“[With this bill] we will build upon the General Assembly’s previous efforts to highlight and elevate leadership, diversity, equity and inclusion in Illinois,” said state Sen. Adriane Johnson. “This bill requires non profit organizations that provide $1 million in grants each year to report the demographic data on their public-facing website.” In 2019, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a law that requires private companies with a principal executive office located in Illinois to provide the gender, racial and ethnic diversity of its board members.

Dr. Susan Dvorak McMahon, a psychology professor at DePaul University, led the study. “Sixty-five percent of our sample experienced at least one type of verbal and threatening aggression before COVID-19,” she said. “That includes things like verbal threats, insults, bullying, cyber bullying, sexual harassment, those kinds of things. During COVID, that dropped to about 33 percent of teachers, and then after COVID it was about 80 percent.”

If approved by the governor, the five-year pilot program will work with a nonprofit to use $10 million to pay off up to $1 billion in medical debt. It’s estimated nearly two million Illinoisans have more than $4 billion in medical debt.

Rates of violence and aggression against educators are high — and in many cases have risen from pre-COVID-19 levels — leading teachers to suffer mental health consequences and to consider quitting the profession. A new study led by DePaul University psychologist Susan Dvorak McMahon reveals the extent of the problem across our nation’s schools as well as recommendations for the field.

“I am becoming known as the ‘sewer senator,’ because I care so deeply about sewer systems,” U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth.

Illinois Farm Bureau spokesman Chris Davis said the Illinois Farm Bureau also worked on wetlands legislation which ended up being withheld in the Senate, but the group will continue the conversation in the next legislative session.

According to the disclosures, Bustos has lobbied the State Department, Energy Department, Treasury Department, and White House for Gotion on issues “related to clean energy technology, U.S. domestic manufacturing and foreign direct investment, trade and economic development.”

A hearing officer is recommending the Illinois State Board of Elections dismiss a complaint that alleged conservative radio host and political operative Dan Proft illegally coordinated with former Republican state Sen. Darren Bailey during his 2022 campaign for governor.

Presumably in response to Gov. JB Pritzker’s insults (linked here), Donald Trump posted to TruthSocial and reposted to X: “Sloppy JB Pritzker, the Rotund Governor from the once great State of Illinois, who makes Chris Christie look like a male model, and whose family wanted him out of the business because he was so pathetic at helping them run it, has presided over the destruction and disintegration of Illinois at levels never seen before in any State. Crime is rampant and people are, sadly, fleeing Illinois.”

“It is said that Republican office holders all go in different directions, like herding cats. Democrats, by contrast, always vote the way leadership dictates for fear they’ll be primaried.”

Can state police track drivers everywhere they go via hundreds of license plate cameras? A new lawsuit says that Illinois’ widespread use of such cameras—called automatic license plate readers (ALPRs)—violates the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches because it breaches citizens’ reasonable expectations of privacy.