Ronald Reagan’s story — the only U.S. president to be born and raised in the state, growing up in a low-income family and being admitted to college on a need-based scholarship — transcends party lines, Eureka College’s Josem Diaz said. “It is about the opportunity, and that is the story here, to remind our young generations to come that anyone from any walk of life — or any first generation student — can aspire to be the next president of the United States.”

Said political consultant Frank Calabrese, “This concept of being void from the beginning is very strong in Illinois. So if the Republicans can convince a state court that this map had problems from the beginning, then there is a legal doctrine in Illinois to kind of throw the whole thing out from the beginning.”

Parkview Board of Education President Jed Davis says the Yorkville school isn’t anti-mask, but wants to give students and parent the choice to wear them or not.

“Getting Illinois on a path to clean energy is a laudable goal, but not if the compromises empty the wallets of households and businesses. There is every reason to be skeptical as our big spenders in Springfield fashion a final bill under pressure from self-interested constituencies.”

To the governor’s changes to the ethics bill, state Rep. Avery Bourne said he should have given the legislative watchdog more independence to investigate wrongdoing of legislators and staff. “So he’s actually trying to bring less oversight of his own agencies with his amendatory veto.”

Gov. Pritzker replied to state Rep. Mark Batinick with a letter that reads, in part, “Creating rigid metrics in this changing landscape wouldn’t result in safer communities. While I wish I could provide a specific end date for the sake of convenience for all of us, this virus’ danger to people is diminished as our deterrence of it improves.”

The report was based on three metrics: Cost of living, quality of life and health care.

TRS spokesman Dave Urbanek said, “One of the things that was concerning abut this incident was that people were raising questions about hiring practices — very brave people raising concerns — and their concerns [vanished].”

Housing authority public safety chief Cortez Slack said people were shooting at each other around 9:30 p.m. Sunday at the Roosevelt Homes. A bullet pierced a window and hit the girl below her left eye.

“I certainly anticipated heated disagreement on issues coming before me as a board member, I did not anticipate getting Facebook messages telling me to kill myself,” Kimberly Cavill, a school board member in Illinois, wrote in a letter to the editor of a local newspaper. “I did not anticipate emails littered with curse words and hateful slurs. I did not anticipate people posting satellite images of my home on social media alongside dangerous, evidence-free accusations too disgusting to summarize.”

Kankakee Trinity will seek accreditation from the Association of Christian Schools International. “Full accreditation with ACSI means that your child will have access to any college or university throughout the world,” a school letter to parents said.

According to the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, as of January 2020, Illinois had an estimated 10,431 people experiencing homelessness on any given day. Of the total, around 1,000 were family households, 736 were Veterans, and 671 were unaccompanied young adults between the ages of 18 and 24.

“What’s going on now, that’s not what our buses are about,” said Don Fielding, who 35 years ago founded Untouchable Tours. “ Al Capone and Bugs Moran—those men are nostalgia, they don’t scare people. What’s happening in Chicago today is so much worse. It just makes you sad.”

Results of the 2020 census show that the change in thinking arises in part from necessity. The nation’s metropolitan areas have become more diverse, forcing their representatives to speak to a more racially mixed constituency. The new data show that seven Black lawmakers now in Congress represent districts that were majority Black in 2010 but no longer are so, including several in and around New York City, Chicago and Washington, D.C

As more employers consider mandatory COVID-19 vaccination programs, companies with Illinois employees should keep in mind a new Cook County ordinance that requires paid time off, or paying an employee, for time spent getting vaccinated.

“We know that there is at least $155 million missing just in a few weeks and so, we want to know the full scope of just how bad this is,” state Sen. Chapin Rose said. “We found dead people getting benefits. We found people under the age of 13 getting benefits. All kinds of problems.”

University of Illinois economist Fred Giertz says new COVID-19 concerns due to the delta variant may have contributed to the current plateau, and he’s concerned about Illinois’ unemployment rate, which is well above the national rate. But Giertz says the outlook remains positive for the U.S. economy, including Illinois, thanks to federal stimulus funding and pent-up consumer demand.

The state has been working on the bill for nearly two years but it has been delayed on concerns of Governor J.B. Pritzker, some lawmakers and environmentalists that coal plants would not be phased out quickly or allowed to keep running with unproven carbon-capture equipment. Public and political anger toward Exelon’s Commonwealth Edison unit also delayed action.

The Senate proposal approved early Sept. 1 aims to put the state on a path to 100% carbon-free power by 2050, but it did not have the support of Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker. A House plan introduced over the weekend has Pritzker’s support, but it’s unclear whether it would have enough votes in the Senate — which would have to reconvene to take up any legislation passed by the House — to make it to the governor’s desk.

“Cook County, Illinois, Judge James Shapiro reached a new low in covid tyranny by forbidding Rebecca Firlit from seeing her 11-year-old son until she receives a covid vaccine. Judge Shapiro is not alone in abusing judicial power to force individuals to get vaccinated.”