Republicans in US House hold hearing on Chicago violence that State’s Attorney Kim Foxx called a ‘clown show’

Republicans who hold a majority in the U.S. House and whose infighting is risking a federal government shutdown by week’s end sought to focus attention Tuesday on a frequent target, Chicago crime and Democratic criminal justice policies, in a field hearing of the House Judiciary Committee.

The hearing at the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 was chaired by Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who co-founded the far-right Freedom Caucus that is playing a major role in the budget resolution delay. No Democrats attended and GOP panel members posed questions, such as one from Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, asking, “Is Chicago savable? Or, is the city in such a downward trajectory that our only hope is to make sure that these policies don’t spread to other places?”

“I don’t believe that the answer to these questions comes out of Washington. But I do think hearings like this are really important because, you know, we want to get a sense of what some of the early warning signs are in a community like Chicago, so that the challenges you face don’t metastasize,” said Gaetz. He appeared by video from Washington due to the government spending impasse — the only public mention of the potential shutdown.

Republicans and those who testified attacked the prosecutorial policies of Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, who is not seeking reelection, Illinois’ enactment of cashless bail earlier this month under what’s known as the SAFE-T Act and Chicagoans for electing progressives to office or not voting at all.

“When you let bad guys out on the street, you shouldn’t be surprised when you get more crime. When you defund the police, you shouldn’t be surprised when you get more crime. When you pass legislation that ends cash bail, you shouldn’t be surprised when you get more crime,” Jordan said, adding the political measures have also has led to a shortage of police officers in the city’s ranks. “That’s what left-wing policies have done.”

Democrats decried the hearing as a political “stunt” to take away attention from the looming federal government shutdown, which would go into effect at 12:01 a.m. Sunday and leave millions of military members and federal workers without pay. The shutdown is being spurred by infighting between Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and far-right GOP members over the size and scope of a federal spending package. Even if the majority of Republicans agreed on a plan, its prospects in the Democratic-led Senate are uncertain.

“It’s clear that MAGA Republicans have done nothing to make life better or more affordable for everyday American people,” Chicago Democratic Rep. Danny Davis said in a statement, using the acronym describing former President Donald Trump’s theme of “Make America Great Again.” “They are wasting time, fighting each other, talking about other things to try and take the spotlight off their ineptness and ability to manage.”

Charges that public safety offices have been defunded do not match recent budgets. With the exception of a slight dip in 2021, appropriations to the Chicago Police Department have consistently climbed: the budget has risen from $1.4 billion in 2016 to more than $1.9 billion this year. The county’s combined public safety spending — on the sheriff and various court operations — has also continued to climb from $1.1 billion in 2018 to $1.3 billion this year.

Republicans also used the hearing as a forum for far-right Rep. Mary Miller of downstate Oakland, who is not a member of the committee, to attack Gov. J.B. Pritzker and other Democrats for progressive policies. Miller, an avid supporter of Trump and a frequent critic of Chicago, held a fundraiser in the city earlier this year at Trump International Hotel & Tower.

“The fact is every Democrat voted for the SAFE-T Act and supported Gov. Pritzker’s lie to the American people and every Republican voted no,” Miller said, even though several Democrats voted against the legislation.

“And I am so sad for you all that have been impacted — our police who are being defunded and demoralized. The American people do not support that and there are more of us than them. We are the normals and they are the crazies,” she said. “What I want to know is what is it going to take to wake the people up in Chicago, and especially in the communities that are disproportionately impacted by this violence, to realize that the people they are electing are promoting these policies and voting for it?”

Pritzker’s office later issued a statement defending the SAFE-T Act and noted Democratic lawmakers also included tens of millions of dollars for law enforcement training, recruitment, health care and safety in the state’s budget.

“Thousands of hardworking federal employees in Illinois are set to lose their paychecks and millions will be deprived of critical government services because Rep. Miller and her Republican colleagues have no grasp on the basic tenets of the job they were elected to do,” the statement from Pritzker’s office said. “Their attempt to distract from their own failures with cheap political stunts is clear and it is embarrassing.”

Foxx told the Tribune she was not invited to testify at the hearing, which she described as a “clown show” and “an exercise in political theater that came at the cost of the exploitation of the loss of Black and brown lives.”

“If this were a legitimate hearing, we would be talking about the need to address violent crime, the urgency of dealing with crime as it happens, and investing in our communities, but that’s not what this was,” Foxx said.

“There are people who are dying, that we do have a horrible issue of gun violence in this community, much like we have had for the last 50 years,” Foxx added, highlighting her own friend shot and killed when she was a teenager “in 1989, not when I was the state’s attorney, but a high school junior when the homicide rate at that time was nearing 1,000.”

Testifying at the hearing were two former Chicago police officers and Gianno Caldwell, a native of the South Side and Fox News analyst whose 18-year-old brother was slain in June of last year.

Caldwell said his brother’s murder had not been solved and he said the Chicago Police Department had “failed my family” and reforms in the Chicago Police Department were needed. But he also faulted city and state politicians, including past Chicago mayors and current Mayor Brandon Johnson, and contended “these officials have recklessly ignored the people they were elected to represent. And, as a result, bodies, mostly Black bodies, are littered throughout the streets of Chicago.”

“Living in Chicago should not come with a death sentence. But it does for too many Chicagoans,” said Caldwell. He previously gained notoriety for having staged a live Fox interview in a restaurant in Naperville, 30 miles away from Chicago, asking people what they thought of Johnson’s inauguration as city mayor.

Foxx told the Tribune she had sympathy for Caldwell, whose brother Christian was killed in a shooting in Morgan Park last June. “But I also know that case has not been called into the Cook County state’s attorney’s office for prosecution.”

Retired Chicago police Lt. John Garrido III faulted not only the political establishment, but also voters.

“At the very basis of it is to pay attention to who they’re voting for. It’s not just with one person. It’s not just the mayor. It’s not just our prosecutor. It’s the mayor, our prosecutors, our judges, our legislators, even our aldermen. It’s such a cesspool of ill-intent,” Garrido said. “It makes no sense when people, they are repeatedly voting against their interests and putting people in place that are having such a negative, negative impact on our communities and it just almost appears as though that everybody’s somewhat blind to it.”

Jordan, the committee chairman, indicated the panel will conduct similar field hearings in other Democratic-led communities. In April, the committee held a similarly styled hearing in New York.

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