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"If they are teaching sexual orientation and gender ideology-related content, the investigations will examine whether the schools have notified parents of their right to opt their children out of such instruction. The investigation will also assess whether the Illinois School Districts limit access to single-sex intimate spaces (such as bathrooms and locker rooms) and girls’ sports teams based on biological sex," the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division said in a release. In total, 36 school districts across the state are being investigated.
The ruling leaves Illinois partisan gerrymandering practices untouched, but it means the racial district requirement of HJRCA 28 would violate the 14th Amendment.
The bill, the “Living Wage for All Act,” was introduced by Reps. Delia Ramirez and Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, both Democrats from Illinois, along with Reps. Analilia Mejia (D‑N.J.) and Lateefah Simon (D-Cali.). If enacted, the bill would raise the federal minimum wage to $25 an hour, would more than triple the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
Though Cook County released most of the illegal immigrants federal authorities wanted to apprehend, records show that the county transferred 86 jailed illegal immigrants to federal custody in 2025.
“We must call this for what it is: voter suppression that will silence Black and Brown voters,” Gov. JB Pritzker said in a prepared statement. “The magnitude of this decision cannot be understated: It guts the Voting Rights Act and its very purpose of protecting all voices. Every American deserves an equal vote.”
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Data from the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES) shows that the unemployment rate was 5.1 percent in March, which is up .1 percent from February and up .5 percent from last March.
Thefts where retail workers are threatened with weapons, or someone is hurt have risen 7 percent in the last year.
House Republican Leader Tony McCombie and Senate Republican Leader John Curran are proposing a specific solution in response to the recent killing of Chicago Police Officer John Bartholomew. They want people who are on electronic monitoring pretrial and commit a new crime to automatically have pretrial release revoked until the case is resolved.
University of Illinois Springfield Professor Ken Kriz spoke to the committee from a neutral stance, based on his 20 years of experience researching and advising cities on pensions. “In general when restrictions are put in place, what we see is poor risk-adjusted returns,” Kriz said. “You have to have increased costs of monitoring to make sure there’s no investments going into a certain asset. Increasing the cost just reduces the benefits you can offer or increases the cost to the taxpayers.”
Testosterone was classified as a Schedule III controlled substance in the 1990 Anabolic Steroids Control Act to crack down on performance enhancing drug use in sports. “Tracking individuals for seeking hormone replacement therapy undermines both medical confidentiality and personal freedom,” state Sen. Adriane Johnson said. “Everyone deserves the ability to make informed healthcare choices without unnecessary intrusion.”
“Documenting this was easy,” Commission Chair Rubén Castillo said. “The record is overwhelming; the video tapes are overwhelming. They’re devastating. They’re shameful. They’re brutal.” Body camera footage released by the commission shows the agents proceeded to use teargas on a street of onlookers in the Far Southeast Side neighborhood, including more than a dozen Chicago police officers who had explicitly asked agents not to deploy the gas.
The board says the overhaul will make school ratings clearer and fairer. The changes also remove some key measures and reshape how performance is judged. Yet at a time when nearly half of Illinois students can’t read at grade level and even fewer are proficient in math, the board’s overhaul will change how schools are labeled but not how they perform.
"Use the law. Use the courts. Use your voice. Make sure Republican leaders know we will not rest until they end their decades-long effort to silence voters of color. This moment calls for a new generation of civil rights heroes."
Pritzker said on MS NOW, “I’m so proud of the people of Illinois who really wrote the playbook. They’re the ones who went out and bought whistles and people in neighborhoods all across the state, because it wasn’t just Chicago. They attacked all across the state. People came out of their homes when they saw these unmarked vehicles, these masked men jumping out of cars, attacking people."
Illinois state courts remained America's top destination for asbestos-related personal injury lawsuits in 2025, with Madison County (872 asbestos-related lawsuits) and St. Clair County (657 asbestos injury lawsuits) again accounting for the lion's share of such filings, a new report has indicated.
“There's no shame in admitting that you made a mistake. There is in not correcting the mistake. And in this case, these mistakes have proven to be very deadly,” Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza said. Gov. JB Pritzker, however, shifted blame away from the act as a whole, saying many cases have been because judges have made improper determinations.
McLean County Judge Rebecca Foley said the Strikebreakers Act does not apply to public universities, noting it was illegal for state employees to strike when the law was enacted. Further, Foley said denying the university the ability to provide clean, hygienic public spaces and dorms would compromise the health and welfare of students and employees. "It doesn't take a lot of imagination," she said, to predict what might happen without janitorial services over the course of a strike.
Springfield received just under $34 million. Ramona Metzger, director of the office of budget and management, listed some of those projects: “There were water fund capital projects, lead service line, tourism, Olde Towne Apartments, the demolition for that. The library, we replaced the elevators. There was also the firehouse and fire equipment."
"It's not a mask mandate," state Sen. Graciela Guzmán said. "It does not require anyone to wear a mask or any protective equipment. It protects the right of people who choose, need, or use protective medical equipment to do so without punishment or discrimination."
State Rep. Kam Buckner said, “I’ve heard many of my colleagues say this is a ballooning budget, but the truth is a balloon floats away when it has no anchor. … (This budget is) anchored in schools, anchored in healthcare, anchored in pensions, public safety, human services.”
Logan County zoning officer and planning director Alan Green said the ordinance will introduce restrictions on all data center projects in Logan County. Some of those restrictions will include energy generation, the type of properties used for the data center, noise level parameters, and more.
Illinois’ gas tax is currently 48.3 cents per gallon, and another annual increase is slated to take effect on July 1.
The Illinois Economic Policy Institute estimated a 3 percent surtax on millionaires would affect 41,000 taxpayers in the state and generate $3.8 billion during its first year. That total would ramp up to $4.2 billion by 2030. The House Revenue and Finance Committee approved the resolution April 21, but it failed to get a vote in the full chamber. There is no similar proposal in the Senate.
“What I was talking about was the fact that a constitutional republic was torn apart in 53 days in Germany in the 1930s, and that we need to watch out for that in this country” and “much of what I said has been proven to be true, that the institutions of this democracy are being attacked by the Republicans and by Donald Trump," Gov. JB Pritzker said on CNN.
“Defendants claim Judge (James) Brown undermined public confidence in the judiciary,” attorneys wrote in the latest filing. “Yet Defendants allow other sitting judges to publicly speak on matters of public concern,” the attorneys argued, before summarizing some of Judge Ramon Ocasio’s comments. “His columns discuss myriad matters of public concern, including: the ‘abolition of policing’ through the lens of the Native American ‘indigenous resistance’ who view police officers as ‘foot soldiers of U.S. occupation, racism, and misogyny,” the filing stated.
The bill now under consideration in the Illinois House of Representatives would allow workers to begin receiving unemployment benefits after two weeks on
"But (Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson) argued the governor can get more credit than he deserves for being a progressive champion. 'Wealthy white men have a lot of cover,' Johnson says. 'The expectations of individuals of privilege are different than women and people of color, and I think that more politicians need to be challenged to push an agenda that’s responsive to the people who have been stuck in the margins.'"
If the proposal, House Joint Resolution Constitutional Amendment 28, gets at least 36 of the 59 votes in the Senate before the May 3 deadline, it will appear on the November ballot. But the proposed language simply codifies the state’s current poor redistricting practice.
Dozens of bills introduced this year aim to address issues of social media addiction, age-appropriate content and age verification. “We all know that social media is having a real impact on our kids. From mental health challenges to exposure to harmful content, the evidence continues to grow. This is not a theoretical issue anymore,” state Sen. Sue Rezin said.
Gov. JB Pritzker said the Bears do not want a 9 percent amusement tax added to their ticket prices. “Obviously that’s something that they didn't expect, don’t believe is a good thing for Bears fans or for the Bears stadium. We’ll see what can happen in the Senate about that,” Pritzker said. The Bears have already notified fans that season ticket prices would increase by an average of 13.5 percent this year.
U.S. Reps. Delia Ramirez, D-IL, Chuy Garcia, D-IL, and Analilia Mejia, D-NJ, introduced the federal legislation, known as the ‘Living Wage for All Act.’ Ramirez was a co-lead on the 2019 state-wide wage increase, which brought it to $15 per hour.
As local governments confront water challenges, regional droughts have called attention to lax or nonexistent water management policies in Illinois. State lawmakers have caught on, too, especially as they consider how to regulate data centers, a new type of high-end water user that’s been spreading across the state.
Top Chicago Stories
Chicago’s home prices grew at more than five times the pace of the nation’s in February, according to today’s report from the S&P Cotality Case-Shiller Indices. Home prices here were up 5.04% in February, the index reports, compared with growth of 0.7% nationwide. 
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Illinois African Descent-Citizens Reparations Commission Chair Marvin Slaughter, Jr. told students at Kennedy King College, "We want the government that is responsible for enslaving our ancestors and responsible for the gaps that we see in everything from mother and infant mortality, education, educational attainment, wealth. They're responsible for all of these things."
Last week, Gov. JB Pritzker signed an executive order barring state employees from using insider information to bet on prediction market apps, citing highly accurate bets made in February regarding U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, an anonymous trader who earned more than $400,000 after placing large bets on the removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and a user who placed a $40,000 bet that OpenAI would launch an AI web browser before the end of the month.
They started as young attorneys on opposite sides of the courtroom — John Lyke as a prosecutor, Charles Beach on the defense — and years later found themselves on the bench in the Pretrial Division at 26th and California, one of the most grueling assignments in the building, where 50, 70, sometimes 100 defendants a day cycled through to have bail amounts set on charges ranging from pot possession to murder.
"Imagine if city decision-makers had walked the Grand Avenue bridge at 8:15 on a Tuesday morning in October 2024, stood at Grand and Halsted and Milwaukee, and watched the No. 65 inch forward. Watched the cyclist’s narrow choice. Watched the parent with a stroller. And said: Maybe all of this at once is not a good idea. Let’s go back to the planning table with CDOT, the CTA, the departments of Buildings and Water Management, the Gaming Board and the casino, together, and center our citizens instead of our regulations."
Roughly 2,290 student workers, represented by the UIC Graduate Employees Organization, went on strike Monday after months of stalled contract talks. The union’s three-year contract expired last August.
"It absolutely needs to be amended because I think while the intention was good, not forcing people to sit in jail because they couldn't afford bond on minor crimes, it has been utterly manipulated and abused by dangerous violent repeat offenders who have no regard for the sanctity of human life, no regard for property, and no intention of ever following the law," Ald. Ray Lopez said.
Joseph Graciosa, a computer science teacher at Solorio Academy High School, said that May 1 at his building will begin with an assembly about the history of May Day and the power of students in education reform. Discussions will highlight the impact of recent immigration raids on the school’s community.
A team of local real estate investors has raised its bet on a downtown office recovery, buying a distressed Loop office building loan for roughly 84% less than the property was worth over a decade ago. It's the 23-story office property at 200 W. Monroe St.
The company will in turn be subject to tax breaks under the state’s EDGE, or Economic Development for a Growing Economy, tax credit program. Those would amount to $19 million over 10 years.
The surprise move in one of the most well-known cases to emerge from Operation Midway Blitz transforms a high-stakes felony prosecution into a misdemeanor matter. Each of the remaining four defendants, including former congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, is now looking at a maximum of one year in prison if convicted.
"Mayor Panic Attack, tipping is an American tradition. More specifically, it’s a Chicago way of life, we all know it and many of us do it with panache. Do us in the hospitality industry a favor and find another madeup grievance to cry about."
Venezuelan migrant Jose Medina, 25, is charged with first-degree murder and other lesser charges for the shooting that killed Sheridan Gorman on a Rogers Park pier March 19. Gorman's father said, "She is gone because systems that are supposed to protect the public did not do their job." Medina's attorney said he was bused to Chicago from Texas by Gov. Greg Abbot, and has been in the U.S. with his mother on asylum.
"CPS says it 'must divert between $400 and $500 million from the classroom annually to pay for debt service to fund school construction and repairs.' That makes little sense for a system with so many empty seats. Until CPS aligns its footprint with the number of students it actually serves, deficits will persist."
In 2026, CPD has a budget of $200 million for overtime. To finish 2026 on budget, CPD must reduce its spending on overtime by 30 percent as compared with what the department spent in 2025.
The proposal has gotten a lukewarm reception by the Illinois Federation of Teachers. Though they are not actively opposing the bill, union leaders have raised concerns about the possible cost and logistics of implementing the restrictions.
The plan shifts care into schools, transit hubs, community centers, and other nonclinical spaces while sending teams directly to residents who live outside traditional care networks. The dollars come from a mix of corporate contributions, state opioid settlement funds, and Ryan White Part A money that typically supports HIV care, and the rollout is expected to involve dozens of community and health partners.
“Electronic monitoring is not an alternative to detention. It does not keep people safe,” Cook County State's Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke said. “The states attorney’s office is going to continue to ask for detention each and every time we believe someone presents a danger."
The $2.8 billion in federal emergency funding that CPS received starting in 2020 helped mask continued structural funding problems.
Andrew S. Boutros, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, and Christopher C. Amon, special agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Chicago Field Division: "The next shooting will not be prevented by a case that will be indicted three years from now. It will be prevented by what happens in the next 24 to 72 hours."
The MetroSouth Medical Center closed in 2019; in the years since, the 12.5-acre property has been shopped as a potential film and TV production campus or a research hub. Builders Capital took ownership of the property after calling in a $44 million note on the property’s former developers.
"Her apparent offense was recognizing a truth that should be obvious to anyone not marinating in activist ideology: If you want to lock up gun offenders, dismantle trafficking pipelines, and keep repeat violent criminals off the street, you cannot afford to gratuitously torch your relationships with federal agencies. That is not corruption. That is called fulfilling your obligations to Chicago residents."
"Unlike Mayor Brandon Johnson’s belief, white supremacy does not run these streets. ... We have valued victimhood over merit, a strange fate, since none of us suffered slavery and most of us never lived under legal segregation. Yet we reach backward to the past for our identity instead of forward to a future where our talents and our character write our own story."
"(Mayor Brandon) Johnson is right that young people need support. But support without structure isn’t compassion; it’s abdication. The question isn’t whether to punish or support. It’s whether we’re willing to do the harder work of both."
"For Chicago, the shocking crimes are noteworthy contributors to its tattered national reputation — fair or not — for being unsafe and for criminal-justice policies perceived as being concerned more with the rights of those accused than the interests of those victimized."
“Officer Bartholomew would be alive today if this massively repeat offender of violent crime after violent crime were behind bars where he belonged,” said Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza. “No reasonable person breathing should think it’s okay to put an armed robber, carjacker on an electronic monitor and send them on their merry way.”
Wirepoints Research and Commentary
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
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.
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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. 
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.
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