Good morning, Chicago. The process for meting out discipline in the most serious cases of misconduct by Chicago police officers has been largely at a standstill for more than two years. During that stretch, a backlog of unresolved cases has grown as a legal fight between the city and the largest CPD officers’ union has worked its way to the Illinois Supreme Court. In 2025, cases in that category swelled to near 500. As of mid-December, police Superintendent Larry Snelling still must decide whether or not to bring administrative charges in 490 cases in which the Civilian Office of Police Accountability sustained allegations of misconduct, city records show. “We now find ourselves in a place where unadjudicated cases involving allegations of serious misconduct by police officers are stacking up,” Chicago Inspector General Deborah Witzburg told the Tribune. “That is a bad and unfair thing for all the people involved in those cases — members of the public, family members of people who’ve been hurt, members of the department who have discipline hanging over them.” Read the full story from the Tribune’s Sam Charles. Here are the top stories you need to know to start your day, including: why Southeast Side residents are pushing for benefits as Chicago’s quantum campus moves forward, 10 thoughts on a blowout win for the Bears, and what to know as Rob Reiner and his wife were found dead in a Los Angeles home. Today’s eNewspaper edition | Subscribe to more newsletters | Asking Eric | Horoscopes | Puzzles Games | Today in History New South Wales Premier Chris Minns, right, and Kellie Sloane, leader of the opposition, the New South Wales Liberal Party, lay wreaths at a tribute for shooting victims outside the Bondi Pavilion at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, Dec. 15, 2025, a day after a shooting. (AP Photo/Mark Baker) What to know about the attack on the Jewish festival in Australia that killed 15 people A father and son are suspected by officials to have killed 15 people on a popular Australian beach, shocking a country where gun violence is rare. The government today, a day after the shootings, proposed tougher new gun laws amid criticism that officials didn’t take seriously enough a string of antisemitic attacks. Here’s a look at what to know. Israel’s Netanyahu lashes out while world shows shock and sympathy over Australia shooting Amanda Capuano and her mother, Julie, daughter and wife of fallen firefighter Daniel V. Capuano, stand with members of the Chicago Fire Department at the site where Daniel Capuano died in South Chicago, during the bell-ringing ceremony marking the 10-year anniversary of his death on Dec. 14, 2025. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune) 10 years ago a Chicago firefighter died in the line of duty. His children have chosen careers following in his footsteps. Bells rang out on the South Side in honor of Chicago firefighter and paramedic Daniel Capuano, who died in the line of duty 10 years ago yesterday. Capuano died after falling into an open elevator shaft while battling a fire in a vacant South Side warehouse on Dec. 14, 2015. The 43-year-old was the father of three and a 15-year member of the Chicago Fire Department. Two staff members at Lincoln Middle School comfort each other outside the school in Berwyn, Sept. 18, 2025, near a memorial of flowers, balloons and cards for Assistant Principal Nerissa Lee, who was shot and killed along with her mother, Joycelyn Everage. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune) Records reveal husband who shot and killed Berwyn assistant principal had his firearm license revoked by Illinois State Police Shana Everage was in bed when she heard the back door of her Broadview home open in the early morning hours of Sept. 16. She didn’t know it at that moment, but it was her older sister Nerissa, who lived just up the street, letting herself in. Shana got up to use the bathroom wondering what the noise was. That’s when she saw Nerissa in the room where they used to sleep when they were little. She was sitting on the bed with her head in her hands, their mom Joycelyn in the room with her. That was the last night the three of them spent together. Rebecca De La Luz of Machesney Park picks up three recently released detainees during a hand-off in a parking lot with the Rev. Dale Dalman on Dec. 4, 2025, in Michigan City, Indiana. The three men were released from the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune) Illinois mom covers 250-mile distance to reunite formerly detained immigrants with their Chicago families It’s pitch-black and frigid in the parking lot of an Italian restaurant in Michigan City, Indiana, by the time a small group of volunteers and immigrants gather in a circle, arms resting on each other’s shoulders and heads bent in prayer. A pastor tells three Chicago-area men, who just hours ago had been released from an ICE detention center in Michigan, that God loves them. That any mistreatment they may have experienced didn’t escape his attention. It’s a message that Rebecca De La Luz, one of the intrepid volunteers who wears a blue T-shirt that says “madre all day every day,” feels deeply as she nodded along that early December day. She’ll soon drive the men hours back to the city and suburbs for emotional reunions with their families, the next conductor in what the group wryly referred to as the “above-ground railroad.” Senate President Don Harmon, center, walks the Senate floor during debates of House bills at the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield on May 29, 2025. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune) 2 Illinois election board Democrats who blocked Senate President Don Harmon fines have ties to his donors Two Democratic members of the Illinois State Board of Elections who helped block nearly $10 million in campaign fines against Democratic Senate President Don Harmon have political ties to organizations that contributed disputed, above-limit donations to Harmon and continued giving to him even as the case was pending before the board. Prep work for construction begins at the Quantum Shore Chicago campus on the site of the former U.S. Steel South Works on Nov. 21, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune) Southeast Side residents push for benefits as Chicago quantum campus moves forward Chicago is bracing for a technology boom expected to come with the construction of Quantum Shore Chicago, a 440-acre development that will feature the nation’s first utility-scale quantum computer. But residents of the South Chicago neighborhood want to make sure they’re not left behind in the process. A fan dressed as the Grinch dances during the first quarter of the Bears-Browns game, Dec. 14, 2025, at Soldier Field. (Dominic Di Palermo/Chicago Tribune) Bear weather: Subzero temps and negative wind chills mark one of Chicago’s coldest games at Soldier Field As the Bears game against the Cleveland Browns kicked off at noon at Soldier Field, the temperature was 8 degrees with a wind chill of minus 10, making it one of the coldest games in the team’s history. Brrrrr down: The coldest Chicago Bears games played at Soldier Field The Bears and Browns play while the sun sets on Dec. 14, 2025, at Soldier Field. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune) Blowout win for Chicago Bears, who turn focus back to Green Bay Packers: Brad Biggs’ 10 thoughts on Week 15 Caleb Williams passed for 242 yards and threw two touchdowns to DJ Moore, D’Andre Swift ran for 98 yards and two scores and the defense intercepted Browns quarterback Shedeur Sanders three times and sacked him five times in the Week 15 win. 10 thoughts after the most lopsided Bears victory in more than five years. Week 15 recap: Bears put Browns in a deep freeze for their 10th win of season Bears defense: 3 INTs and 5 sacks ‘carried the day’ in a 31-3 demolition of the Browns The crowd sings under the direction of Margaret Hillis at the “Do-It-Yourself ‘Messiah’” event at Orchestra Hall on Dec. 9, 1980. The holiday event was so popular, crowds were turned away. (John Bartley/Chicago Tribune) Handel’s ‘Messiah’ wasn’t meant to be Christmas music, but it still became a Chicago holiday staple For nearly a century and a half, voices have rung out in Chicago each December, proclaiming: “Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!” The German-British composer George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah” is a fixture of the winter holiday season, although Handel didn’t originally intend for his 1742 oratorio to serve as Christmas music. Fareed Haque, left, and Wanees Zarour, co-directors of the Chicago Immigrant Orchestra, play music while they select the songs for their upcoming concert as they sit in Zarour’s studio in West Town, Dec. 4, 2025. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune) The Chicago Immigrant Orchestra is defiant in the wake of recent raids The recent and often chaotic federal immigration raids across Chicago’s neighborhoods have rocked the city. Journalists at the Tribune and other local outlets have done thorough work documenting the upheaval and fear of the moment, but perhaps less so as it has affected the immigrant-as-artist. The Chicago Immigrant Orchestra, says musician Wanees Zarour, the orchestra’s co-director, is “doubling down because whether anyone likes it or not, we’re part of the fabric of this country.” Rob Reiner arrives at the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network’s Respect Awards, in Beverly Hills, Calif., Oct. 8, 2010. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles) Rob Reiner and his wife found dead in Los Angeles home, AP source says Director-actor Rob Reiner and his wife Michele were the two people found dead yesterday at a Los Angeles home owned by Reiner, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation. Investigators believe they suffered stab wounds and a family member is being questioned by investigators, the official said. Rob Reiner, son of a comedy giant who became one in turn, dies at 78 ...read more read less