“The reasons Governor Pritzker is giving for not lifting the mandate – as all of the states around Illinois have already done so – are vague and confusing. They also change from time to time, but no state politicians are raising a fuss about it.”

Mark Konkol: “What Blagojevich is looking for doesn’t exist in politics. He won’t find it in the public eye.”

Martin Torres served as deputy policy director on Pritzker’s first campaign for governor and later joined the administration as a senior policy advisor before moving to the first assistant deputy governor for education role.

Pritzker is one of seven governors, and the only one from the Midwest, traveling to the conference as part of a large U.S. delegation. His message will be: “In America’s heartland, there’s one state taking strides to match this moment.”

The program is meant to streamline the documentation process after release, which often turns into a bureaucratic runaround.

IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said in a news release that medical experts have reviewed data from clinical trials that included more than 3,000 children, leading to the CDC recommendation. While children don’t often get severe COVID-19, Ezike said, it is still possible, and infected children play a major role in disease spread.

Rep. Angelica Guerrero-Cuellar, who represents the largely Latino 22nd District on Chicago’s southwest side, is arguing that the composition of her district, and therefore her chances of reelection, could hang in the balance if the court decides to alter the map. Guerrero-Cuellar was appointed to the 22nd District seat earlier this year to replace former House Speaker Michael Madigan, who resigned

Among them, Northern Illinois University in DeKalb reported the largest year-over-year increase in freshman in more than 20 years. However, overall enrollment for the fall semester at NIU was down 3% from last year.

State Sen. Cristina Castro, who sponsored the bill in the Senate, plans to push for Medicaid coverage when the legislature is back in session in the spring.

Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski said the impact of the leveling must also take into account the total number of overall beds, which has decreased significantly during the pandemic. “And if you think about it, that was the limiting factor on why we needed all these controls, and mandates, because we were worried about crowding the hospitals. Well, here you go, they’ve allowed 1,000 beds to disappear.”

Four Republicans are vying for the GOP nomination. The primary is in June.

“It is a factor of, one there being so many unemployed people in the state of Illinois compared to other states and two there being so many fewer employers in the state,” Bryce Hill of the Illinois Policy Institute said. “So that’s the cause of this phenomenon here.”

Amendment 1 would constitutionally prohibit Illinois lawmakers from pulling back on union power. It would give government union bosses more power than voters and than those elected to represent voters’ interests. No other state in the union restricts its lawmakers from passing such labor provisions.

In August, U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth voted to pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal out of the Senate, which includes $2.5 billion for inland waterways project construction and another $2.5 billion for inland flood risk management.

Jim Dey: “A statute’s language determines its meaning. In cases where the language is clear and unambiguous, courts rely on the plain meaning of the statute’s words. That reality doomed Pritzker’s ‘intent’ argument. So he directed legislators to eliminate protection for vaccine skeptics.”

“We all rather would not have had a pandemic to prove a point, but good timing,” said head of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association Rob Karr. “Is it not over the top to say that retail literally saved state and local governments’ budgets as a result of those laws.”

Former state Rep. Luis Arroyo acknowledged that he offered a member of the Illinois Senate monthly payments of $2,500 to support a bill. At the time of his indictment, Arroyo was registered as a Chicago lobbyist focused on sweepstakes legislation.

The recognition process for Illinois schools and districts has already changed multiple times this year. This process is significant because if a school loses recognition, they also lose all the money they usually receive from the state, and their diplomas won’t count.

The plaintiffs in the first two cases, Troesch v. Chicago Teachers Union and Fischer v. Murphy in New Jersey, said that so-called “escape periods” are allowing states to avoid compliance with the court’s 2018 decision in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31. The court Monday also denied a request to hear a case from a Chicago teacher, Joseph Ocol, who argues he should receive a refund for the union fees he paid. Ocol has refused to join the picket line in the past two Chicago teacher strikes in