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The signs read “violence on the CTA will not be tolerated,” adding that the attorney’s office “will prosecute and seek pre-trial detention for all violent public offenses on public transit.”
Restricting tax credits in Illinois adds to other hurdles going up across the country, something Data Centers Coalition Executive Vice President Dan Diorio said could discourage investment for data center development in the U.S. “I think as we look at our lives today, it is absolutely crucial that we have the ability to store Americans’ data here at home safely and securely,” Diorio said.
Responding to DOJ’s July 7 letter threatening prosecution, Marni Malowitz, the state board’s general counsel, began by noting that DOJ “does not identify any credible evidence of voter fraud or other impropriety in an Illinois election. Nor does it contain any allegation of a violation of federal law by an Illinois election official.”
When long-ago allegations of sexual harassment and domestic violence resurfaced against the Hillside Democrat in 2021 as he was vying to replace Michael J. Madigan as speaker, an influential female legislator and a women’s advocacy group called for an inquiry into the accusations against Welch. But that apparently never happened.
Closing hundreds of old complaints — without determining whether officers should be disciplined — did allow COPA to function more efficiently, according to the analysis, launched by former Inspector General Deborah Witzburg and released by her successor, Inspector General David Glockner. But the initiative also “allowed misconduct to go unaddressed,” according to the analysis.
Mayor Brandon Johnson has not yet decided whether to run for reelection or walk away after a single term. But he has already rejected the call by his Council opposition to allow the winner of the 2027 mayoral election to select Larry Snelling’s replacement. “What is that suggesting? That I’m not going to be here? So we’re making decisions again based upon chance or lots? I’m just going to be very direct here. I find that to be absolutely ridiculous — insulting to the people of Chicago. So we should stop a process based upon someone’s political calendar? That is
“At best, his failure to adequately respond to sexual harassment complaints is the consequence of poor management and irresponsibility. At worst, the speaker doesn’t take sexual harassment seriously and his office normalizes such behavior.”
The closures came less than four years after the city approved $13.5 million in tax-increment financing funds and another $13 million in New Market Tax Credits and private funding for Yellow Banana to buy and rehabilitate six stores in Auburn Gresham, South Chicago, South Shore, West Garfield Park, West Lawn and West Pullman.
“Instead of putting referendums on the ballot that might help Chicagoans, aldermen goofed around with areas in which they have neither control nor any legal hand in deciding. One of the absurd measures showed the city’s aldermen and Mayor Johnson were arrogant enough to imagine they can force the entire state to enact a millionaire tax just because of a little ballot measure in Chicago.”
Davis Gates pointed to the state’s higher-than-expected revenues that could be used to avoid school layoffs. “I don’t think you cut when people owe you money, you call in the debt,” Chicago Teachers Union president Stacy Davis Gates said. “And so we’re calling in the debt, and the Governor has to answer the phone.”
Companies seeking city contracts for firearms, ammunition and related accessories will be required to disclose licensing and regulatory compliance information, firearm-related violations, corrective actions and business practices designed to prevent firearm trafficking, straw purchasing, theft and the unlawful diversion of firearms.
“It’s nice to see a federal judge rule the proper way on an immigration issue,” Niemerg said.
Less than 28 percent of IFT’s spending in 2025 was on representing teachers, according to the union’s annual report filed with the U.S. Labor Department. The rest was on politics, overhead and other union leadership priorities.
Shoppers in the six-county area around Chicago will be sending more money to CTA, Metra and Pace when they buy staple groceries such as milk, bread and eggs or other medicines like anti-itch cream or medical cannabis.
Jim Dey: “Statements by both (Gov. JB) Pritzker and (U.S. Attorney Steven) Weinhoeft addressed the policy dispute — the wisdom of providing in-state tuition for illegal immigrants who are citizens of other countries. But the laws the litigation addressed received scant attention.”
No arrests have been announced.
“Being under that circus tent for eight months — he’s got a career ahead of him. He’s an impressive young man. I would suspect that he just got fed up with these folks,” Ald. Matt O’Shea said. “Fed up with no clear plan. Fed up with mixed messages. Fed up with absolutely no communication at a time when, now more than ever, city leadership needs to be working together on a cohesive plan to get us out of the financial predicament that we’re in.”
“Some critics believe the most prudent course of action is to delay the legislative process of extending solvency. They believe that a more favorable balance of power in Washington will yield their desired policy outcome. But if Democrats refuse to act until we control both chambers of Congress and the presidency — a feat that would take at least two election cycles — we run the risk of skating even closer to the insolvency cliff.”
“It would be especially commendable, albeit wishful thinking, if that vision included something that is desperately needed but rarely considered because it is extraordinarily challenging, complicated and politically risky: A long-term plan to eliminate hundreds, if not thousands, of the individual units of government — all of them taxing bodies — that make Illinois more bureaucratically bloated than most other states, and as a result, one of the country’s highest in property tax levies.”
Illinois won’t be among the Democratic Party’s early presidential primary states in 2028, despite an aggressive lobbying effort by Gov. JB Pritzker and state Democrats to move the state to the front of the nominating calendar.
