Good morning, Chicago. ✶
🔎 Below: Chicago's Jewish community shared a message of hope during a Hanukkah celebration Sunday night while also mourning the victims of a deadly antisemitic attack in Australia.
🗞️ Plus: The Chicago Housing Authority is audited, museums ride the unionization wave and more news you need to know.
📝 Keeping score: The Bears blasted the Browns, 31-3; the Bulls fell to the Pelicans, 114-104.
⏱️: An 8-minute read
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TODAY’S WEATHER ⛅
Mostly cloudy with a high near 23 and wind chill values as low as -12.
TODAY’S TOP STORY🔎
Jewish community mourns victims of mass shooting at Hanukkah celebration in Australia
By Mary Norkol
Solemn celebration: Many in Chicago's Jewish community were left reeling Sunday following news that gunmen had shot and killed 15 people at a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach in an act of antisemitic terrorism. Chicagoans with heavy hearts gathered in Lake View for a menorah lighting.
Mourning the victims: Rabbi Dovid Kotlarsky, an organizer of the Lake View event, said he knew one of the victims, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who he called "the most happy, energetic" member of Chabad-Lubavitch, one of the most well-known Hasidic Jewish movements.
'Shining the light': Amanda Wojciechowski told the Sun-Times she brings her young daughters to the menorah lighting every year, saying it's important to celebrate their faith even in the wake of tragedy. "We’re gonna focus on shining the light," she said. Jewish faith leaders echoed her sentiment, spreading the message that light, the central theme of Hanukkah, counteracts darkness and hate.
HOUSING 🏠
Last remaining residents move out of troubled South Shore building raided by feds
By Esther Yoon-Ji Kang, Mohammad Samra and Lizzie Kane
Move-out day: Some turned in their keys and walked off feeling relieved. Others were forced out by armed security personnel telling them they had 30 minutes to leave. The remaining residents of the South Shore apartment complex raided by federal immigration agents earlier this fall left the building Friday, scattering to different parts of the city.
On the streets: Relatedly, as bitter subzero temperatures hit the area this weekend, workers at the Night Ministry street medicine team offered support to homeless Chicagoans, stopping by encampments to hand out hot cocoa, gloves, coats, sandwiches, scarves and medical care.
CHA audited: In other housing news, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Inspector General is conducting an audit of the Chicago Housing Authority to scrutinize its procedures around verifying residents’ immigration status and criminal backgrounds, according to documents obtained by the Sun-Times.
WATCH: RAIDED APARTMENT RESIDENTS MOVE ▶️
Residents of the South Shore apartment complex raided by federal immigration agents move out. | Candace Dane Chambers and Zubaer Khan/Sun-Times
MORE NEWS YOU NEED 🗞️
- Detective faces felony charges: Embattled Chicago police Det. Marco Torres discussed plans to pay a gang member "a grand" to "get rid of" a fellow female detective he was convicted of assaulting during an abusive relationship, a newly filed lawsuit alleges.
- More ‘puncher’ attacks: Marlon Anthony Miller, who has a history of mental illness and punching people, was charged with slugging three women in the face in the Loop last week — the latest in a series of unprovoked punching attacks around the city.
- ‘Right-to-die’ OK’d: Terminally ill people will have the option to end their own lives with a doctor’s prescription in Illinois next year, under legislation signed Friday by Gov. JB Pritzker.
- Steelmaker fined: A. Finkl & Sons has agreed to add pollution controls and pay the state $125,000 to settle accusations that the company broke environmental laws by releasing excessive amounts of a harmful gas.
- Ruling expected: The legal battle between Illinois gambling regulators and a Cicero restaurant operator, whose video gambling devices were ordered shut off amid questions about past connections to reputed mob figures, appears to be coming to a head.
- Writers recognized: Authors Samira Ahmed, Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. and Eve L. Ewing and WBEZ reporter Adriana Cardona-Maguigad are among the latest recipients of The Chicago Review of Books’ annual literary awards.
LABOR ✶
Workers at more Chicago cultural venues are unionizing
By Erica Thompson
MSI first: Earlier this month, the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry ratified its first union contract, which includes an average 8% pay increase and new workplace protections. More than 120 employees in guest-facing roles and the education department are represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31.
Union wave: The victory is part of a wave of unionization at Chicago’s cultural institutions. Launched in 2020, AFSCME’s Cultural Workers United organizing campaign now represents 50,000 cultural workers nationwide. In the last four years, it has helped 2,500 Illinois cultural workers form unions at such sites as the Art Institute of Chicago, Field Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Shedd Aquarium and Newberry Library. Employees at the Adler Planetarium voted Thursday to join them.
Key context: Such votes are happening at what museums say is a perilous time, as about a third of U.S. museums have lost government grants or contracts. More than half of museums reported fewer visitors in 2025 than in 2019, according to a November report by the American Alliance of Museums. As a result, financial performance has stalled or declined.
BOOK CLUB 📖
Here are the best reads of 2025, curated by Sun-Times and WBEZ staffers
By Sun-Times and WBEZ staff
This year, it feels hard to tell what's really worth buying, watching and reading, as we all sink deeper into our feeds, curated by the ever-powerful capital-A Algorithm.
That’s why the WBEZ/Sun-Times arts and culture desk asked our colleagues to share their favorite reads of 2025.
These picks from our staff of bookish nerds (a compliment!) cover all genres, from memoir and nonfiction to sci-fi and semi-autobiographical comics from a local graphic artist.
FROM THE PRESS BOX 🏈🏀
- Grades are in: Here's how columnist Steve Greenberg thinks the Bears did in their beatdown of the Browns.
- Lineup experiments: Bulls forward Matas Buzelis is set to defend more on the perimeter.
- Girls basketball: Benet comes in at No. 1 in Kyle Williams' Super 25 high school girls basketball rankings for Dec. 14.
- Boys basketball: Hersey, St. Patrick and Palatine have made their season debuts in Michael O'Brien's Super 25 high school basketball rankings for Dec. 14.
CHICAGO MINI CROSSWORD 🌭
Today's clue: 1D: ___ Wacker (famous underground roadway)
BRIGHT ONE 🔆
Bears fans layer up and tailgate before fourth-coldest Soldier Field game
By Selena Kuznikov
About two hours before Sunday’s kickoff, Patrick Vanier grilled chicken wings and Polish sausage with his family at the Waldron Deck lot outside Soldier Field. The temperature was 5 degrees.
Vanier, who lives in Hammond, Indiana, took the train up to Chicago to bring his son, Elio, to his first Bears game, which turned out to be one of the coldest ever.
Elio, 10, said he was excited to see the Bears play in person for the first time, even though it was "insanely cold."
The game was tied for the fourth coldest ever at Soldier Field. The temperature was 8 degrees when the Browns kicked off at noon, and the wind chill was -2 degrees.
Bears fan Joe Garcia also braved the cold with his family, bringing homemade chili and jalapeño poppers. Standing at the tailgate of their van, he and his cousin Marco Garcia said they have been season ticket holders the past eight years.
And no matter the weather, they said, they tailgate at every single home game.
"We tailgate in the rain, sleet, snow, cold," Joe Garcia, 47, said. "It is what it is. You can’t miss this."
YOUR DAILY QUESTION ☕️
Finish this sentence for us: 'It's so cold in Chicago that ____'
Email us here (please include your first and last name). We may run your answers in Tuesday's Morning Edition newsletter.
PICTURE CHICAGO 📸
Kimchi the dog smiles on the first day of PAWS Chicago’s Adopt-a-Thon, which wrapped Sunday.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
Thanks for reading the Sun-Times Morning Edition!
Got a story you think we missed? Email us here.
Written and curated by: Matt Moore
Editor: Eydie Cubarrubia
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