Chicago Is About To Have The Gayest City Council In The Country – Block Club Chicago

Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson’s platform emphasized the wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation across the nation and promised to further invest in Chicago as a “regional hub for LGBTQ community and culture.” At the top of Johnson’s plan is a promise to protect LGBTQ people by ensuring hate crimes are fully investigated and solving more murders of transgender people in Chicago, which have been on the rise.

Read More »

As mandates loom, it’s getting harder to ‘just keep truckin’ – Illinois Business Journal

Two laws that exist now in California are being considered in Illinois: The NET-Z coalition is pushing legislation to mandate an increasing percentage of heavy- and medium-duty trucks sold in Illinois to be electric or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, and a second bill reclassifies independent contractors as employees, essentially eliminating the independent contractor and the owner/operator model from the trucking industry.

Read More »

Evanston’s groundbreaking reparations plan was stumbling. A brother and sister pushed it forward. – Evanston Review*

When apartment-dwellers Kenneth Wideman and Shelia Wideman, 75, were picked as two of the first 16 Evanstonians to each receive $25,000 housing allowances, they were unable to accept the payment. Instead, a committee of residents and council members voted in March to push the program in a direction its sharpest critics had always wanted: They carved out a fourth option to existing rules, allowing the Widemans and 600-plus other waiting applicants to receive a direct cash payment to be used toward rent or other housing expenses.

Read More »

New solar farms proposed for Sangamon County – Illinois Times

New solar farms proposed for Sangamon CountySteve Jones, who has lived 45 years at the same address, is among about a dozen people organizing opposition to the River Maple Solar II project. Thirty-five acres of solar panels up to 15-feet tall would be erected in farmland 1,200 feet from Jones’ backyard. But it may not matter what Jones and his neighbors think. A controversial bill signed into law in January dramatically reduces the power of county governments to regulate solar and wind farms if the projects meet standards set in the new

Read More »

Cost of insuring undocumented immigrants complicating Illinois budget – Bloomington Pantagraph

Even as enrollment has far outstripped expectations, some Democratic lawmakers are pushing to further expand coverage, opening the program to people 19 and older, which the Pritzker Administration estimates would cost an additional $380 million in the first year. The financial pressure is exposing tensions between Democrats’ open-arms stance on immigration and the limited resources available in a state that has only recently begun to stabilize its chronically shaky finances.
Read More »

Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney controversy deepens: Chicago gay bars roar at beer maker’s ‘abandonment’ of cause – FOX Business

Anheuser-Busch had partnered with Mulvaney in March, sending her a personalized pack of beer as part of an ad for March Madness and Mulvaney’s first-year anniversary of her gender transition. The marketing move led to Anheuser-Busch losing roughly $5 billion in market value and significant boycotts from conservative drinkers.

Read More »

Beleaguered Lori Lightfoot Exposes the Open Borders Scam – American Thinker

“Have Mayor Lightfoot’s complaints accidently exposed the Democrat party scam — that it was never about prosperity or charity? Has she revealed that the open borders argument is actually something much less noble? Has the ‘no human being is illegal’ rallying cry really been about the importation of voters and chaos, rather than charity?”

Read More »

Chicago reporter issues dire warning after being barred entry to luxury migrant hotel: ‘Ticking time bomb’ – FOX News

“It is very disturbing,” William Kelly said. “This is right off of Michigan Avenue. We already have the retailers fleeing due to violent crime. Tourists obviously have flatlined in the city of Chicago. Hotels are struggling, and this luxury hotel is apparently being used to house migrants. The city of Chicago isn’t talking about this at all, so Chicago residents are being kept completely in the dark.”

Read More »

Can Brandon Johnson Save Chicago? – Glenn Loury

“The majority of Chicago’s black and brown babies are born to single mothers, according to this analysis from Wirepoints. That’s important because there’s a huge household income gap between those headed by single mothers and those headed by married parents. Another issue is that Chicago’s black and brown students don’t do well in school.”

Read More »

Guest Column: Joe Trippi Should Wear the Jacket – John Kass News

“Toni Preckwinkle wields great power and remains a humorless racist with a penchant for political torture. It was Toni Preckwinkle who might have uttered, ‘Will no one rid me of this troublesome geek (policy wonk)?’ One of Toni’s barons must have decided to do the old Thomas Becket on Paul Vallas. The broadsword used to hack Paul Vallas was California Techno-politico Joe Trippi.”

Read More »

Car insurance prices soar in Illinois, Rep. Will Guzzardi aiming to crack down on insurers – WBEZ (Chicago)

The five biggest auto insurers in Illinois have raised automobile insurance rates a whopping $527 million since January, an analysis by two consumer groups shows. Now, state Rep. Will Guzzardi’s bill would, among other things, require automobile insurers to get prior state approval for rate hikes and prohibit using gender, marital status, age, occupation, schooling, home ownership, wealth, credit scores or a customer’s past insurance company relationships in setting car insurance rates.

Read More »

Mayor Lightfoot says city lacks funds for incoming migrants, Mayor-elect Johnson to inherit crisis – ABC7 (Chicago)

Lori Lightfoot said more than 200 migrants a day are showing up in Chicago; Close to 300 migrants have camped on police station floors this week. “We’ve got to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to support the people that are here, but it doesn’t make sense for people to continue to come to Chicago when we are literally out of space,” she said.

Read More »

Firefighters’ pension bill could cost Chicago taxpayers $3 billion, city official says – Chicago Sun-Times

The Civic Federation has warned on its website that the companion bills would “jeopardize the hard-won financial stability attained over the last several years” by the state and city and “could potentially result in the reversal of recent bond rating upgrades for both governments….For the city of Chicago and other local governments, this could lead to large property tax increases, further burdening homeowners and businesses as Illinois enters into a recession.”

Read More »

Column: ‘ComEd Four’ plus Madigan really under gun now – Champaign News-Gazette

Jim Dey: “At some point, the U.S. Supreme Court must choose between conflicting interpretations of the bribery statute, and this could be the case. The reality, however, is that for all their standing in political and community affairs in Chicago, the ComEd Four are little fish. The Great White Whale is former Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan, the biggest fish in Illinois political cesspool.”

Read More »