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A field that started with 47 candidates in June was whittled down after six hopefuls withdrew and another eight were removed after failing a petition challenge. Even after this process, all 10 geographic voting districts will have contested elections.
The Cook County Electoral Board voted 3-0 to overrule an objection to the candidacy of Ron Andermann, the Republican nominee for the seat from the Illinois 53rd House District. The decision means Andermann will officially advance to face unelected interim State Rep. Nicolle Grasse in the November election for that seat.
The ACLU, which is part of the consent decree coalition, would like to see Chicago police act every day as they did during the DNC. “There shouldn’t be a difference because the whole world’s watching. It ought to look the same on the South, or the West, or the North Side, or downtown, simply because that’s the way policing should work,” spokesman Ed Yohnka said.
“We’re one of the very few cities that were able to raise the money, recruit the volunteers, raise millions more than what we planned on, and recruit thousands more volunteers than any other host city or past political conventions has, Democrat or Republican,” said Christy George, executive director of the Chicago DNC’s Host Committee.
Caveats incorporated into the Homeowners’ Native Landscaping Act, signed into law in mid-July, include “so long as the area is maintained predominantly free of weeds, invasive species, and trash” and “so long as the vegetation does not extend over or onto neighboring properties, public or common sidewalks,” among other provisions.
Mayor Brandon Johnson named Amber Nesbitt to serve as acting inspector general. Nesbitt, a CPS alumna, had been the head of the office’s sexual allegations unit, which was created in 2018 after widespread allegations that teachers and staff members had sexually abused students.
“This a much larger thing than just me and my dad, and then me and my mom when she was going through her battle with cancer. This is a larger issue that impacting everyone in the country,” said state Sen. Celina Villanueva, who represents Illinois’ 12th District.
Illinois taxpayers have paid more than a billion dollars for non-citizen health care, housing, food and education in the past two years with hundreds of millions of dollars more expected. But not all of the arriving migrants want to stay in Illinois; According to the Illinois Department of Human Services, migrant travel costs in the Chicago area, including people leaving by bus, plane and train, total nearly $800,000.
The Illinois Organized Retail Crime Task Force was established in 2021; Illinois taxpayers are spending $5 million on the task force in fiscal year 2025. But according to Capital One Shopping, retail thefts cost Illinois an estimated $185 million in tax revenue in 2022.
In 2019, Illinois lawmakers allocated $162 million taxpayer dollars for constructing an interchange at I-57 and Eagle Lake Road. “We don’t have roads out here. We don’t have water out here. We don’t have sewer out here. Some people have really lousy internet out here,” Will County Board Chair Judy Ogalla said.
Carol Davis is with the Illinois Election Integrity Program said legal fights continue to address the state’s voter rolls that she says are full of inactive voters. Her group recently got access to voter rolls and found nearly 1 in 10 registered voters are inactive.
“Inviting us to one meeting to tell us what your engagement plan was — at first we thought, ‘Wow, this is really great! They’re getting in front of this,’” said Diane Burnham, of the South East Chicago Commission. “But then, there was really no other engagement with us per se, besides other emails.”
This is Cairo’s first new home construction in nearly 50 years. The town of roughly 1,600 people has been grappling with how to replace some of the affordable housing lost when the federal government demolished two family public housing complexes, Elmwood and McBride, in 2019. Nearly 400 residents were displaced.
Illinois employers that use any automated tools to make employment-related decisions are encouraged to prepare for compliance with the new law, which takes effect January 1, 2026.
Black and Hispanic students are thriving academically at Chicago’s selective enrollment high schools by meeting proficiency in reading and math at much higher rates than their peers in other CPS high schools. But in a letter to Senate president Don Harmon, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson asserted Black and Hispanic students are “underrepresented at selective enrollment schools.”
Federal prosecutors have kept busy for decades putting Illinois officials on trial, sometimes after lengthy investigations with names like “Operation Haunted Hall,” “Operation Silver Shovel,” “Operation Board Games” and “Operation Greylord.” A federal prison in nearby Oxford, Wisconsin, has become such a regular destination for convicted Illinois politicians that, at one point, it housed four Chicago aldermen, a Metropolitan Water Reclamation District board member and a state representative. When they bumped into one another, the six men would jokingly yell “quorum call!”
Section 13(b) of the Act reads that an “employer shall not impose work authorization verification or re-verification requirements greater than those required by federal law.” As federal law does not require the use of E-Verify, Illinois employers may not use E-Verify to check whether their employees are work authorized unless there is some reason (such as prior violations) that the federal government requires them to.
Since the Supreme Court ruled cities have a right to criminalize camping on public property, ordinances in Pekin and Morton allow police to issue citations and arrest people who are caught camping on public property. In East Peoria, the city’s policy has long been to remove people camping on public land.
An email from University President Michael Schill also noted changes were made to the Student Code of Conduct and Demonstration Policy such as a “Display Policy.” He wrote, “Activities that lead to intimidation and impede an environment where dialogue and education can flourish cannot occur again.”
River Forest ended fiscal year 2023 with a $2.3 million surplus and projected 2024 would end with a $4.3 million surplus. It bumped by $5.5 million its general fund spending for 2025, up from $35.4 million to $40.9 million. Yet it cannot figure out how to let its Whole Foods and Jewel-Osco customers get a break without “hurting taxpayers.”
Illinois’ media continues to give state and city politicians cover for their many failures. The media is so protective, in fact, that even pointing out the city’s obvious failures can get you dismissed as racist. The latest instance comes from the Chicago Sun-Times. It purports to fact check JD Vance’s declaration of Chicago as the nation’s murder capital, but the article is really more of a murders-and-crime-are-not-as-bad-as-they-say sort of piece.
Gov. JB Pritzker persuaded the General Assembly to eliminate the state’s 1 percent grocery tax; That alone will add up to $80 million to the city’s shortfall. Chicago firefighters and paramedics have waited more than three years for a new contract. When settled, it will require the city to shell out three years of retroactive raises, to say nothing of firefighters’ demand for 20 more ambulances — and the paramedics to staff them. And Johnson extended the police contract and doubled the pay raises negotiated by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, but now must cover those costs.
“People forget that the Democrats were the party of, and probably still are the party of defund the police, and now the Democratic Party at the Democratic National Convention has the largest police presence in Chicago history. I mean, that kind of strikes me as very strange,” said retired Riverside police chief Tom Wetizel.
Even when the district regains the ability, Martinez said he will not seek to ease budget concerns by closing schools. “Not under my leadership,” he said. “I really believe in investing in our neighborhoods, and I want to strengthen the schools.”
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