This plan expands the current state law that bans public and private schools from prohibiting hairstyles associated with race, ethnicity, or hair texture. Sen. Mike Simmons said rabbis asked him to file the bill to protect Orthodox Jewish students who have beards.

“As lawmakers, we should be using an ‘all of the above’ approach to energy policy. Illinois can’t simply shut down coal and natural gas plants before reliable and affordable replacements are ready,” state Rep. Dave Severin said.

Illinois Senate Republican Leader John Curran said there is good and bad in the governor’s plan. “Cutting red tape would be incredibly important, incentivizing first-time home ownership, incredibly important,” Curran said, adding that the governor needs to roll back expensive mandates, like requiring electric vehicle plug-in stations in the garage of any new housing unit.

The call to eliminate the Commission on Equity and Inclusion comes amid bipartisan criticism of its work as lawmakers consider its proposed $5.6 million budget for the next fiscal year. Additionally, the seven commissioners each earn about $150,000 annually that is paid from a separate funding source. Gov. JB Pritzker appointed the seven commissioners.

The House and Senate both passed versions of a bill to authorize the state treasurer to set up and operate an investment fund that would manage the deposits of nonprofit corporations. Lawmakers passed similar legislation in 2025, but Gov. JB Pritzker vetoed it, saying such a fund could be used to benefit extremist groups that organize as nonprofit corporations.

Take Rockford Public Schools for example. In 2022, the state reimbursed pretty much all of their special education transportation costs. A lot of their regular transportation was reimbursed too, and the local district was left to foot the bill for the remaining $800,000. Fast forward to 2026, costs have gone up and reimbursements have stayed the same. So, now the bill is up to $7.5 million.

Investigators found more than 500 cases of state employees abusing the government loan program, at a cost to taxpayers of $2.8 billion.

The proposal calls for solar panels to be just 150 feet from existing homes.

IBM and U of I’s Grainger College of Engineering at Urbana-Champaign launched a decade-long, $200 million research partnership called IBM-Illinois Discovery Accelerator Institute in 2021, focused on artificial intelligence, supercomputing and materials research. Since then, IBM has collaborated with U of I to launch the National Quantum Algorithm Center, which will be a tenant at of the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park in Chicago that’s being built at the former US Steel factory site on the Far South Side. IBM plans to build a team of up to 50 researchers in Chicago.

The Federation does not object to the goal of providing unemployment benefits to seasonal school district employees during the summer. However, it emphatically opposes any unfunded mandates to local governments, including school districts. This bill could impose hundreds of millions of dollars in costs on Illinois school districts without providing them with commensurate funding.

State Sen. Steve McClure, the bill’s main Senate sponsor, said when enough schools are unwilling to protect victims and hold perpetrators accountable, the legislature needs to step in. “Most schools do the right thing, but there are enough cases where the school is forcing the rape victim to still be in school with the rapist,” he said. “And it’s very detrimental to the victim and it also puts other students at risk. This is a very important bill that’s going to address what is a real problem.”

Brian Granahan, director of the Illinois Power Agency, said that while IPA is assessing whether the deadline for closing gas and coal plants is viable, it’s also assessing the regulatory and legal barriers for new nuclear power following Gov. JB Pritzker’s executive order aimed at spurring nuclear development after CRGA ended a longstanding moratorium on new plant construction.

Since 2019, more than 1,500 lawsuits have been filed under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act in Illinois state and federal courts. Employers across Illinois, ranging from trucking companies to cosmetic companies to hospitals, have faced BIPA litigation.

With nearly 167,000 votes cast throughout the eight-week competition, the NASA Standard Initiator was awarded the title of The Coolest Thing Made in Illinois. The NASA Standard Initiator is an electrically activated pyrotechnic device that has flown on every NASA mission since Apollo and was a critical part of the historic Artemis II mission.

“The sad truth is that if President Trump is for it, JB Pritzker will always be against it.”

“Does any of this make any sense in a rational world? No, it doesn’t. But it is a sorry reminder of the unanticipated consequences that can and do occur when policymakers interfere in such heavy-handed ways in complex industries like power generation that they usually don’t understand. … The industry warned Springfield five years ago that the 2030 deadline wasn’t realistic. The warnings went unheeded.”

Nearly 64 percent of Illinois voters in 33 jurisdictions supported opting into the federal tax credit scholarship program in a non-binding question on the ballot.