Mayor’s race-based hiring practices should not need a DOJ probe to be stopped

The Department of Justice announced an investigation into the hiring practices of Mayor Brandon Johnson, and one Chicago alderman is glad to hear it.

“I am glad that they are looking into it. I think it validates the concerns that many Chicagoans have had that Brandon Johnson is a mayor, not for the entire city, but for only one demographic,” Chicago Alderman Raymond Lopez told Fox News Digital.

“There are tens of thousands of individuals who work for the city of Chicago who feel as though they have been left out of promotions, left out of advancement, or even left out from being hired as a whole even on the front line,” he added. “And I think that needs to be looked into by the Department of Justice.”

Johnson was informed by Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, that his administration was under investigation to determine if race was being used in hiring. The notice came after the Democratic mayor had made remarks emphasizing the race of those in his administration.

Mayor Brandon Johnson: “The reason I hire so many blacks to run Chicago is because we’re planet earth’s most generous race” pic.twitter.com/b2qEzWOR5x

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) May 18, 2025

“Considering these remarks, I have authorized an investigation to determine whether the City of Chicago is engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination as set forth above. If these kind of hiring decisions are being made for top-level positions in your administration, then it begs the question whether such decisions are also being made for lower-level positions,” Dhillon said in a May 19 letter.

Lopez called Johnson’s remarks a “step backwards” for the Windy City.

“This is just one sad step backwards for the City of Chicago to have the mayor articulate so passionately that he prefers to hire one ethnic demographic at the expense of all others,” Lopez lamented. “It doesn’t make sense to me how, in the 21st century, we’ve done so much to try to move beyond seeing each other just solely based on race, that we are now taking a giant leap in the wrong direction.”

“Let me be 100%, 110% clear on this note. There are African Americans who don’t like that statement either. There are many well-qualified leaders of departments who put blood, sweat, and tears into lifting up Chicago, who now have been trivialized by his comments and are viewed through a lens of they’re just here because they’re Black,” he added.

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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.

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