“Wirepoints policy analysts Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner opined in mid-June that ‘case positivity rates downstate have collapsed for nearly two straight months and never reached the highs seen in Chicagoland.'”

Comment: We will be watching this and similar lawsuits closely and writing about them soon. The state’s position on this seems indefensible.

Blaire Lewis, who was on the committee and is manager of Advocate Trauma Recovery Center, said the federal funding has a much better chance of making a big impact with these smaller organizations which do work like intervene in street conflicts, provide services to the men closest to gun violence, support survivors of domestic violence, assist people who have been raped and provide counseling to trauma survivors. “I know for a fact that it would have a major impact to be able to say, ‘oh, you need cleaning supplies … here’s some cleaning supplies.’”

Comment: See our own article on this topic here as it pertains to Illinois.

“The word defund is not part of the bill that we will be voting on. And I think it’s fair to take a look at budgeting and and how a budget is used. A budget is a statement of the community’s values.”

“But we need access to the courts for those tenants who have been unresponsive or are violating leases in ways unrelated to COVID-19,” one landlord said. The judge gave the governor a July 5 deadline to respond to the plaintiffs’ request for a temporary restraining order.

“Or maybe the state has through equal parts good planning and good luck happened upon the right combination for making the most of weeks of ‘stay at home’ orders to tamp down the virus to manageable levels.”

“And did you notice yesterday with the Bunn shooting, they didn’t call counselors, they called police,” Tim Wortman added, referring to the workplace shooting at Bunn-o-Matic in Springfield on Friday.

It borrowed $1.4 billion during the Great Recession. It took five years to repay that money through a joint funding agreement with Illinois’ business community.

State Sen. Dave Syverson, R-Rockford, said small businesses need some relief. “If unemployment rates double and minimum wage goes up at a time when businesses are struggling that’s going to be very difficult to try and jumpstart.”

Along with the minimum wage increase to $10 an hour, here are some of the several laws that take effect Wednesday as the state heads into the 2021 fiscal year.

Full text of Trump’s letter is here.

“While states like Illinois struggle with debt and pension liabilities, Wisconsin and other states will be able to quickly bounce back from the pandemic. It’s a classic cautionary tale: the prudent, careful state will come out with more freedom, while the tax-and-spend state will be forced to beg other states for charity.”

Illinois is one of a handful of states that does not tax retirement or pension income as taxable revenue.

Almost three-quarters of a million people were employed in what’s considered clean-energy industries at the end of last year across 12 Midwest states, led by more than 125,000 each in Illinois and Michigan. The sector grew 5 percent since 2017, four times faster than the rest of the economy even in the relative boom ahead of the COVID collapse.

Illinois has also witnessed the steepest decline in Black population among all U.S. states since 2010 — both in number and by percentage. The state’s Black population has fallen by about 56,000, or 3%, since 2010.