Politics
QUINCY — State Sen. Jil Tracy (R-Quincy) said the Pritzker Administration should not be diverting millions of taxpayer dollars to non-citizens – especially without any input from Illinois lawmakers. On Nov. 16, Gov. JB Pritzker announced he is re-allocating $160 million from the Illinois Department of Human Services to help assist Chicago with its influx…
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CHICAGO – As winter quickly approaches, Gov. JB Pritzker on Thursday announced plans for the state to spend an additional $160 million to aid and house a sustained influx of migrants sent to Chicago from the nation’s southern border. The administration sold the plan as a three-phase approach: “welcome, shelter, independence” – aimed at meeting…
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The high-stakes nature of one of this year’s biggest public corruption trials became clear Wednesday when a defense attorney predicted an ominous argument from prosecutors: That federal guidelines call for life sentences for four people convicted of conspiring to bribe then-Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan.
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This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Capitol News Illinois. In late December, a teenage boy with a broken arm was left to suffer alone in his cell at a youth lockup in rural southern Illinois. Staff were aware he’d been seriously injured; he told them he was in pain and…
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SPRINGFIELD — Illinois received another credit upgrade Tuesday, the same day a legislative committee once again scrutinized Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration for its handling of unemployment claims during the COVID-19 pandemic. The upgrade came from Fitch Ratings, the last remaining holdout of the nation’s three major credit reporting agencies to advance the state’s status to…
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SPRINGFIELD – Illinois lawmakers adjourned their fall veto session Thursday afternoon without renewing a controversial program that provided indirect state support for students attending private and religious schools. The Invest in Kids program will sunset as scheduled on Dec. 31, meaning donors to six state-approved private school scholarship funds will no longer be able to…
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HANNIBAL, Mo. — Hannibal voters chose Barry Louderman as the Hannibal Mayor Elect by a margin of 238 votes on Tuesday. Louderman had a total of 1,484 votes in Ralls and Marion County. Candidate Kristy Trevathan had 1,246 votes and Steve Colyar had 25 votes. In an interview following his victory, Louderman said he is…
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HANNIBAL, Mo. – On Tuesday Hannibal voters will head to the polls to decide on only two issues. The Nov. 7 election will not only decide who will replace and finish the term of former Mayor James Hark who resigned in June, but voters will also decide if the city manager will be required to…
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In a 2-1 ruling Friday, a federal appeals court ruled that Illinois’ assault weapon ban does not violate the U.S. Constitution, setting up a likely appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. “The Second Amendment to the Constitution recognizes an individual right to ‘keep and bear Arms.’ Of that there can be no doubt,” the majority opinion began,…
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Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft wrote ballot titles for six proposals to restore abortion rights that were “replete with politically partisan language,” a Missouri appeals court unanimously ruled Tuesday. In an expedited decision issued a day after hearing arguments, a three-judge panel of the Western District Court of Appeals upheld, with only minor revisions, the revised ballot…
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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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