Politics
Treasure Dowell has called Missouri’s social services department three times a day for nearly a month and has yet to speak to a human being. Sometimes she is automatically disconnected hours before the call center closes because it has reached capacity for the day. Other times she waits hours, her phone on speaker atop the…
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SPRINGFIELD – The Illinois State Police are facing pushback from gun rights advocates over proposed rules requiring owners of certain firearms to register them before the end of the year. ISP is in the process of adopting new rules to implement part of the state’s new assault weapons ban – officially named the Protect Illinois…
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SPRINGFIELD – Elementary and secondary students in Illinois showed consistent improvements in their reading and math scores while the state’s high school graduation rate reached a 13-year high for the most recently concluded school year. Those are some of the conclusions from the most recent annual statewide school report card, released Monday by the Illinois State…
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JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — A St. Louis lawmaker is demanding that Missouri regulators investigate what she called an “egregious exploitation” of social cannabis equity licenses, following a report by The Independent last week about a company that recruited out-of-state license applicants on Craigslist. State Sen. Karla May, a St. Louis Democrat, sent a letter on Thursday to the state’s…
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SPRINGFIELD – Vowing to make Illinois the top state in the nation for child care accessibility, Gov. JB Pritzker unveiled a plan Tuesday to consolidate all the state’s early childhood programs and funding into one new state agency. “Early Childhood program governance has to be unified in its focus on serving children and families, easing…
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STEUBENVILLE, Ohio — Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio isn’t just Catholic. It’s “passionately Catholic,” according to the tagline on its website. It is known as a traditionalist hardliner on church teachings, according to some Catholic scholars. So it caught some people by surprise when the university announced last week that it would not only…
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Gun laws, scholarship tax credits, nuclear energy – but not new spending – on table for veto session
SPRINGFIELD – When lawmakers return to the Capitol next week for their annual fall veto session, they have a full agenda, including a handful of vetoes from Gov. JB Pritzker to consider overriding, in addition to deciding whether to revive a private school scholarship program. But additional state spending is unlikely to be on their…
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Until eighth grade, Carter Bremer went to school on a standard five-day schedule. After moving to Harrisburg, he stopped going to class on Mondays. Now a senior at Harrisburg High School, Carter has spent just four days a week in school for the past five years, giving him more time to spend on sports, a…
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Gov. JB Pritzker is self-funding the launch of a new political advocacy group aimed at fighting for abortion rights across the U.S. – an extension of sizable donations he’s been making in Democratic politics for several years. The billionaire governor, whose rising national profile had garnered feverish speculation about a run for president in 2024,…
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Navigator CO2, a Nebraska-based company specializing in carbon capture and sequestration, announced Friday it is canceling plans to build a 1,300-mile carbon dioxide pipeline that would have run through central Illinois. The plan included several hundred miles of pipeline in Illinois which terminated at sequestration sites designed to store the greenhouse gas underground. The company,…
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HANNIBAL, Mo. — Kristy Trevathan and Barry Louderman addressed questions on Thursday afternoon at the Hannibal Country Club in a mayor candidate forum hosted by the Hannibal Chamber of Commerce. Trevathan and Louderman are two of three candidates running to finish the term of former Mayor James Hark, who resigned in June due to increasing…
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FROM THE NEW YORKER: “Last fall, on a sunny day in the Chicago exurbs, J. B. Pritzker, well on his way to reëlection as the Democratic governor of Illinois, was knocking on a few doors and talking up his candidacy. A Republican had won every gubernatorial election in DuPage County since 1932, until Pritzker came…
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CHICAGO – As lawmakers prepare to return to Springfield later this month for their annual two-week fall veto session, advocates are pushing for a measure that would require law enforcement to take guns away from people hit with domestic violence orders of protection. In May, Democrats in the Illinois House passed a bill including that provision, but…
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SPRINGFIELD – The supply of education professionals continues to improve in Illinois despite strains brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, but persistent issues remain in certain regions of the state and within some teaching fields. That’s the conclusion of a new report by the education advocacy group Advance Illinois, which was instrumental in the 2017 passage…
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MACOMB, Ill. — The Macomb Area Chamber of Commerce will be the host of a legislative luncheon, presented by Comcast NBCUniversal, on Monday, Oct. 23, at the Park Place, 127 E. Carroll. Check-in/social begins at 11 a.m. with a buffet lunch served at 11:30 a.m. The noon featured speakers will include State Senators Mike Halpin…
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SPRINGFIELD – Unions representing nurses in Illinois are pushing for legislation that would impose mandatory staff-to-patient ratios in hospitals, nursing homes and other health care facilities. But lobby groups representing hospitals and nursing homes say they are steadfastly opposed to the legislation, arguing that a nationwide nursing shortage makes it impossible to comply with such…
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Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey expects to finally complete work on public records requests submitted to the office under his predecessor by the end of the year. A review by The Independent of the massive Sunshine Law backlog — which stood at 315 pending requests on Friday — found inquiries from reporters and political operatives, as well…
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Gov. JB Pritzker on Tuesday condemned the deadly attacks on Israel over the weekend by the militant group Hamas, telling those gathered outside a synagogue in Chicago’s north suburb of Glencoe that Illinois “unequivocally stands” with the people of Israel. The governor, who himself is Jewish, was one of a handful of elected officials and…
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There is $60 million at stake on the meaning of two words in the Missouri Constitution. On Thursday, a Cole County judge said he will provide the definition as soon as possible. The money, from the state road fund, would mean significant raises for thousands of employees in the Department of Transportation. The question Circuit…
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Marc Smith is one of 3 state agency leaders to announce end-of-year departure plans Illinois Department of Children and Family Services Director Marc Smith will resign effective Dec. 31, he told colleagues in an all-staff town hall meeting Wednesday morning. For years, critics had called on Smith to resign or be fired, amid legislative hearings,…
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CHICAGO — Gov. JB Pritzker was in Hyde Park Tuesday at the University of Chicago’s library to discuss Illinois’ fight against book bans. The university is building a collection of every book that has been banned in the U.S. and is partnering with the Digital Public Library of America to make books more accessible where…
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ROCKFORD — In 2016, before Donald Trump’s presidency paved the way for the eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade, Democrats in Illinois passed what would become the first in a series of laws shoring up reproductive rights in the state. That law altered Illinois’ 1970s-era Health Care Right of Conscience Act – a statute passed in…
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Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias last week filed administrative rules that would increase the age at which a driver is required to pass a driving test when they renew their license, raising it from 75 to 79. The rules – proposed by Giannoulias to the legislative Joint Committee on Administrative Rules – would keep…
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QUINCY — The historic 1993 flood of the Upper Mississippi River caused billions of dollars in damages, displacing more than 74,000 people from their homes and disrupting the region’s transportation and economy. The Upper Mississippi River watershed has experienced more frequent flooding with higher river stages with major floods happening in 2008, 2013, 2014 and…
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SPRINGFIELD – Six months before the next presidential primary elections in Illinois, county clerks and other local election authorities are asking for the public’s help in stopping misinformation campaigns before they get started. Officials from 25 counties scheduled a series of news conferences Tuesday in Tazewell, McLean and LaSalle counties. At the Tazewell event, the…
Read Full Article November 14, 2024
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