Updated at 1:10 p.m. ET

Lori Lightfoot officially became Chicago’s first black female and openly gay mayor on Monday. She immediately laid out a four-point plan for safety, education, stability and integrity during her 40-minute inauguration speech.

“I’m looking ahead to a city of safe streets and strong schools for every child, regardless of neighborhood or ZIP code,” Lightfoot said. “A city where people want to grow old and not flee. A city of sanctuary against fear where no one must hide in the shadows. A city that is affordable for families and seniors, and where every job pays a living wage. A city of fairness and hope and prosperity for the many, not just for the few, a city that holds equity and inclusion as our guiding principles.”

Lightfoot was sworn in with all 50 aldermen, City Clerk Anna Valencia and City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin at the 10,000-seat Wintrust Arena.

She thanked her 90-year-old mother, Ann Lightfoot, who traveled from Massillon, Ohio, to sit in the front row for the speech.

Lightfoot then promised “to build this great city, and leave it better, stronger, fairer and more prosperous than we found it.”

The new mayor promised to tackle violence and education, but cautioned that the city’s problems “will not be solved overnight.”

To combat gun violence, Lightfoot announced the Mayor’s Office of Public Safety, which will be lead by a deputy mayor. The office will be tasked with developing and implementing an interdepartmental anti-violence strategy.

“People cannot, and should not, live in neighborhoods that resemble war zones. … Let’s unite in our response to the biggest challenge we face: the epidemic of gun violence that devastates families, shatters communities, buries dreams and holds children hostage to fear in their own homes,” Lightfoot said. “It inflicts lifelong trauma that spreads through our communities.”

Lightfoot also vowed to improve the city’s public education system to “create a citywide workforce as a pipeline of jobs.”

“As a city, we make promises to our children … we promise them an education — a safe, relevant and challenging education that prepares them for meaningful work, civic engagement and lifelong learning.”

But Lightfoot will face challenges. Among the many demands of the Chicago Teachers Union is hefty 5% raises for staff, as well as more counselors and nurses. Though negotiations are moving along, the CTU is taking the necessary legal steps to strike in September if they don’t have a contract by then. Lightfoot has said she wants to avoid a strike but has not said how she will find money to meet these demands.

In her speech, Lightfoot acknowledged the city’s financial hole by saying “some hard choices will have to be made” but didn’t give details on her plan.

“Our challenges are great, there’s no mistaking that,” Lightfoot said. “But if we follow these four stars — safety, schooling, stability and integrity — we can once again become a city that families want to move to, not run away from.”

Lightfoot’s inauguration caps a stunning political rise for someone who has never before held elected office. The former federal prosecutor and corporate lawyer launched her mayoral bid last May, months before Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s bombshell announcement that he would not seek a third term in office.

That prompted a crush of pols to jump into the race, but Lightfoot, 56, rose to the top of a field of 14 candidates in late February’s general election. After a short and bruising campaign against Democratic Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, Lightoot went on to win a landslide victory in the April 2 runoff.

Ultimately, Lightfoot won in all 50 wards and garnered 74% of the vote over Preckwinkle’s 26%, a margin not seen in Chicago since Mayor Richard M. Daley.

The city is also inaugurating Chicago’s two other citywide elected officials and all 50 aldermen Monday.

On the campaign trail, Lightfoot promised to put an end to Chicago’s political machine “once and for all” and shine a bright light on corruption in City Hall. It’s a message that resonated with voters, particularly as a burgeoning corruption scandal involving some of the city’s longest-serving aldermen hit the headlines at the height of the mayor’s race.

Veteran Alderman Ed Burke was charged in January with attempted extortion for allegedly trying to shake down owners of a fast-food franchise in order to win business for his private law firm. Burke has said he didn’t do anything wrong.

But legal documents also revealed that Burke allegedly urged the restaurateurs to give campaign money to Preckwinkle. That revelation and other Preckwinkle-Burke connections, coupled with Preckwinkle’s post as the Cook County Democratic Party Chair, left an opening for Lightfoot to paint her as the consummate City Hall insider at a time when voters were hungry for reform.

In recent days, Lightfoot started to act on some of those campaign promises to clean up City Hall.

She met with aldermen about an executive order she had said she would sign on her first day in office that would curtail an unwritten custom, known as “aldermanic prerogative,” that gives local aldermen the final say over permits and zoning in their wards. Critics have long said that unilateral power leads to corruption, but many aldermen were not on board with Lightfoot’s proposed changes after last week’s meetings.

Lightfoot not only must learn now to navigate a new political landscape at City Hall, but she also immediately has to deal with the city’s serious financial problems and the onset of summer gun violence.

Lightfoot told reporters Friday that the 2020 budget gap she will have to close is worse than the $700 million deficit proclaimed by Emanuel’s administration, though she wouldn’t say how much worse.

The new mayor also will have to work with the City Council quickly to find money for a spike in state-mandated payments to Chicago’s beleaguered pension funds. City Hall’s ante into its pension funds jumps by $121 million next year, and the city will have to come up with about $1 billion more by 2023 in order to keep up with those ever-rising obligations.

Lightfoot has not detailed how she plans to deal with Chicago’s budget problems, and how that could hit taxpayers. To pay for pensions, aldermen went along with a series of unpopular tax hikes under Emanuel, and it’s not clear whether they’ll be willing to do so again for Lightfoot.

The new mayor will also immediately face high levels of violence and crime with the coming of warm weather. While she’s still rolling out her top cabinet picks, Lightfoot has made it clear that she will not decide whether to replace Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson until after the summer, in order to provide stability during the traditionally violent season.

Lightfoot, the former head of the Chicago Police Board, will also have to manage the ongoing task of reforming the Chicago Police Department. That process, launched after the Laquan McDonald shooting scandal, has been fraught with tension between City Hall and the Chicago police union.

She’s also had only a small window of time — about six weeks — to staff a new leadership team for City Hall.

Several of her top staff picks signal her priorities — reducing segregation, building up neighborhoods, tackling police reform — and some department heads will be kept on from Emanuel’s administration.

One of Lightfoot’s first tests in the City Council will come later this month, when aldermen are set to vote on which from their ranks will get to lead the chamber’s influential committees. Committee picks are traditionally put forth by the mayor.

And Lightfoot is already shaking things up. She wants to name progressive Alderman Scott Waguespack, 32nd Ward, to head up the powerful Finance Committee. That post was held by Burke until he was charged by the feds.

Alderman Pat Dowell, 3rd Ward, would replace the influential Alderman Carrie Austin, from the 34th Ward, as Budget Committee chair. Austin backed Preckwinkle in the mayor’s race.

Among other changes, 36th Ward Alderman Gilbert Villegas will serve as Lightfoot’s floor leader, the first Latino ever to hold that unofficial post. The job, which involves whipping votes and advancing a mayor’s agenda in the City Council, was performed by Alderman Pat O’Connor during Emanuel’s time in office. But O’Connor, 40th Ward, was defeated in the anti-incumbent wave that swept Lightfoot into office in April.

There’s an evening show on North Korea’s state TV that brings soldiers news from their hometowns.

Last September, the show on the regime-run Korean Central Television, or KCTV, was interrupted for an urgent update.

“Another piece of news from our families on the home front, just in from the Kangson steel factory,” an announcer says. “Soldiers from Kangson will be happy to hear that,” the anchor replies, beaming.

The update: A soldier’s father says he and fellow factory workers are so motivated, they will beat production targets by 50%.

The spirited labor message is decades old. But the presentation, including the staged interruption, hints at a change in propaganda tactics.

The news presenters are fresh-faced. Their attire is business casual. Their dialogue is chatty. You might almost think it’s a South Korean show. One giveaway that it’s not is the anchors’ red lapel pins bearing images of old North Korean leaders, worn only in the North.

The program is an example of recent North Korean efforts to give propaganda a makeover. Analysts say it is a response to fierce competition between Pyongyang’s narrative — that its foreign and domestic policies are succeeding — and an influx of outside information, in spite of government attempts to completely shut it out.

North Korean authorities “know that they can’t go on with the old ways of propaganda and idolizing leaders,” Jang Haesung, a former KCTV reporter who defected to South Korea in the 1990s, tells NPR.

“But they have no choice,” he says, “because if they admit their failings, the regime could collapse.”

In the past, stern-faced anchors stolidly read their scripts, and there were few visuals. For major events, such as nuclear tests, presidential summits and the death of national leaders, the state television would wheel out veteran anchor Ri Chun Hee. She is known for her dramatic spiels, delivered wearing a traditional hanbok dress and in front of a backdrop of the crater atop Mount Paektu, the mythical birthplace of founding dynast Kim Il Sung.

In recent months, though, the network’s business reports have begun to use digitally designed charts and graphics. Weather forecasters have stood up from their desks. Previously unseen TV studios and control rooms have begun to appear on screen.

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un himself underwent an on-air makeover for his annual televised New Year’s address, ditching his rostrum and his Mao suit of years past. He instead donned a suit and tie and ensconced himself in a book-lined, wood-paneled study, which North Korea watchers say was apparently aimed at making him look more genial and statesman-like.

Proclamation to disregard conventional style

Authorities, meanwhile, have issued a slew of directives to the effect that news and propaganda “should boldly disregard the established customs and conventional way of writing and editing,” as the ruling party’s flagship newspaper Rodong Sinmun proclaimed in a May 7 article (link in Korean).

Another Rodong op-ed on April 29^{called for “fact-based” propaganda, which should never “fail to take into account the general public’s cognitive and emotional capabilities.”}

In March, Kim Jong Un himself wrote a letter (link in Korean) to propaganda workers, telling them that “mystifying the leader’s revolutionary activities to emphasize his greatness will bury the truth.” He added: “Only when the people are charmed by the leader as a human and a comrade, will they feel a sense of absolute loyalty.”

The statements, analysts say, reflect the fact that North Koreans increasingly have access to alternative sources of information which challenge the leadership’s narrative.

“After watching South Korean television, North Koreans can’t help but wonder why they can’t make programs like those,” says Kang Dong Wan, an expert on North Korea media at Dong-A University in Busan, South Korea.

This is happening despite authorities’ best efforts, Kang points out. Few of North Korea’s more than 25 million people have access to the Internet, and those who do are limited to surfing a dozen or so government-run sites. Several million North Koreans now have mobile phones, but their calls are believed to be monitored by authorities.

Jang, the former KCTV reporter who is now retired, confides that when he was with the North’s network he had access to foreign news and domestic intelligence briefings and, although he couldn’t discuss it publicly, he knew pretty well what was happening at home and abroad. He says other North Korean elites are in a similar position.

Increasingly, ordinary North Koreans are also exposed to outside news and entertainment through smuggled DVDs, thumb drives and memory cards, or in broadcasts from foreign media outlets, such as Radio Free Asia and the BBC, accessed by shortwave radios.

And it is carried in the minds of North Korean traders and laborers — from seafood merchants in China to lumberjacks in Russia’s Far East — who can access foreign media while working abroad.

Even though North Korea’s leaders can easily jail their critics, analysts say, they still have to at least appear to care about what people think.

“No matter how much propaganda it puts out,” Kang says, “the North Korean government knows that its people know that what they are telling them is not true.”

Meanwhile, says Kim Seungchul, president of the Seoul-based North Korea Reform Radio, penalties for accessing banned foreign media are becoming more lenient as more people catch on.

Kim is a North Korean defector. His network broadcasts a couple of hours of news a day via shortwave, aimed at a North Korean audience.

It used to be, he says, that getting caught listening to foreign broadcasts could land you in a political prison, or worse. Now so many people are listening, he says, that getting caught usually just means a fine or a short stint in a detention center.

The influx of information has undermined North Korea’s control over the narrative of current events, most notably in February in Vietnam, when President Trump walked out on what he said was a bad deal offered by Kim Jong Un.

Kim Seungchul says that following the summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, North Korean diplomats told workers overseas: “‘We have our own position on this. You just wait and see. But in the meantime, don’t tell anyone about it. Don’t even discuss it with each other.'”

But the news got into North Korea anyway, and after a week of claiming the summit was a victory for Kim Jong Un, state media did an about-face, blaming hard-liners within the Trump administration for sabotaging the summit.

Later in March, Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui argued that public opinion was constraining Kim’s policy options.

“Our people, especially our military and munitions industry, are saying we must never give up nuclear capabilities,” Choe said, and therefore they opposed Kim making a deal with Trump in Hanoi.

Chicago will make history Monday when Lori Lightfoot is sworn in as the city’s first black woman mayor and first openly gay mayor.

The 56-year-old is set to be inaugurated along with Chicago’s two other city-wide elected officials and all 50 aldermen.

Lightfoot’s inauguration caps a stunning political rise for someone who has never before held elected office. The former federal prosecutor and corporate lawyer launched her mayoral bid last May, months before Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s bombshell announcement that he would not seek a third term in office.

That prompted a crush of pols to jump into the race, but Lightfoot rose to the top of a field of 14 candidates in late February’s general election. After a short and bruising campaign against Democratic Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, Lightoot went on to win a landslide victory in the April 2 runoff.

Ultimately, Lightfoot won in all 50 wards and garnered 74 percent of the vote over Preckwinkle’s 26 percent, a margin not seen in Chicago since the reign of Mayor Richard M. Daley.

On the campaign trail, Lightfoot promised to put an end to Chicago’s political machine “once and for all” and shine a bright light on corruption in City Hall. It’s a message that resonated with voters, particularly as a burgeoning corruption scandal involving some of the city’s longest-serving aldermen hit the headlines at the height of the mayor’s race.

Veteran Ald. Ed Burke was charged in January with attempted extortion for allegedly trying to shake down owners of a fast food franchise in order to win business for his private law firm. Burke has said he didn’t do anything wrong.

But legal documents also revealed that Burke allegedly urged the restaurateurs to give campaign money to Preckwinkle. That revelation and other Preckwinkle-Burke connections, coupled with Preckwinkle’s post as the Cook County Democratic Party Chair, left an opening for Lightfoot to paint her as the consummate City Hall insider at a time when voters were hungry for reform.

In recent days, Lightfoot started to act on some of those campaign promises to clean up City Hall.

She met with aldermen about an executive order she had said she’ll sign on her first day in office that would curtail an unwritten custom, known as “aldermanic prerogative,” that gives local aldermen the final say over permits and zoning in their wards. Critics have long said that unilateral power leads to corruption, but many aldermen were not on board with Lightfoot’s proposed changes after last week’s meetings.

Lightfoot not only must learn now to navigate a new political landscape at City Hall, but she’ll also immediately have to deal with the city’s serious financial problems and the onset of summer gun violence.

Lightfoot told reporters Friday that the 2020 budget gap she’ll have to close is worse than the $700 million deficit proclaimed by Emanuel’s administration, though she wouldn’t say how much worse.

The new mayor will also have to work with the City Council quickly to find money for a spike in state-mandated payments to Chicago’s beleaguered pension funds. City Hall’s ante into its pension funds jumps by $121 million next year, and the city will have to come up with about $1 billion more by 2023 in order to keep up with those ever-rising obligations.

Lightfoot has not detailed how she plans to deal with Chicago’s budget problems, and how that could hit taxpayers. To pay for pensions, aldermen went along with a series of unpopular tax hikes under Emanuel and it’s not clear whether they’ll be willing to do so again for Lightfoot.

The new mayor will also immediately face high levels of violence and crime with the coming of warm weather. While she’s still rolling out her top cabinet picks, Lightfoot has made it clear that she will not decide whether to replace Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson until after the summer, in order to provide stability during the traditionally violent season.

Lightfoot, the former head of the Chicago Police Board, will also have to manage the ongoing task of reforming the Chicago Police Department. That process, launched after the Laquan McDonald shooting scandal, has been fraught with tension between City Hall and the Chicago police union.

She’s also had only a small window of time — about six weeks — to staff a new leadership team for City Hall.

Several of her top staff picks signal her priorities — reducing segregation, building up neighborhoods, tackling police reform — and some department heads will be kept on from Emanuel’s administration.

One of Lightfoot’s first tests in the City Council will come later this month, when aldermen are set to vote on which from their ranks will get to lead the chamber’s influential committees. Committee picks are traditionally put forth by the mayor.

And Lightfoot is already shaking things up. She wants to name progressive Ald. Scott Waguespack, 32nd Ward, to head up the powerful Finance Committee. That post was held by Burke until he was charged by the feds.

Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd Ward, would replace the influential Ald. Carrie Austin, 34th Ward, as Budget Committee chair. Austin backed Preckwinkle in the mayor’s race.

Among other changes, 36th Ward Ald. Gilbert Villegas will serve as Lightfoot’s floor leader, the first Latino ever to hold that unofficial post. The job, which involves whipping votes and advancing a mayor’s agenda in the City Council, was performed by Ald. Pat O’Connor during Emanuel’s time in office. But O’Connor, 40th Ward, was defeated in the anti-incumbent wave that swept Lightfoot into office in April.

Bob Best enthusiastically supports President Trump’s tough policies against China and other countries.

“I’m not a big tariff guy. I’m a free trade guy,” says Best, who manages a heating and air conditioning company in Kennesaw, Ga.

“But sometimes when the bully just doesn’t listen, you’ve got to punch him in the mouth. And that’s what he’s doing.”

Best supports the president’s actions even though they affect him directly. The price of the heating and air conditioning units that his company sells went up by as much as $150 apiece after the cost of building them went up because Trump placed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports last year. He was forced to pass the increase onto his customers.

Trump will have to appeal to Americans’ national pride, and even their patriotism, to succeed in leveling the playing field with China. That’s because virtually every American is likely to feel an impact if Trump’s tariffs go forward on just about everything imported from China. He will have to persuade Americans that what’s at stake transcends their own interests.

Americans may not like paying higher prices on imported products, but they are more likely to tolerate them if they perceive that American values are at stake, says Henry Olsen, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

“I think you have an element of patriotism,” Olsen says. “People recognize that the Chinese government is not a free government, it’s not a democratic government, and that it’s increasingly becoming a threat to us and the other countries that do believe in those things.”

As an abstract idea, Americans are big backers of trade. Seventy-four percent see trade as a net positive for the economy. Mohamed Younis, editor-in-chief at Gallup News, says most people believe trade lowers prices over all and leads to a greater selection of products.

But 62% of Americans believe trade with China is unfair, he says.

Last week, Trump hiked tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese products from 10% to 25% and has threatened to levy that amount on an additional $325 billion worth of goods.

Tariffs are like taxes paid by importers at U.S. ports when they clear customs. Those businesses have to either swallow the cost themselves or pass it on to customers. The risk for Trump is that Americans will balk at paying higher prices. So far, there’s little no evidence that’s happening.

And support from some of the hardest hit remains firm. Even farmers, who have bore the brunt from the trade war, continue to support Trump in large numbers, says Rhonda Brooks, editor of Farm Journal, which regularly surveys ranchers and farmers about their political views.

“They believe very strongly that this is a president who is more than any president in recent history actually who’s really been talking about farmers and at least acknowledging them and that he wants to help them,” Brooks says.