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Among the four named plaintiffs is Chicago Transit Authority board member Michele Lee, a disability rights advocate. She’s served on the CTA board since 2022.
The Justice Department says it will lend its weight to the effort by a Republican congressman to overturn Illinois’ extended vote-by-mail counting deadlines, as the Trump administration has asked for the chance to argue that lower courts wrongly denied U.S. Rep. Mike Bost the chance to present his case and forcing Illinois election officials to prove they can constitutionally keep counting votes for two weeks after Election Day.
“We’ve seen other political violence, occur in other states. And I would just say, it’s got to stop,” Gov. JB Pritzker said. “And I think there are people who are fomenting it in this country.” Pritzker said President Trump’s rhetoric “often foments it.” Pritzker has been widely criticized for referencing Nazis several times during his budget address earlier this year and for his other anti-Trump rhetoric.
About 70 percent of these mass layoffs will be permanent.
Retired Riverside Police Chief Thomas Weitzel argued that the focus of Operation Midway Blitz is firmly on violent offenders who are in the country illegally. The chief dismissed as falsehoods the claims that families and schoolchildren are being indiscriminately targeted, saying that media coverage and statements from some politicians have fueled unnecessary fear.
At the start of the year, state House Republicans filed multiple bills that could have given property tax relief, but since they’re in the minority, their bills never made it pass both chambers. There seems to be appetite for some property tax relief in the coming sessions, as a couple of state Democrats and the Governor indicated they need to do something to reduce property taxes.
After the Trump administration slashed billions in state and local public health funding from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this year, the eventual impact on states split sharply along political lines. Democratic-led states that sued to block the cuts – including Illinois – kept much of their funding, while Republican-led states lost the bulk of theirs, according to a new analysis from health research organization KFF.
Henry Bienen established the university’s Qatar campus during his first stint as president, signing a contract with the Hamas-allied Gulf state that prohibits students and faculty in Doha from criticizing the Qatari regime. He said the financial “boom in the Gulf” attracted him to Qatar and described the school’s presence there as ‘really amazing.”
Barack Obama’s foundation center’s staggering $850 million cost has been fueled by soaring operational budgets and huge salaries for executives, a new financial report has revealed. It was initially estimated to cost $300 million, before the budget was revised to $500 million in 2017, and then again to $700 million in 2021.
“I got trained in rapid response,” Mayor Daniel Biss said. “So now when ICE comes to town, I get a text. I’m able to go immediately to the location, share rights that individuals have with them, and inform them of their rights. Videotape, bear witness, hold ICE officials accountable.”
Katie Abraham and a friend were waiting at a stoplight in January 2025 when police say their car was struck at high speed by a Guatemalan man in the U.S. illegally. Authorities said he was suspected of drunk driving. Katie died at the scene, while her friend later died at a nearby hospital.
“While the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that states cannot seize more than what’s owed, Illinois is the only state that still allows private investors to strip homeowners of their equity over debts as small as a few thousand dollars. It’s the nation’s steepest taxes paired with the harshest penalties—and for thousands of homeowners, that combination has become unsustainable.”
The governor asserts that President Trump’s real goal is to “normalize” the use of the military in civilian areas, and create a pretext to use it to sway the 2026 election, which will determine control of Congress.
“The reality is that crime here has dropped, in part due to community violence intervention programs, a more assertive Cook County state’s attorney, a robust police presence in our communities and innovative initiatives employed by Illinois law enforcement agencies, including crime-fighting grants that our office oversees.”
Residents and activists also want environmental and anti-displacement protections as developers redevelop the old U.S. Steel mill into a cutting-edge quantum research campus. “In simpler, layman terms, [a contract would make] sure they’re hiring you, your neighbors and your workers from your community to work inside of these facilities,” community organizer Kenin Johnson Jr. said.
“Zeus is the Democratic Party of Illinois and Prometheus is young buck Kevin D. Ryan, a United States Marine Corp veteran, teacher, Oxford and Georgetown graduate, who is running in the Democratic primary for the Illinois Senate.” When he returned from Afghanistan he left his teaching job to study at the University of Oxford. “I earned a graduate degree in diplomacy that took me to assignments across Europe, The Pentagon, and the U.S .Treasury Department including an assignment working directly for the commanding general of the Marine Corps.” And oh yeah, while he
Ibrahim Abusharif teaches a mandatory seminar promoting Qatar after a lawsuit from a Hamas terror victim crippled the group he cofounded.”
Skokie, Bolingbrook, Evanston, and Maywood have echoed similar messages, reminding residents of their rights under Illinois law and pointing to legal aid hotlines, community resources, and village services. “The Bolingbrook Police Department is dedicated to building trust within our community and will not waste resources eroding it,” BPD said.
The city’s chief financial officer, Jill Jaworski, discussed the cost of Illinois House Bill 3657, which Gov. JB Pritzker signed Aug. 1. The new law enhances Tier 2 pensions for Chicago police and firefighters. “Annual pension contributions will grow by $60 million starting in fiscal 2027 but will balloon over time, reaching an estimated $750 million by 2055. In total, we estimate the legislation will require $6.6 billion in additional contributions over the plan’s 30-year funding horizon,” Jaworski said.
“While it is nice taxpayers get to hold onto their money for a little while longer, you have to wonder about the hidden costs if taxing bodies need to borrow to fill the gap.”
Chalmers, in the historic North Lawndale neighborhood, served about 210 students last year in a building with capacity for 600. Just around the corner, about 210 students populated Johnson Elementary on a campus meant for 480. The local high school, Collins Academy, was down to 200 students. Three of every 10 Chicago schools sit at least half-empty, and closing or merging them remains a political third rail.
“People are, frankly, afraid. People are afraid to come out of their homes. They’re afraid to go shopping. They’re afraid to take their own children to school because they have mixed-status households,” Gov. JB Pritzker said. “ICE is somewhere on the ground here. They already have been effectuating their plans. We have not seen the bulk of those ICE agents yet in communities, but we have seen some. And we know that they are gathering steam.”
The protest came after federal agents descended on Chicago’s Lawndale neighborhood as part of operation “Midway Blitz” Tuesday.
Tracking recidivism rates are a key metric to determine whether the state is effectively rehabilitating convicted criminals or merely warehousing them. In fact, reducing recidivism is mentioned two dozen times in the Illinois Department of Corrections’s most recent annual report. However, IDOC officials acknowledge they have not been able to calculate the recidivism rate since 2022 due to what they describe as a computer “programming issue.”
“The frequency of crimes like the rape and murder of Antwinica Bridgeman is enough to cite Chicago as another blue state city mired in such brutal crime that deployment of the National Guard is appropriate. But the aftermath of the case in the city’s sordid legal and political machine can lead to only one conclusion: Hellhole.”
“So it’s time. Past time, really. CPS must begin the process of rightsizing a school district built to serve at least a third more students than it currently does. … With a mayor who talks repeatedly of his 2016 hunger strike to reopen Dyett High School on the South Side and a Chicago Teachers Union that considers Rahm Emanuel’s closures to be an act of pure evil, CPS and too many state and local policymakers have become paralyzed.”
Every Great Lakes state has passed tax incentive legislation to encourage data centers to locate there. But these incentives are not “reflective of where water is available — and where it isn’t,” said Helena Volzer, author of the report and senior source water policy manager at the nonprofit Alliance for the Great Lakes. In addition, data centers are not required to report their water consumption.
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