“The impact of the state’s ongoing status-quo approach of inequitably and inadequately funding our public universities has been slow burning for more than two decades. Regrettably, it is our students who have been shouldering the cost of that shortcoming by shelling out more money to attend school at great personal or familial expense, or by sitting out the college opportunity altogether to avoid the debt they’d have to incur to attend.”

The order, issued in an federal transportation department memo, calls on the department to “give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.” The order could put Illinois nearly last in line to receive federal transit funding.

“The Department of Education funds important programs like special education. We have in the state of Illinois many, many parents and their children who need special education and that funding is vital,” Pritzker said. “If they take that away, that’s going to be highly detrimental to the people of our state. … They should know better. It would be shameful to take it away.”

“We’ve got some pretty bad people here and for this state and this governor to sit there and say we are not going to help getting rid of the worst of the worst, he should resign,” said state Rep. John Cabello.

House Republicans called for a repeal of the TRUST Act, which lawmakers passed in 2017 to stop local law enforcement agencies from enforcing federal immigration laws. They called on the Illinois House immigration committee to hold hearings to answer questions about the status of illegal immigration in Illinois, including how much the TRUST Act and sanctuary policies cost and how they’ve affected law enforcement.

Illinois’ unfunded pension liabilities make up the largest percentage of the state’s GDP, at just over 18 percent. That’s driving the increasing burden on taxpayers, whose contributions to state pension systems have grown nearly 20-fold, from $614 million in fiscal year 1996 to $11.2 billion in fiscal year 2025. That’s a major reason why Illinois’ property taxes are the second-highest in the nation and more than double the nation’s median rate.

“Economic growth in the secessionist counties has been at about half the rate of the rest of Illinois so far this century. … If the secessionist parts of Illinois were their own state, they’d have the worst 25 years of population loss of any state in U.S. history. So, it’s pretty easy to see why these counties might be unhappy about their economic conditions.”

Joshua Bandoch, of the Illinois Policy Institute: “Fixing this is good for improving income and racial outcomes and social mobility, on which Illinois ranks worst among all Midwestern states and 40th nationally, according to research from the Archbridge Institute. It’s also important to getting people back to work and decreasing the state’s 5 percent unemployment rate and about 8 percent Black unemployment rate.”

Rep. La Shawn Ford, the bill’s chief sponsor, said ticketing students for vaping is an example of how current policies are failing. “We definitely need to make sure to enshrine what we believe into law. We can’t let Trump policies dictate our morals,” Ford said. “Our schools should be a place where we protect students from the school-to-prison pipeline, period.”

It reads, in part, “Public safety is not a political issue but a shared responsibility. While we comply with existing laws, we encourage lawmakers to revisit the Illinois Trust Act to remove unnecessary barriers and create commonsense solutions that prioritize the safety and well-being of law-abiding residents.”

At stake is the potentially millions of dollars in home equity that homeowners have lost when buyers of their delinquent taxes get ownership of the property. Also at stake is the future of the tax sale system itself, since the high court’s ruling.

“In just a little over two weeks, the governor will give his budget address and lay out his plans to plug a fiscal 2026 deficit that as of November was projected to exceed $3 billion. He has all but ruled out tax hikes, saying the state must learn to live ‘within our means.’ House Speaker Emanuel (Chris) Welch has made similar statements and put his fellow House Democrats on notice that ideas for new programs requiring funding aren’t likely to go far this year. Both leading Democrats rightly read the 2024 election results as a signal that taxpayers feel tapped