Mayor Brandon Johnson – that’s a whole lotta nuthin’ in three words.
If ever there was a less deserving, more unqualified, more ethically challenged, and intellectually and emotionally unprepared for being a dogcatcher, less mind mayor of Chicago than this pathetic excuse of a teachers’ union tool, I’ve never seen it.
The one thing he does have is that simple-minded focus (emphasis on ‘simple-minded’) determination that comes with being simple-minded in that once what brain he has locks onto something, it isn’t letting go, no matter what common sense, rules, regulations, the laws of physics or just the law says.
Brandon Johnson has that problem right now. Not that he hasn’t gotten distracted here and there with vanquishing Columbus statues, Sanctuary City posturing and bluster, and the occasional ethics kerfuffle over gifts and sundry items. Momentary diversion.
He is still squirming and working the angles anyway he can to force the Chicago School Board to finally sign on the dotted line for the $300M payday loan he needs to cover the Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU) pension payment that he’s been trying to force the school system into taking out since last fall.
You know – so the broke-butt city doesn’t have to because Johnson was also trying to shove through an $820M bond issue at the same time, and Chicago’s credit rating is about junk bond status.
Brandon Johnson will go down in history as arguably the worst major city mayor of all time. https://t.co/M3fBUmTGS8
— Corey Walker (@CoreyWriting) May 29, 2025
His first target was the Superintendent of the school system, Pedro Martinez, who told him to…um…climb a rope.
MUST WATCH: Maybe the best opening line in public comment history. Former Chicago Public Schools Board Member Dwayne Truss goes off on the Chicago Teachers Union and Mayor Brandon Johnson for their fight to oust CPS CEO Pedro Martinez and issue a $300M payday loan to fund the… pic.twitter.com/kngaYBI8Yx
— Austin Berg (@Austin__Berg) September 27, 2024
Martinez fought Johnson tooth and nail, forcing the mayor into having the lame-duck school board oust him four days before Christmas, as Johnson couldn’t outright fire him.
Sadly, Martinez is about gone – his contract let him finish out the teachers’ union contract negotiations as he was fired ‘without cause.’
…Another board member, Carlos Rivas Jr., thanked Martinez for his contributions to the city and CPS, calling his exit a “really great loss to our district.” He also criticized other members and officials for pushing him out of Chicago.
“I really applaud your integrity,” Rivas said, “and I pray to God that I’m never attacked as badly as you have been attacked by people on this board, by people in this room. I don’t know how you did it.”
It’s making the mayor a smidge desperate. No one at the new school board he helped handpick specifically to dump Martinez has approved or signed Johnson’s $300M get-out-of-dun-territory-free card yet.
So, it turns out he’s been quietly massaging egos in Springfield to see if he could get the state to change the playing field, yet again.
Johnson just got busted trying to get the legislature to rejigger the Chicago school board voting rules so he could circumvent the cooler heads who have been holding up his big borrowing plans.
SCOOP: Behind closed doors in the final hours of legislative session, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is lobbying for a hidden provision in the state’s budget implementation bill that would allow for a simple majority vote of the Chicago Board of Education to approve new borrowing.… https://t.co/zM6I4uBApj
— Austin Berg (@Austin__Berg) May 30, 2025
…Behind closed doors in the final hours of legislative session, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is lobbying for a hidden provision in the state’s budget implementation bill that would allow for a simple majority vote of the Chicago Board of Education to approve new borrowing. This currently requires a supermajority vote. Multiple iterations of the Chicago school board have rejected Johnson’s demand for Chicago Public Schools take out a reckless, $300 million high-interest loan. So now he’s trying to change the rules of the game.
You’ve got to give the grifter credit for trying. He never quits working for his mob-like family – the CTU.
He’s gonna do the Goodfellas bit, but to Chicago Public Schools. Load it with debt, have that money go to his favored groups, then blow the joint.
— Man w/o a Plan (@MidWestMet) May 30, 2025
The mayor’s office is backpedaling now that word of the proposed rule change has surfaced.
Not at all what he had in mind, says the mayor’s office in a statement, and we’re ‘not currently working on any reform.’
RIGHT
The only good news to this is that if Brandon Johnson is actively lobbying for something – there’s even less of a chance of it passing vs if he had stayed away
The bad news: This is classic Springfield bait and switch at the last second. Stop rewarding corruption + incompetence https://t.co/p3JAcQ25o1
— Isaiah Walker (@walkeri141) May 30, 2025
Nobody but nobody is falling for it. They’ve seen this guy in action.
The last-minute budget push in Springfield could also bring a last-minute change to the way the Chicago Public Schools Board of Education votes on its own budget.
Some supporters of the elected school board are raising concerns the mayor may be trying to undermine their authority, with a “Springfield surprise.”
…The rumblings in Springfield are connected to the simmering battle over Mayor Brandon Johnson’s unsuccessful push to have CPS take out a $300 million loan to cover a pension payment.
But, if the law governing the CPS voting threshold was changed, the mayor could get his way.
…It matters because the mayor fell one vote short in his push to have the hybrid elected school board approve a high-interest loan to cover a $175 million pension payment that has since fallen to the city.
“What we’ve heard is that he is talking directly to the Senate president, asking him to change the law, so that our board wouldn’t require two-thirds to make budget amendments and to take out irresponsible loans,” CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said.
Thousands of pages with a quick nip tuck?
…”So, what we’re hearing is that they want to put it as part of the budget implementation bill, which has thousands of pages that nobody reads. They’ll sneak it in there, and that will get passed. And nobody will even know it,” Martinez said.
Surely not, right?
Democrats are the experts to call when you need to bury something.
