“I’m happy to discuss all day long what we can cut, what we should preserve, all of those things, but we certainly should not be holding senior citizens on Medicare and veterans hostage because you suddenly decide you don’t want to pay your bills,” U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth said.

Groups that included U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth and U.S. Representatives Sean Casten and Lauren Underwood announced a raft of new proposals to establish a national paid family and medical leave program and modernize the current Family and Medical Leave Act.

As Liz Shuler, President of the AFL-CIO, told Politico, ​“Illinois could be a roadmap for other states,” including ​“how that campaign was waged and the narrative and the secret sauce that we can spread around to other states.”

“In 2021, legislators passed a bill that established a goal of having 1 million electric vehicles on the road by the end of the decade…At any rate, meeting the goal would cost the state more than $700 million in sales and gas taxes plus another $1.1 billion in federal funds. That money is being counted on to help finance capital infrastructure plans already in place.”

“The budget bills do not need to come forward in the final hours of the session with little or no Republican input, and certainly the budget shouldn’t be used as a political football, year after year,” House Minority Leader Tony McCombie said.

“We will not be sending our deputies out proactively to take your lawfully owned gun, so remove that stressor from your life,” DuPage County Sheriff Jim Mendrick said. “What we will be doing is enhancing penalties for those who use guns illegally in a commission of a crime.”

“(T)his judge made it very clear that the equal protection clause of the Illinois Constitution has been violated and he doesn’t think the governor or the General Assembly will ever overcome,” attorney Thomas DeVore said. He argued the law, which doesn’t apply to retired or active duty law enforcement or others in the security sector, violates Illinoisans equal protections rights because the law enforcement community is treated differently.

Said Norman Walzer, professor of economics at Western Illinois University, “The idea that we have increases in telecommunications programs, and Illinois has spent a lot of money putting broadband into rural areas, but you can now have people who want to start their own business in a small community and market over the internet.”

A spokeswoman for Gov. JB Pritzker said Wednesday that any local district in Illinois that wants to offer the course is free to do so.

According to a study from 2022, Illinois’ state and local taxes have risen from 11.2% in 2019 to 12.9% in 2022. Research finds that Illinois’ property taxes, and gas taxes both rank second highest in the nation.

Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, California, and New Jersey were the most exited states in 2022.

“(T)he truth is the Illinois Republicans’ failure in 2022 wasn’t due to just one factor. A monumental failure like this is rarely caused by just one thing, especially since our party has been failing in Illinois for well over a decade.”

Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries took Mike Quigley off the House Intelligence Committee, a panel he had served on since 2015. However, Raja Krishnamoorthi was tapped by Jeffries to lead Democrats on a select committee on strategic competition between the United States and China, Jan Schakowsky was named the ranking member on the Innovation, Data and Commerce Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee., and Tammy Duckworth will helm the Senate Commerce Aviation Subcommittee

Jim Dey: “Open The Books will be moving out of its 2,000-square-foot building in Hinsdale in March, after which (Adam) Andrzejewski said its roughly 30 investigators will go ‘100 percent remote’ and ‘become even more effective…We believe transparency revolutionizes U.S. public policy and politics, and we’re proving it,’ Andrzejewski said.”

Among those named in the case brought by attorney Thomas DeVore are former state Sen. Darren Bailey, who ran for governor against incumbent Gov. J.B. Pritzker last year, and state Reps. Adam Niemerg and Blaine Wilhour.

David Kolata, executive director of Citizens Utility Board and Valeria Rincon, National Resources Defense Council’s Midwest Building Decarbonization advocate: “Chicago needs to begin implementing an exit strategy from gas and start investing in cheaper, safer, cleaner and more reliable options for meeting our household energy needs.”

State Farm and Wells Fargo are the latest companies to announce job cuts this week: Groupon said it would lay off 500 people, in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Monday, a number that could represent up to 20% of its workforce. Electric truck manufacturer Rivian said Wednesday it would lay off 6% of its workforce, including a small number of nonmanufacturing employees at its assembly plant in downstate Normal.

Fred Giertz explained, “This extends the slow decline of the index that began in May of last year. This reflects the slowing of growth after the remarkable recovery from the steep decline during the beginning of the Covid crisis. Illinois and the national economies are still growing but at a slower rate.”