Gov. J.B. Pritzker said these counties were chosen because they have significant needs in terms of case numbers in vulnerable populations, a robust capacity for tracing and existing collaborations with public health personnel, medical students and volunteers already on the ground. Of the 97 local health departments, only 55 have answered IDPH assessments regarding their ability to expand and deploy their contact tracing capabilities.

It seems to be therapeutic to many of my friends to have their beliefs reinforced each night that anyone who complains about shutdowns is unintelligent or malevolent.

“The 2001 memo surfaced amid a series of additional lawsuits filed against the governor’s orders, arguing that Pritzker has overstepped his authority under the U.S. Constitution as well as Illinois law…Some of these legal battles could have been averted had the General Assembly organized a plan to meet before the initial proclamation expired.”

Small businesses face a potential income tax hike nearly 5 times larger than corporations under Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s “fair tax” amendment.

A local nursing home where a quarter of the residents died from COVID-19 is being sued by the family of a 97-year-old woman. A spokesperson for the family said they had no idea the woman was sick until they got a call saying she died.

“The collapse in state revenues has complicated matters severely, the reality being that Illinois doesn’t have the money to meet its current obligations and won’t have the money to support desired spending for the new fiscal year, either. This is a conundrum for spendthrift legislators. If past is prologue, they will spend money the state doesn’t have in the vain hope that it will all work out.”

Now, Pritzker and Illinois have become whipping boys in a heated and mostly partisan national debate over how much cash Washington should fork over to patch state budgets shredded by the plunge in tax revenue.

Thei statement from Fayette County State’s Attorney Joshua Morrison and Fayette County Sheriff Chris Smith in response to the Governor’s emergency rule making it a class A misdemeanor for certain businesses to open reads, in part: “Because we expect that this rule will be quickly overturned, this Office has the duty to protect citizens and businesses.”

Writes former State Senator Ed Petka (R-Plainfield): “Did you know that Illinois Law requires that a private place or business could only be closed or shut down by the consent of the owner or by a court order?”

Under a 2012 law designed to keep the company from leaving the state, Sears was required to maintain at least 4,250 employees at its sprawling offices in Hoffman Estates and a small satellite office in Chicago. In return, the retail icon received tax breaks worth an estimated $275 million.

Illinois Republicans Monday demanded a vote in the General Assembly on removing from the fall ballot Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s proposed graduated income tax structure during a Special Session this week in Springfield. State law does not specify a deadline for removing a question that’s been certified for a particular election, according to Matt Dietrich, spokesman for the Illinois State Board of Elections.

In addition to the loss of his law license, Blagojevich is barred from holding elected office in Illinois again.

The Northeast region, which includes Cook County and collar counties, reported a positivity rate at 18.3% Monday — just under the threshold of 20% and a drop of 4.9% in the last two weeks. The remaining regions in the state sat well-below the positivity rate threshold, with the North-Central region at 7.2%, the Central region at 4.2% and the Southern region at 6%.

Trump accused Pritzker of money being the motivating factor for the his response to the pandemic, the president claiming he “knows the family.”

“To put that into greater perspective, an area comprising only 18.7% of Illinois’ total area is steering the stay at home guidelines for the remaining 81.3% of the state. It makes sense that the rest of Illinois feels disenfranchised when it comes to Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s COVID-19 lockdown measures. But what happens should the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin metropolitan finally embrace the threats of its state counterparts, take its ball and go elsewhere?”