Retired Police Chief Tom Weitzel: “Illinois has developed a reputation for passing sweeping criminal justice reforms that prioritize political optics over operational reality. Public safety too often takes a backseat to messaging. The Clean Slate Act appears to follow that same pattern.”

Despite warnings from their colleague that they are ripping a hole in the U.S. Constitution and the concept of federalism, two Democrat-appointed federal appeals court judges have refused to put a hold on a Chicago federal judge’s order blocking Florida’s Republican state attorney general from using Florida state courts to enforce a Florida law against the Chicago-based American Academy of Pediatrics for allegedly misleading the public about the safety of child gender transitions.

The plan requires drivers who commit two offenses within a year to install the speed limiting device in their vehicle. This comes as 75 percent of people with suspended licenses continue to drive.

“Even just moving your digital assets from one wallet that you control to another because you want to have control of your finances instead of trusting a bank, even that might be a taxable event under this bill, which is kind of nuts,” said Peter Van Valkenburgh, executive director of Coin Center.

Gov. JB Pritzker reiterated his willingness to call a special session to pass legislation. “I think (the Bears are) looking at both of the bills that passed – the one in the House, the one in the Senate – hoping to put the provisions of each of those together in a form that they think will pass,” he said. “And then, of course, they need to begin conversations with members of the legislature that they weren’t able to win over before.”

The governor also said any total ban on data centers should be left up to residents and governments at a local level. “I think locals, people in the local community, should have more say about the siting of where those data centers go because unless they’re incredibly well built, they produce a lot of noise,” Gov. JB Pritzker said.

Their base pay has risen almost 50 percent since JB Pritzker became governor, compared with just a 30 percent increase for Illinoisans.

House Bill 4537 brings the state into compliance with the 2023 high court decision in Tyler v. Hennepin County, which ruled that in taking property, state governments must give owners the value that exceeds the amount owed in taxes. Just last month a federal district court ruled that Cook County was in violation of the constitution and potentially on the hook for millions of dollars owed to owners who lost their properties.

Despite investing a significant amount of political capital, Gov. JB Pritzker was unable to overcome local government leaders’ opposition to the proposal that, they say, not only preempts local authority, but was also dropped on their laps at the last minute. The governor remains optimistic.

Jared Walczak, a senior fellow at the Tax Foundation, noted the law falls far short of defining the terms it supposedly will use to determine how much the state will demand from online platform operators. To begin, he said, the law doesn’t actually define what a “user” is. “This isn’t a philosophical question,” Walczak wrote. “It’s an eminently practical one.”

Late last week, a similar law in Ohio was allowed to move forward after having been held up by a federal court’s injunction for more than two years, a break from decisions on similar laws in other states. The injunction came after NetChoice, a leading tech industry trade association, sued to block the law in Ohio on the grounds that it was unconstitutional.

“Teachers did their jobs and retirees earned their pensions, and we’d never argue otherwise. The scandal here is that politicians have completely mismanaged these promised benefits, allowing annual costs to balloon out of control alongside unfunded liabilities that continue to grow. … In the recently signed $55.9 billion state budget, Illinois’ education costs aren’t just the $10.8 billion spent on K-12 operations, they also include roughly $7 billion in teacher pension obligations.”

As of June 13, there were more than 2,800 people on two programs run by Cook County’s Office of the Chief Judge; Statewide, in counties overseen by Illinois’ Office of Statewide Pretrial Services, just under 2,500 people have active cases with GPS conditions. “It makes me nervous to roll out this intrusive technology and have it run by the agency that is not subject to a lot of meaningful oversight,” said Jonathan Manes, senior counsel for the MacArthur Justice Center’s Illinois office.