The first reform allows for a broader use of Clear and Present Danger Rule reports, which allows ISP to revoke or deny a Firearm Owners Identification Card to those who are deemed a risk to themselves or to others. The second change puts a model policy in place to provide an overall framework law enforcement can follow to secure and execute a Firearms Restraining Order.

As White prepares to depart the political stage, he will continue to work with the Jesse White Tumblers. “I’ve had this program for 64 years, more than 18,000 young people have come through it, and only 15 have gotten in trouble with the law,” he said. “I remind those kids that I always want them to look up, and the only time I want them to look down is when they tie their shoes.”

Employer associations from Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Indiana and Ohio sent Congressional leaders a letter last week urging them to implement the Presidential Emergency Board’s recommendations.

Illinois’ October unemployment numbers show a slight improvement, but the state is still at the bottom compared to the other state’s job markets, marking the second month in a row that Illinois has held the nation’s worst jobless rate.

“It doesn’t look like an unusually large turnout for an Illinois midterm election,” said Matt Dietrich, spokesman for the Illinois Board of Elections. “I’d estimate the statewide turnout at 50-51%.” That’s far off the turnout for Illinois’ 2018 midterm which was 57.23%, the highest for a midterm election in 36 years.

“Illinois casinos, it seems, have become like NFL franchises, supremely skilled at lobbying and dangling the promise of revenue to cash-strapped cities but on their own ever-changing terms.”

Jim Dey: “As an alternative to traditional incarceration in a jail or prison setting, the courts can sentence defendants to home incarceration. That means exactly what it says — individuals are required to be home unless they get permission from their overseers to leave for a limited amount of time for a specific reason… But the SAFE-T Act changed the rules to the point they are no longer required to remain at home.”

Triple A says the average gas price statewide is at four dollars a gallon for regular unleaded, down 16 cents over the past week. Springfield has the lowest prices of any major metro area in the state, at $3.69 a gallon, down 40 cents in the past month.

Illinoisans spent $3.3 billion more than projected on the state’s worst-in-the-nation pension crisis between 2017 and 2022. That’s enough money to give every taxpayer a $284 rebate, repave more than 150,000 miles of road or give every student at Southern Illinois University, both Edwardsville and Carbondale, a full-ride scholarship for four years.