While the divestment efforts are meant as a show of solidarity with Ukraine and a rebuke of Russia’s attack, the amount of money potentially affected compared to the overall size of the nation’s public pension assets is relatively small. And some of the actions would involve legislation and other measures that aren’t yet finalized.

The Democrat wrote Monday night to the Illinois State Board of Investments, the Teachers’ Retirement System and the State Universities’ Retirement System asking them “to explore the potential of divesting state pension assets from Russian-based companies and Russian assets.”

The dissenting justices, Michael J. Burke and David K. Overstreet, said they would have granted Pritzker’s petition to appeal, to allow the state high court to at last weigh in on the question of the limits of Pritzker’s claims to virtually unlimited pandemic emergency powers. To this point, the state Supreme Court has done little to address claims of executive overreach against Pritzker in the past two years.

“In trying to maximize their gains in the Land of Lincoln, Democrats may have stretched themselves too thin, leaving the party vulnerable to unintended losses, particularly in a cycle trending toward Republicans with an unpopular Democratic president in the White House.”

The Secretary of State’s said the flag was raised Monday at the request of Governor Pritzker, the great-grandson of a Ukrainian refugee.

Like the vetoed measure, House Bill 1167 gives administrative leave rather than sick time to staff for COVID-issues, and guarantees pay for school staff if there are emergency closures in schools. There’s one difference. “It structures this bill as an incentive so that teachers and staff need to be vaccinated within five weeks of the bill signing in order to receive the benefits of the administrative days,” state Rep. Janet Yang Rohr said.

State Rep. Justin Slaughter said the chiefs of police and sheriff’s associations are on board with the change in House Bill 3904. “It provides law enforcement a less lethal alternative to their handgun thus reducing preventable police-involved shootings while aiding in the de-escalation techniques and ultimately keeping our officers and communities safe.”

State Rep. Blaine Wilhour said the damage from the governor’s unilateral orders the past two years is vast, impacting businesses and beyond. “Just what we’ve done to school kids over the last two years has been completely irrational. We always knew where the risks were. It was not there [for school children].”

Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike announced she would leave her $178,200-a-year post on March 14. Amaal Tokars, the agency’s assistant director, will serve as interim director during a nationwide search to find a longer-term replacement.

Reason Foundation Senior Policy Analyst Marc Joffe warned of government bloat. “A lot of the wins that have been presented here have to do with state and local governments spending money on broadband, but that’s also in the infrastructure bill as well, so you have a lot of duplication of effort across these bills and naturally you’re going to have a lot of waste.”

Teacher strikes are prohibited in all of the states bordering Illinois. They are also banned in eight of the nation’s 10 largest school districts.

Hospitals, nursing homes, physician offices and other health care facilities will still follow masking mandates.

Jim Dey: “That’s impressive, especially for a chief executive who pledged his opposition to the ruthless political practice when he was running for governor in 2018. But that was then…And this is now — he’s an incumbent governor who realizes how instrumental this age-old practice can be in leveraging political power into even more political power.”

James Warren, former managing editor of the Chicago Tribune: “A spokesperson for the Illinois State Board of Education underscored the importance of students learning credible sources of information, and said that the mandated ‘unit of instruction’ would be defined and monitored separately by each school district. It would be great if this new legislation means that Illinois students will learn the difference between PBS and TikTok. Or the difference between the Chicago Tribune and The New York Times on one hand, and InfoWars.com or RT.com, on the other. RT.com is the English language organ of the Russian government now in

State Appellate Defender James Chadd told a state Senate committee Tuesday, “We are now able to begin working on a case within a month or two of the date we get a complete record. In my 37 years with OSAD, I can remember no time when we’re able to get to cases so quickly.”

Administered by the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois Board of Higher Education, the Illinois Tutoring Initiative program will team up school districts and universities around the state. Funding for the program comes from the federal government’s investment of nearly $8 billion in pandemic relief for Illinois schools.

State Rep. Margaret Croke explained that the payment system would involve an outside third party, similar to how credit cards payments are processed. The measure would not mean the state holds digital currency, but rather converts cryptocurrency payments into U.S. dollars.

Comptroller Susan Mendoza just threw her support behind a bill that would slash the 12% annual interest rate that state agencies must pay suppliers for bills that aren’t paid on time. Mendoza and Pritzker like to tout their progress in improving Illinois’ finances. But they have a long way to go—as the state’s massive pension funding shortfall shows. Bringing lasting stability to Illinois finances requires a long-term commitment to sound practices, including timely bill payment. The push to cut the interest rate on late bill payments casts doubt on that commitment.

Starting this year, Illinois will receive nearly $18 billion in federal infrastructure funds, on top of the $45 billion the state already committed to repair roads, bridges, rails and more—a collective windfall for infrastructure that this area has not witnessed at any other point in its history.

The Secretary of State’s office, which oversees the Capitol Complex itself, says masks are now “recommended,” but not required inside the Capitol building. But, both the House and Senate set the rules for their own chambers and office areas, and they will require masks.

State representative Mark Batinick warned that inflationary pressures that have caused a short-term “sugar high” for the state’s tax revenues will eventually even out and start to hit the state’s expense side of the ledger sheet.

The family’s attorney said that despite a previous 17-month investigation finding no medical neglect of one of the three children, who has a complex medical history, all three children were eventually taken away for more than 460 days, including the three-day-old child.

Now that Covid is endemic, why don’t legislatures permanently repeal or relax laws that restrict their citizens’ access to medical care? Mostly because powerful interest groups, including lobbies representing in-state healthcare professionals, oppose doing so. Illinois’s J.B. Pritzker has renewed his Covid-19 “disaster” proclamation every 30 dayssince the pandemic began, most recently on Feb. 4. Governors have another incentive to extend states of emergency: The Family First Coronavirus Act, enacted in March 2020, increased food-stamp benefits subject to states of emergency at the state and federal levels. This is one reason average food benefits nationwide