“Somehow, Sen. Martwick continues to represent thousands of teachers, firefighters, police, and others in public service. They should know that as member of the General Assembly and Cook County Committeeman, he has taken a taxpayer-funded salary, made millions on tax appeals for corporate clients, received contracts from the Democratic Party for printing services, underfunded the public pension system, and has attacked women, repeatedly. This level of corruption is why Chicago and Illinois remain a universal laughingstock.”

Black Researchers Collective employees purport to conduct interviews “on the street” with black Chicagoans, which have been compiled into “reports” that advocate against capitalism and for policies like slavery reparations, the mass release of black violent criminals from state jails, and free, housing, health care and college for black Chicagoans, funded by white, Asian and Hispanic taxpayers.

In what may be the first campaign announcement in U.S. history ever to use the F-word, the progressive social media sensation Kat Abughazaleh released a video Monday that kicked off her bid to unseat Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois.

The plan would stop any town or city from criminalizing “life sustaining activities.” This would include eating, sleep and setting up shelter on the streets.

“The persecution of immigrants you are seeing in this precise moment has happened in other nations that has led to the mass murder of groups and masses of people,” she said.

Joining Attorney General Kwame Raoul in the filing of the amicus are attorneys general of California, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.

“People look at this on the surface and think it’s a Democrat versus Republican thing, that is not the way we see it at all,” said G.H. Merritt, chairman of New Illinois. “It is an urban versus rural, small town and suburban thing.”

Gov. JB Pritzker signed legislation Friday authorizing the Illinois Department of Natural Resources to hand over to the tribe the ownership title to Shabbona Lake State Park. The Prairie Band Potawatomi have long argued that the land is still legally theirs because Congress never authorized the sale, and as recently as 2001, attorneys for the U.S. Department of the Interior acknowledged the tribe had a legitimate claim to the land.

The bill would have required that warehouse employees be given a written description of any quota they will be assessed on, including the number of tasks they must perform and the time tasks should be completed in. The bill would prohibit employers from punishing workers for failing to meet quotas because they took bathroom, meal or rest breaks.

Roughly 50 towns around Illinois have already decided to pass their own 1 percent grocery tax.

Most Illinois metro areas face unemployment rates above the national average of 4.4 percent. Kankakee saw the highest rate at 6.3 percent, followed by Decatur at 6 percent and Rockford at 5.8 percent. Only a few regions have unemployment rates below the national average, including Bloomington and Champaign-Urbana at 4 percent and Cape Girardeau at 3.8 percent.

Sherry Britton, of Dolton, called it “bananas” to pay one person a half million dollars. “And then when you look a the statistics of how our children are doing … it’s ridiculous,” Britton said.

The report by ConsumerAffairs found that Chicagoans faced the ninth-highest rent inflation, with a 5.4 percent increase from 2023 to 2024. ConsumerAffairs specialist Brooklyn Bannister said statewide only Bloomington had a much more dramatic jump (11.6 percent).

A series of setbacks have stalled progress, including staffing issues at the Capital Development Board, the state’s construction management agency, rising post-pandemic construction costs and local disputes over how to stretch funding that no longer covers what university officials originally planned.

“As liberal anger towards the Trump administration and congressional Democrats alike boils over, Pritzker is eagerly claiming a role as both an advocate and example for an all-of-the-above approach towards opposing Trump and enacting a relatively bold policy agenda in his own jurisdiction.”