Rep. Daniel Didech, who serves as chairman of the Illinois House Gaming Committee and played poker professionally for over five years, filed House Bill 4171 to maintain uniform, statewide regulations on sports gambling by preventing local governments from imposing their own taxes. The state raked in $429 million in tax revenues related to sports gambling in fiscal year 2025.

Education scholar Thomas Kane says that’s the lesson of recent ‘Southern surge’ in test scores: “The federal government gave the power back to states in 2015, and the decline in students’ achievement began that year. It got worse during the pandemic, but it started back in 2015. States need to realize that if we’re going to turn this around, it will depend on their own leadership. Four states have clearly taken that message to heart: Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Tennessee.”

“ICE is not planning operations targeting polling locations. ICE conducts intelligence-driven targeted enforcement, and if an active public safety threat endangered a polling location, they may be arrested as a result of that targeted enforcement action,” a DHS spokesperson said.

“I was assigned to serve as local counsel for attorneys in another jurisdiction seeking to enforce a civil money judgment for their client who, at the time, was completely unknown to us, just as he was unknown to most of the country 13 years ago,” Madison County Judge Andrew Carruthers said.

First Brands closed its distribution center in McHenry, accounting for 389 job cuts, and laid off 642 workers at facilities in Albion in Southern Illinois.

Moody’s Analytics’ “State of Illinois Economic Forecast” outlines some of the state’s major challenges. But Illinois also has many strengths, such as its central location, a large pool of skilled workers, strong tourism and world-class universities, upon which is can build a stronger economy. Reforming policies that undercut these advantages will help the state economy grow.

As part of a comprehensive incentive package, which includes an EDGE agreement with the State, Hyundai Translead has committed to investing $452.5 million and creating at least 2,475 new full-time jobs. In addition to state incentives, the company is also working with Will County taxing bodies to secure local incentives.

In his budget address last month, Pritzker said “historic investments” in public education have boosted student success. But Illinois student performance in both reading and math fell over the most recent 10 years of the National Assessment for Educational Progress. Those declines weren’t just because of COVID-era shutdowns. Both eighth- and fourth-grade scores were dropping in both reading and math even before schools were closed.

Pritzker’s fiscal 2027 budget expands on the foundation laid by the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act. The governor proposes allocating $14 million for EV rebates and $328 million for low-income weatherization and advancing proposals for solar canopies over state parking lots.

With barely 24 hours to go before Republican voters in Illinois choose a nominee for governor from four candidates, one thing they agree on is that he must be able to defeat two-term Democrat incumbent JB Pritzker.

U.S. Rep. Yvette Clarke of New York, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, accused the governor of trying “to tip the scales” in the primary. “A sitting governor shouldn’t be heavy-handing the race. Quite frankly, his behavior in this race won’t soon be forgotten by any of us,” Clarke emphasized in a statement. But for Pritzker, the Senate primary is viewed as a test of his political clout in his home state as he likely gears up for a 2028 presidential run.

Financed in part by malign foreign powers who seek to defeat the United States, radical left activists have co-opted the Democratic Party. Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois, head of the supposedly centrist New Democrat Coalition, typifies the illogic.