs for volume. Weight training is reflected in the pecs on his 5-8, 130-pound frame.
One workout is two sets of three-mile tempo runs at a 5:05-mile pace, with two minutes of rest between sets. For context, that is fast enough to be all-state in cross-country once, then twice, all in less than 33 minutes.
He did such a workout on a treadmill on a recent rainy day, then finished with 300-meter sprints. The machine maxes out at 16 mph. He was outsprinting the treadmill.
“His workouts are unreal,” Jones said. “Whatever I throw at him, he just does.”
Similarly unreal has been Bontrager’s assault on records:
>> March 28, Fall Creek Pavilion. He set a small-school meet record of 9:08.35 in the 3,200 at the Hoosier State Relays, running the last 800 in 1:59.33. Eighty minutes later, he ran a 1:50.88 anchor to bring Westview from ninth to fourth in the 4×800 relay.
Remember his devotion to band? He played drums until the third quarter of Westview’s 2A basketball title game against Parke Heritage at Bankers Life Fieldhouse that day, then hustled to the track.
>> April 17, Franklin Central. He set a Flashes Showcase record of 4:02.48, winning by six seconds. It was fastest mile ever run by a high schooler on Indiana soil.
>> April 24, Carmel. He ran the 3,200 in 8:42.18, just a tenth off the state record, closing in 57.89 – or eight seconds faster than Seitz’s last lap.
Bontrager could repeat his double win in the June 5 state meet at North Central. But he might skip the 1,600, focusing on a fast time in the 3,200. (Fastest in the nation is 8:31.80 by Spencer.)
Beyond that, there is the 3,000 in the under-20 nationals June 18-19 at Eugene, Ore. That selects a team for the U20 World Championships, set for Aug. 5-9, also at Eugene.
“That’s the goal,” Bontrager said.
He once thought he was no sprinter, but that was dispelled when he ran 400 meters in 49.78 two days after the Hoosier State Relays.
International racing requires closing speed. He has that now. He already had the worth ethic.
That’s a way of life around here.
Contact David Woods at dwoods1411@gmail.com.
IOWA (KWQC) – Iowa Democrats responded to Vice President JD Vance’s visit and endorsement of Rep. Zach Nunn in a press release.
The statement addressed Vance’s comments on tax cuts for American manufacturers. Democrats said corporate greed and policies pushed by Republicans including Vance and Nunn have led to the ongoing closure of Burlington’s CNH plant.
The release stated that from 2015 to 2024, CNH made $11.6 billion in profit and the CEO made $113 million during that time period. The statement said the money could have provided as much as $5 per hour per employee and could have been used to keep plants open in the U.S. and Iowa.
Vance discussed opening regulation for E15 fuel so Iowa farmers can have another revenue source, along with recent progress made for the Farm Bill.
A farmer from central Iowa remarked on the recent Farm Bill, saying a new Farm Bill has just passed the House, but it is not future-looking and continues to support big operations. The farmer said the bill gives money for precision agriculture development and purchases for farmers.
The statement referenced the president’s February executive order to purchase metric tons of beef from Argentina instead of supporting Iowa’s beef production.
Copyright 2026 KWQC. All rights reserved.
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