by WorldTribune Staff, September 28, 2025 Real World News
Taxpayers in deep blue Chicago and New York City are about to be hit up again.
In Chicago, taxpayers could be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars for the long-delayed Obama Presidential Center after new tax filings show the Obama Foundation has only deposited $1 million into its promised $470 million reserve fund.
A Fox News in-depth report looked at what was described as a “sweetheart deal” to create the reserve fund “to spare taxpayers should the project ever go belly up.”
“Under its agreement with the city, the [Obama] foundation was required to create the fund, known as an endowment, to take control of a sprawling 19.3-acre section of Jackson Park — often described as Chicago’s Central Park equivalent — where the complex is now slowly rising,” the report said.
“But when former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama turned the sod at the site in September 2021, just $1 million — or 0.21% of the pledged funds — had been deposited into the endowment, and that figure has remained unchanged ever since.”
The report added that the “use agreement” hands over “exclusive control” of the land to the Obama Foundation “for nearly a century in exchange for ten dollars.”
Illinois Republican Party Chair Kathy Salvi said the project is an “abomination” and slammed Democrats for potentially exposing taxpayers with the deal.
“It should come as no surprise that the Obama Center is potentially leaving Illinois taxpayers high and dry — it’s an Illinois Democrat tradition,” Salvi told Fox News Digital in a statement. “Democrats in this state, when not going to prison for corruption, treat taxpayers like a personal piggy bank giving sweetheart deals to their political benefactors.”
Richard Epstein, a University of Chicago law professor emeritus and a New York University law professor, advised the local nonprofit Protect Our Parks with former legal challenges to the Obama Center’s construction.
He said that “the city never should have signed over the large section” of the park.
“They put a million dollars into a $400 million endowment, so it’s endowed. That gets you in jail as a securities matter,” Epstein told Fox News Digital. “An endowment means that you have the money in hand. But they have nothing. … So, I regard this as something of a public calamity.”
“Without an endowment, they’ll have to scramble every year to cover $30 million in operating costs,” Epstein added. “The whole point of an endowment is to avoid that volatility.”
In New York City, taxpayers will pick up an additional $100 million tab to pay for lawyers for illegal aliens facing deportation, Democrat mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani vowed, calling it a “cornerstone” of his campaign.
“Four hundred thousand of our residents are right now in urgent risk of deportation,” the socialist lamented on MSNBC “The Weekend,” adding fewer than 200 of them received access to free lawyers last year.
Mamdani’s chances of victory improved even more on Sunday as current Mayor Eric Adams pulled out of the race.
Under his so-called “Trump-Proofing NYC” platform, Mamdani said: “A cornerstone of our campaign is to increase funding for those very legal defense services by more than $100 million so that we can ensure we’re taking every step we can to keep New Yorkers safe, to keep New Yorkers together, and to show the world that they are welcome in this city.”
To do that, Mamdani said the city’s Law Department would hire 200 more lawyers.
“Anybody who is present in the United States without status can be removed,” said Candice Ackermann, a lawyer who represents highly-skilled immigrants. “The thing is that in many previous administrations, they were not really strict about that – or they weren’t seeking out those people, but that is what the law says.”
If the Trump Administration makes good on removing those in the U.S. illegally, that is another $100 million pill New Yorkers will have to swallow.
At least in New York they got that $500 “inflation refund” check last year.
Blue taxpayer blues: $470M for Obama library; $100M for lawyers for illegals in NYC added by Editor Two on
View all posts by Editor Two →