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Altogether CPS is eliminating 102 crossing guard positions, a third of which only serve private school students. CPS did not say how much it will save through these reductions. CPS had 732 crossing guard positions last year, at a cost of $18.4 million.
Students who come to school with offensive, distracting, or noxious odors, including the smell of marijuana, will be required to call home for a change of clothes or may be picked up to change before returning to class. Parents and visitors arriving on any Decatur Public Schools campus with similar odors will be asked to leave the premises.
The “safety gap” has also narrowed, but it still remains staggering. This year, Black Chicagoans have been 19 times more likely than White Chicagoans to be the victim of a homicide.
“He could never even think of delivering that speech without a round of boos here in Illinois. His visit to North Carolina assures one thing, that he’s only out after running for President in 2028 and he’s using the fine families and men and women of Illinois as a stepping stone for that purpose,” Illinois Republican Party Chair Kathy Salvi said.
The law increases the age from 14 to 18 for what’s considered a minor where a firearm must be “secured by a device or mechanism, other than the firearm safety, designed to render a firearm temporarily inoperable;” or “placed in a securely locked box or container.”
“The belief that good governance can be engineered—that there’s a correct way to govern, some set of magical processes that, if followed, will achieve optimal results—is what led cities to outsource core functions to consultants and nonprofits in the first place. And replacing one bloated public-private technocracy with a slightly more efficient public-private technocracy doesn’t solve this fundamental problem.”
“Preckwinkle has developed a pattern of targeting and unseating incumbents who dare defy her wishes. Take, for example, her campaign to remove Clerk of the Court Iris Martinez in the 2024 election. Martinez’s offense? Seeking transparency around the SAFE-T Act by publicly releasing accurate data on pre-trial release and court no-shows.”
“If Pritzker is going to join in with other Democratic governors in midcycle redistricting to respond to Trump’s audacious Texas maneuvering, he should spare us the high-minded rhetoric. The redistricting wars are nothing but partisan brawling. In the meantime, at the state legislative level, Pritzker and his fellow Democrats can claim no moral high ground whatsoever.”
“It’s unfortunate there has to be this fear around federal immigration enforcement,” said Beatriz Ponce de León, Chicago’s deputy mayor of immigrant, migrant and refugee rights. “We come together to say firmly that people should reject the negative attacks that are coming from our federal government, that we will protect each other and will take care of each other. And that’s what makes Chicago such a great city.”
“I think it’s terrible for the United States,” former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich said of the party that elected him. “The good news is, I still think most Americans have common sense and can see through the baloney. They can see through the danger of these radical socialist communists.”
Illinois also offers tax breaks to firms that create jobs or manufacture chips and other quantum components in the state. “Illinois wants to make sure that the development of technology happens here,” said said Preeti Chalsani, chief quantum officer for Intersect Illinois, a statewide economic development agency. She is from Canada.
State Sen. Chris Balkema acknowledged that COVID-era eviction moratoriums hindered the enforcement of evictions and may have emboldened squatters.
Illinois is taking $1,237 more in taxes from each resident than before Gov. JB Pritzker took office, yet the tax hikes keep coming.
It pays to be a state employee in Illinois. As of 2024, the average Illinois state employee made $85,689 compared to an average of $78,267 in the private sector, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Quarterly Survey of Employment and Wages data. That’s a 9.5 percent difference.
“Aye, aye, aye.”
“If the bills do indeed arrive in late fall, all sorts of political complications could result.”
When will politicians learn? How many times must the lesson be taught? Industrial central planning by government doesn’t work. Government is no good at picking winners and losers. Leave that to the private sector and let it bear the losses on bets that don’t pay off. Illinois, however, recently announced yet another subsidy for another Canadian electric bus company.
No, this isn’t about Obama’s alleged role in the “Russiagate” hoax, currently capturing the headlines. There’s much more that many probably don’t know about the Obama Administration, making a new, 25-minute documentary well worth your time.
A little-noticed provision in the “Big Beautiful Bill” forces blue states and cities to make a tough choice: Comply with federal immigration law or lose federal money for criminal justice aid. Sen. Dick Durbin, ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, argued that “Putting unnecessary stipulations on this funding is harmful and unproductive.” “Blocking funds for this purpose,” Durbin continued, “totally misses the mark.”
Nearly 375 workers in government agencies across Illinois engaged in misconduct related to the federal Paycheck Protection Program, a long-running investigation by the state executive inspector general’s office has found.
“We’re well past the halfway point of Johnson’s term, and he’s still knocking at the ‘progressive taxation’ door.”
The ages of the victims range from 6 to 50.
At about 11:25 p.m. Sunday, the alleged shooter became involved in a fight and argument with one of the five victims, all of whom he knows, in the 700 block of South Springfield Avenue, according to a police report. After getting maced, the shooter grabbed a gun and opened fire at the group, hitting five teens between 13 and 15 years old, according to the report. No one was in custody.
Mt. Vernon police were called at 12:49 a.m. Seven people had been shot at what the city described as a “non-sanctioned event” attended by more than 100 to 150 people, officials said. Mt. Vernon Mayor John Lewis said on Facebook that police were not getting any cooperation with attendees on what transpired.
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