“So, I asked them, so, how many of those students that are signing up and want to do this? How many are women?” Schakowsky said, adding that they told her it was at least 13 percent. “It was a low number,” she said. “And you had mentioned trying to engage more women in manufacturing. I’m just wondering if just the name manufacturing sounds like a guy.”

“They automatically think I’m helping undocumented individuals or I’m allowing them to be firefighters. That is not the case,” state Rep. Barbara Hernandez said. “This is only for individuals that have federal approval to work here.” A couple of years ago, a plan that passed and was signed into Illinois law allowed migrants with federal work authorization to become police officers.

The small business networking platform Alignable survey shows nearly one in three businesses nationwide anticipate revenue losses, but researcher Chuck Casto said the percentage is higher in Illinois. “Of the states that we looked closely at, Illinois ranked as the third highest state of small businesses who are concerned about what the tariffs could do to their revenues where we had 35 percent from Illinois telling us that,” said Casto.

The Trump administration has been taken to court by 22 states, including Illinois, to block it from freezing federal spending programs. Gov. JB Pritzker said in a statement the “cuts” are “catastrophic.”

“We cannot afford to have federal prosecutors continue to enforce our weak ethics laws, regardless of what Speaker Welch feels,” House Republican Leader Tony McCombie said.

Illinois is split into three judicial districts. While Springfield in the central district is ripe for corruption with high-profile state lawmakers, Chicago politics is the root of Illinois’ corruption. For that reason, the Northern District produces over half of the state’s corruption convictions.

“The Civic Federation estimates that expanding the services subject to sales tax could raise about $2 billion.”

The lawsuit is the latest example of a public university facing scrutiny for its race-based hiring practices after the University of Colorado Boulder also came under fire in recent weeks. Missouri State University and West Virginia University are the latest schools to shut down their DEI programs this year.

“We have ample data showing that Illinois is struggling on key economic metrics. The reality is, we continue to lag other states regionally and nationally in employment growth, output, and population trends—which has a real and immediate impact on the State’s financial health,” said Civic Federation President Joe Ferguson. “Our tax structure is not set up for growth. We have a high tax burden, a regressive tax structure, and an inhospitable environment for business investment.”

Stephen Maynard Caliendo, a political science professor at North Central College in Naperville, said while Pritzker has always been a vocal leader, it seems to have “ramped up” in Trump’s second term. “It appears to me that he sees an opportunity to capture the American imagination a bit.”

“Illinois can undo its persistent structural deficit by creating savings from responsible growth linked to projected inflation, saving at least $1 billion from the 2026 budget to roll back massive spending increases, right-sizing government health care costs and reducing administrative waste from redundancies in a state with too many single-school districts.”

The same obstacles that thwarted previous attempts remain in 2025. However, Illinois’ financial situation has changed, and the Governor’s support might mean this latest push makes it further through the legislative process.

Former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. previously requested a pardon from former President Joe Biden but was denied. Now, he’s asking again, saying he’s spent years advocating for others to be forgiven and believes it’s time he received the same.

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said the volume of litigation has become so intense, he would like to add new attorneys who would focus solely on litigation battling the Trump administration. And while he admits the cost of those cases is stretching the resources of his office, he is not yet ready to ask lawmakers for additional funding to cover those costs.