“Needless to say, the castor oil Mendoza is recommending will not go down well with her colleagues in state government. Pritzker agrees that repaying the Federal Reserve is a good move, but he doesn’t want to get carried away with spending restraint. He talks of the need to spend more to “stimulate the economy” and create more jobs.”

Jim Dey: “It’s been decades since members of the U.S. Senate — principally Southern segregationists — so openly threatened to make decisions based solely on race. But growing identity politics have created a new world, to the point where statements once considered an affront to the concept of equal rights for all generate little public comment or criticism.”

Lynn Sweet: “While much is known about the basic biography of Duckworth, a Democrat – the Illinois Army National Guard officer lost both legs and shattered her right arm when her Black Hawk helicopter was shot down in Iraq on Nov. 12, 2004 – her backstories of her relentless drive to rise above adversity are useful to know when we think we are having a bad day. Duckworth’s story is about her personal journey and is not a political tome.”

“It was passed two months after the introduction of iPhone 1 and two full years before the introduction of the iPad – things that we certainly now can’t remember living without,” said Clark Kaericher, Illinois Chamber of Commerce vice president.

In the bill, the criteria for approving or denying a book is based on if it contains language that is derogatory, racist, or incites hate against a person. It would require some books used in school lessons to be written by people of color and women.

“Democrats in blue states like Illinois, where the latest unemployment rate was 7.7 percent, don’t like the competition from lower-cost RTW neighbors such as Indiana, where unemployment is around 4.2 percent. They are pushing PRO to even the playing field. Who gets hurt? Workers, whose jobs may go outside the country, or disappear altogether through automation.”