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Top Illinois Stories
President Trump, Pritzker told a conference of Black activists in New York City, is “going to try to call out ICE and CBP and scare people away from the polls, everybody. He’s going to make it seem like you shouldn’t vote. We need to go with purpose and push them out of the way or at least tell them to get out of the way and go in and vote. And all of us as governors need to protect your right to vote.”
Cook County, IL was the second biggest loser. But blue counties lost population even in states that had big gains. Of the 50 counties with the biggest net gain of population, all but four voted for Trump in the past three elections.
Illinois’ 2026 budget included a $500,000 grant to Goal Digger Divas United, an amount more than 10 times the organization’s highest recorded annual revenue. The organization’s non-profit status was revoked for failure to file its federal 990 tax form three years in a row. While the status was reinstated early this year, it had not been at the time the state budget was passed.
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"When the real statues were under siege, when they were being torn down and hidden away under the cover of “safety,” these same people were nowhere to be found. No outrage. No pressure. No backbone. But now? ... Now they’re brave enough to put Columbus back on display… as long as he’s standing next to a tray of antipasto."
Defense lawyer Amy Saharia reminded the 7th Circuit panel that prosecutors’ theory of the “alleged benefits” prosecutors said Madigan enjoyed were “far outside the typical … bribery case. Speaker Madigan did not take cash from ComEd, he did not take Rolex watches, trips to Vegas, all the things you typically see in bribery cases."
Rep. Mary Beth Canty's proposal to legalize it passed a House committee last month and she's currently writing an amendment to address concerns about regulation and liability in hopes of moving it forward.
The highest effective tax rates were concentrated in the Northeast and Midwest, led by Illinois (1.84 percent), New Jersey (1.58 percent), Vermont (1.4 percent), Connecticut (1.36 percent), and Ohio (1.32 percent). 
Economist James Bohn recently documented the breathtaking resultsof that experiment in which Wisconsin — for a century a high-tax, high-regulation state atrophying in a straitjacket of antique progressivism — turned
“I’m just wondering, if (the school districts are) 90 percent adequate (funding), and we’ve got probably 25 percent of the schools in the state of Illinois that are at full financial adequacy, why aren’t we seeing property taxes come down?” asked Rep. Blaine Wilhour.
"President Trump threatened to wipe out an entire civilization. Let's be honest: There is something genuinely wrong with this man, and the 25th Amendment must be invoked before it's too late," Pritzker declared in a video posted to X this week. He called for removing Trump via the 25th Amendment last year, as well.
"In 2017, Illinois confronted fiscal problems years in the making. The state had accumulated more than $15 billion in unpaid bills, its pension systems were deeply underfunded and the legislature had been locked in a multiyear budget impasse — all under a constitutional balanced-budget requirement."
“The federal government is picking a fight with us. We have states rights. We know our rights. We know our power,” Speaker of the House Chris Welch said.
Bills from state Sen. Laura Fine and state Rep. Robyn Gabel would require all hospitals to file plans with the state in case they close or scale back services to make sure patients don’t fall through the cracks. For-profit hospitals owned by investors, like West Suburban, also would have to give the state a deeper look into their finances. Now, that’s largely shielded from the public.
"There is no proposal to cap property taxes for surrounding homeowners or small businesses, no guardrails on levy growth tied to these projects, and no mechanism to prevent the shifting of costs onto those outside the district. The protections apply to the developer. The risk is borne by everyone else."
"The anti-informant culture that dominates Chicago’s criminal class is as strong as ever -- perhaps stronger. That societal illness partially explains why so few Chicago murders are successfully prosecuted. Banning law enforcement from utilizing facial recognition technology will only make solving crimes in Illinois even harder."
Illinois’ fourth-quarter growth ranked 13th in the nation and sixth in the Midwest, highlighting the region’s relative resilience under current economic circumstances.
Sponsors said renters shouldn't be surprised by charges included in their rent, such as fees for after-hours service requests, renewing a lease, or routine maintenance. The bill states that all non-optional fees should be explicitly disclosed on the first page of a lease agreement. Tenants would not be liable to pay fees if they are not shown on the first page of a lease.
State Sen. Elgie Sims Jr. said Illinois-based companies get work in Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, Texas, Florida and Georgia. “We are hearing it across the board, ‘I can get business elsewhere and I can’t get business from my own home state.’ That’s a problem,” Sims said.
“I ordered that audit. I reviewed that audit as a member of the audit commission. It's one of the worst in the state history,” Rep. Charlie Meier said of the state’s Department of Human Services. “Faculty failures, personnel failures, lack of reporting, no oversight. You name it. It's in there.”
John VanVleet, 53, was the training coordinator at Hill Correctional Center in Galesburg when he retired in January 2025 and took a partial buyout. “People always say, ‘Oh, the government can and can’t do this!’ he said. “I’d rather have a contingency; we see the government do all kinds of stuff they shouldn’t do.”
State Rep. Ryan Spain said now the revenue from the tax is being moved from downstate to Chicago transit. He added the bill can work with the budget because Chicago did not need as much money as they received. “This sales tax that I'm speaking about was promised as a delivery into the Road Fund,” Spain said. “Those dollars have now been rescinded and transferred beginning on July one to fund Chicago land transit.”
“The result of this effort to not work together with the federal government to resolve the issues, particularly related to immigration and enforcement of our laws, has resulted in huge problems in our state,” said state Rep. Patrick Windhorst. The bill’s legality has also been questioned.
Rep. Marti Deuter is pushing a bill that would allow drivers to have a speed control device installed in their car rather than having their license suspended. “Speeding is a chronic problem on our streets and is a threat to public safety,” Deuter told a House committee last month. “Speeding is a factor in nearly half of all deadly crashes. Risk of fatality increases as speed increases.”
Politicians in Michigan and Illinois are pushing for help to build barriers and blast annoying sounds to repel the fish. Meanwhile, boaters are taking matters into their own hands.
“For the benefits, it is true that data centers bring revenue. In Aurora, that will mean approximately $1.6 million annually in both property and utility taxes to the city each and every year,” Aurora Mayor John Laesch said. “Aurora residents living near data centers have described a constant low-frequency hum day and night. It's not loud in a traditional sense, but persistent. People have described trouble sleeping, increased stress, a loss of quiet in their own homes."
State Rep. Blaine Wilhour said the board should do its due diligence about federal tax credit scholarships that would not cost the state a dime. “I really don’t want to hear people come in here and talk about inequity in education and all this when you’re just leaving that stuff off the table because of politics,” Wilhour said.
Meanwhile, not far from Evanston, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson plans to hold a public engagement forum called "Repair Chicago" to "gather lived experiences of harm of Black Chicagoans" as part of an effort to implement reparations. On the state level, Illinois’ reparations commission released a report laying out what it called the state's history of harms against Black residents.
The poll findings underscore the growing affordability crisis facing many Illinois residents, particularly in the state's urban centers like Chicago. “The pension buyout program moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension," said Mark Glennon, founder of Wirepoints.
State Rep. Regan Deering said the Illinois gas tax hit 48.3 cents per gallon last July 1 and another increase is looming in 80 days. “Springfield here put the gas tax on autopilot, and taxpayers are indeed paying the price,” Deering said.
Both reports highlight the dramatic increase in the use of tax increment financing Statewide, along with the cost of that growth to local taxpayers. Just in Cook County over the past 30 years, TIF district property tax collections have increased by 1034 percent from $160 million to over $1.8 billion in 2024.
Top Chicago Stories
A city spokesman said council members were told starting in 2024 that part-time staff should work under 700 hours in order to stay below the threshold of being entitled to pension contributions, per state law. “If they elect to have a part-time staffer work more than the prescribed hours per the pension code, they are required to make allowance for that within their appropriated expense budget,” the spokesman said.
Board member Che “Rhymefest” Smith, who abstained from the vote, said the board spends too much time talking about politics. “Fifty-four percent of our time is wasted on politics, and government things, and I’m not saying politics ain’t important, but what are we doing as a board when we only spend 14 percent of our time talking about student outcomes?” Smith said. More Highlighted Chicago Area Stories
Vetress Boyce of the city’s Reparations Task Force suggested that reparations could include expanded educational programs in Chicago Public Schools exploring the history of racism in the United States; full tuition coverage for Black college students in Chicago; down-payment assistance for Black home buyers in Chicago to alleviate the impacts of redlining; and high-quality health care for all.
After some 27 seconds of continuous gunfire — yes, 27 seconds of continuous gunfire — at least four men enter camera view with firearms. Some of them are seen running into the street and returning fire downrange. They jog off-screen for a moment, then return and briefly mingle in front of the camera, some holding firearms in plain view, one toting a rifle, others more discreet.
David Greising, of the Better Government Association: "In 2023, Johnson sought to cut off rancorous public demonstrations at City Council meetings by banishing uninvited visitors to the upstairs gallery, behind plate glass. ... Against that backdrop, it’s bittersweet to see Johnson invoking OMA as a clout tool in his unrelenting effort to place (his crony Walter Burnett Jr., a former alderman) in the CEO’s role at the CHA."
The project is one of seven office-to-residential conversions under construction in Chicago. As of late 2025, the city has the third-largest office-to-residential conversion pipeline in the U.S., according to RentCafe.
In a petition to Mayor Brandon Johnson and the Chicago Board of Education, CTU notes the importance of schools as “centers for learning.” Yet the union regards attending class May 1 as less important than its “equity” agenda and “the autonomy of locally governed public schools.”
The area stretching from 79th and Harlem south to 113th and Harlem now has a sign for formal recognition, the result of two formal resolutions at the state and county levels.
The area stretching from 79th and Harlem south to 113th and Harlem now has a sign for formal recognition, the result of two formal resolutions at the state and county levels.
The works are meant to build context around some of the 41 monuments deemed problematic by a city commission. Hector Gonzalez created "Tierra Nuestra" (Our Land), featuring a young man of mixed Mexican and Native-American heritage standing on a horse with a boom box on his arm in front of the current "Signal of Peace" monument at Diversey and the lake.
"'Violating people's Constitutional rights does not make us safer,' (Mayor Brandon Johnson) exclaimed. Not that illegal aliens have Constitutional rights, mind you."
Fabian Jeffers’ criminal history - nearly 90 cases in Cook County, including 16 felony matters - stretches back to the Bush administration. No. The other Bush administration. This time, prosecutors didn’t ask a judge to hold him, so he was released.
Emmanuel Andre, the deputy of policy for the Cook County Public Defender's office, will be deputy mayor for community safety. At the Public Defender's office, Andre helped expand the county's Restorative Justice Community Courts and co-founded Circles and Ciphers, a "hip-hop infused restorative justice organization led by and for young people impacted by violence."
The complaints center around a report on antisemitism that former city human rights commissioner Nancy Andrade was leading — responding to data showing a rise in antisemitism hate crimes across the city. Andrade accuses the mayor's team of trying to micromanage the process and dilute the report.
Roughly 20,000 approved certificate-of-error refunds, worth more than $46 million in total, are currently stuck at the Cook County Treasurer’s Office. Between late December and early April, the treasurer processed only about 1,343 refunds, worth roughly $2.57 million. That pace barely dents the backlog, and taxpayers and local taxing bodies say the delays are putting real pressure on their budgets.
The downtown office vacancy rate ticked up during the first quarter to an all-time high of 28.6% from 28.2% at the end of 2025. The share of available workspace in Chicago’s urban core is up from 26.5% a year ago and 13.8% when the COVID-19 pandemic began, having now hit new record highs for 15 consecutive quarters. But competition is stiff for large spaces in prime buildings.
Chicago police said Kenyae Franklin was walking near Safe Achieve Academy of Chicago when a white vehicle with three to four men inside approached, and one of them opened fire.
"Cities such as New York and Chicago are in deep financial trouble. Broadly speaking, they have two options: Make the difficult but appropriate choice to raise taxes and reduce the scale of government, or continue to live in a state of denial, increasing their pension obligations while also promising their residents more services."
Claims of secrecy and deception are at the heart of the pending lawsuit against the CHA. The mayor says it is about transparency, and while he supports the private lawsuit, he would not say what steps the city might take to prevent the newly hired CEO from starting later this month.
Wirepoints founder Mark Glennon said 28.6 percent is a terrible vacancy rate. When asked what people in the private sector could do about high office vacancy rates, Glennon said so-called civic leaders have been far too complacent and understated in their criticisms of government. “They’ve got to really take the bull by the horns and force some reforms on the city. It would start with crime. That's clearly a solvable problem if the city would get on it, and that's one of the factors that contributes to people not wanting to go downtown and makes work from home more popular,”
The statement also called for CPS CEO Macquline King to keep partnering with community leaders to “protect every student’s right to a public education, regardless of immigration status." The signees included nine alderpeople and six state lawmakers.
Neil Steinberg turns a murdered Loyola student into a prop for his immigration sermon — and calls it journalism.
"If you live in Chicago, you are far more likely to be shot or murdered than in surrounding communities. They reflect policy choices, enforcement failures, and a justice system that has too often lost sight of its first duty: protecting innocent people."
As with 2026, the majority of last year’s clearances were “exceptional.” A total of 156 cases, more than half, were closed without charges filed. Of those, 26 involved suspects who were dead. The remaining 130 were labeled as “bar to prosecute” because the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office declined to approve charges.
"On the South Side, we have lived with it for years: open-air drug markets, gang shootings that turn playgrounds into war zones and politicians who lecture us about 'equity" while the body count rises. We watched as certain criminals were coddled, released and protected while the Black families trying to raise children in peace paid the ultimate price. "
In Chicago, real-estate developer Marc Calabria bought a 485,000-square-foot office building for $4 million. The building sold for $68.1 million a decade ago. It will be converted into an urban farm and education center.
In comments Monday on Fox News, Mullin questioned whether cities that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement should continue to host international arrivals with full customs processing.
Wirepoints Research and Commentary
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do. 
The state's existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis. SIGN UP HERE FOR FREE WIREPOINTS DAILY NEWSLETTER
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MORE WIREPOINTS ORIGINAL STORIES
Illinois lost another 54,000 tax filers and dependents, net, according to the IRS. Since 2000, fleeing taxpayers have taken $94 billion of annual adjusted gross income with them. 
Borrowing for current and past operating expenses, blanks for use of funds and more make Chicago's bond sale planned for next week smell mighty bad. Mark Glennon's interview is in the first ten minutes starting here.
It’s March, which means we are being subjected the dumbest annual study going about how well Chicago is doing.
“You didn’t have to be a wizard t.o see it,” Glennon said, recalling that warning signs were evident as far back as the early 2000s when state revenues faltered after the tech bubble burst. The fiscal trajectory of many major cities, he said, has long reflected a pattern of expanding government commitments without sustainable funding models. Full interview here.
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