Equal Protection Project founder William Jacobson describes the Tracey Meares Scholarship as discriminatory, and said it violates the 14th amendment. “It is limited to certain races. It excludes white people, unless they are also LGBTQ. And it also favors female students. So we think that those are discriminatory on multiple levels,” Jacobson said.

If approved by the legislature, the tax for sports book operators would go from 15% to 35%, one of the highest percentages in the country. Dan Holmes with the gambling information website PlayIllinois said big operators like DraftKings and FanDuel should have no problems with the increased operational taxes, but may choose to offer less perks to Illinois sports bettors. But there is speculation that smaller sports books may suffer and close up shop in Illinois.

Senate Bill 3591 would set up a structure for online news outlets to negotiate with social media platforms to get compensated when someone shares a news story on their news feed. Jeff Jarvis, a longtime journalist and professor, questioned the First Amendment implications, and said that in locations that have already done this, social media companies ended sharing news stories online, resulting in no loss of traffic for them, but lost traffic to the news outlet.

HB793 would get rid of the federal waiver that allows companies to pay disabled adults sub-minimum wage. State Sen. Chapin Rose said, if passed, companies would hire more productive employees for the mandated minimum wage price. Sheltered workshops would cease to exist.

Gov. JB Pritzker included the funding move in his State of the State and budget address last month. Public transportation costs for things like commuter rail and city busing have been historically paid for by the state’s General Revenue Fund since they are not associated with capital improvements, repairs or upgrades.

Nearly 300 Illinois truckers were laid off from two Chicago-area companies in February, Hillside Logistics in Hillside and DHL Supply Chain in Joliet. But Don Schaefer, president of the Mid-West Truckers Association, said that for every warehouse that is laying off drivers or closing, five new ones are being built.

Ralph Martire, of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, said the amount of operational funding covered by the state has decreased from 72 percent covered in 2002 to 35 percent in 2021. “We are making higher ed more unaffordable for everyone in Illinois generally,” said Martire, who also served on the commission. “But in particular, for low-income families and families that have been marginalized for decades.”

Like BIPA, plaintiffs asserting claims under GIPA have suffered little or no actual damages. However, they attempt to recover significant statutory damages on their behalf and other class members like them.

Said commission member and Advance Illinois president Robin Steans, “If we learned anything from K-12, it’s that not every student requires the same support. It may cost more [when it comes] to the first-generation goers, if they are English language learners, if they are parents, if they’ve got housing instability, all of that got factored in. We’ve come up with what we think is a credible way for the state to look at that and say, ‘Okay, here’s what it’ll cost,’ and here’s how you adjust that adequacy target based on your student population and the type of programs and

U.S. District Judge Mary Rowland said Wednesday she appreciated that Link’s tax crime “was not directly related” to his official duties, but that it still sends “a terrible message to have taxpayers hear that someone in public service is not paying their taxes.” The judge also lamented the level of corruption in Springfield, where apparently someone can walk up to a fellow elected official and “on a dime, you could say ‘What’s in it for me?’ and we’d be off to the races with a federal case.”

U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the top Democrat on the committee, said the bill addresses national security concerns posed by Chinese ownership of TikTok and protects American social media users from “the digital surveillance and influence operations of regimes that could weaponize their personal data against them.”

The complaint, filed by Campus Reform Editor-in-Chief Dr. Zachary Marschall, cites a “Free Palestine” display at Illinois Wesleyan University which justified Hamas “rockets” and compared Israel to a rapist.

Illinois is one of several states with no statewide protections for wetlands on private land. It relied on federal Clean Water Act protections until the conservative court severely curtailed them in Sackett v. EPA, a ruling that has been celebrated by real estate developers and industry but has greatly concerned environmentalists. If passed, the Wetlands and Small Streams Protection Act will empower the Illinois Department of Natural Resources to regulate land use around the state’s remaining wetlands.

U.S. Rep John Moolenaar and Paul Teller, of Advancing American Freedom: “Gotion [which is scheduled to build a plant in Manteno, subsidized by the state] is undoubtedly a threat to U.S. national security…. Former President Barack Obama’s defense secretary, Leon Panetta, along with former President Donald Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, recently testified that Gotion poses a significant risk to American sovereignty and security…. Only a fool would fund his adversaries….”

“Because once you weed out the parts of (Gov. JB) Pritzker’s speech and budget proposal that are there solely for future presidential ads, you see the true state of the state. … The artificial boost to state revenue from federal taxpayer dollars is gone, and revenues from inflationary spikes are slowing. The years of budgets in which increases in normal spending outpaced increases in typical revenues are catching up to us. Said simply, the gravy train is gone, but the appetite of Pritzker and his majority for spending is stronger than ever.”

“Some of Illinois’ economic doldrums are the inescapable legacy of its outrageous past failures to fund its public-employee pension systems. In Chicago alone, more than 80% of its property tax revenues go to pensions. All the more reason to take whatever steps possible to ease the tax and cost burden on businesses rather than worsen it.”