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The candidates sparred on state spending, education funding, safety net hospitals, the SAFE-T Act, the Chicago Bears, Choate Mental Health and Developmental Center and more. But much of the debate centered on the relationship between the federal government and the state.
“The statute, as interpreted here, does not federalize all gambling, or even all sports gambling,” U.S. District Judge Martha Pacold wrote. “Instead, the statute governs gambling so far as it takes the form of swaps. … People may view these contracts as gambling, but little in the statutory definition turns on what people think. Instead, most of the definition turns on commercial function.”
Unsurprisingly, the states paying the most six-figure pensions are typically the states whose pension funds are at risk of insolvency. Illinois is currently $202 billion away from saving up enough money to pay the pensions it has already promised to current and future retirees, according to Equable.
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State Rep. Kam Buckner was asked if it would be possible to give the Bears control and still protect taxpayers. He responded, “Yeah, I think that's a conversation that, number one, has to be at the center of this. I don't know what that part looks like."
Former head of the Illinois GOP Pat Brady weighed in: "The governor came across as a governor. It was fact versus fiction. I thought the governor was very effective, and I give him credit for even doing it. ... I think the problem with the Republican Party right now, we're attacking Pritzker, but we're not talking about what we're going to do."
Some governors had been waiting for the federal government to issue regulations for it before deciding whether to opt in. The U.S. Treasury Department released those rules in early October, but they lack guardrails Democratic governors had hoped for, including provisions that might allow them to steer money toward students from low-income backgrounds or require certain standards for scholarship-granting organizations.
Comment: For a very different viewpoint on what Frerichs is doing, see our own recent column here.
Haywood Talcove, CEO of LexisNexis Risk Solutions, said Illinois has antiquated processes and technology, and the state’s error rate has been high for years. “Imagine applying for a mortgage and telling the bank that you make a million dollars a year and they just check the box and say, yep, that's what you make. Government does not validate the information on the forms, and as a result, the criminals know that,” Talcove said.
With Democrats using President Donald Trump’s low approval ratings and the high gas prices triggered by his war in Iran to their advantage, Republicans are not only slapping back by labeling Democrats’ economic policies ineffective but also looking for ways to change the conversation. The Illinois GOP is hoping recent scandals involving Democratic state lawmakers will breathe new life into the party’s efforts to gain more relevance in the General Assembly.
Illinois law makes it a Class 4 felony to knowingly give, lend or promise to give anything of value to influence a person to vote or register to vote, or to influence a person to vote for or against any candidate or public question.
The difference between Democrats and Republicans’ votes above the minimum needed for victory is known as the efficiency gap. While Missouri’s efficiency gap was +17.6 percent in favor of Republicans, Illinois’ 2022 map was +20.9 percent in favor of Democrats.
"Other states are competing to attract upper investment and growth. Illinois Democrats are continuing policies that drive them away."
Gov. JB Pritzker, who also serves as chair of the Ready for the Fight PAC, seeded the committee with at least $20 million for the 2026 midterm election.
State Rep. John Cabello said that before implementing a tax, lawmakers should face the people who will pay for it. “Hold a hearing. Let them testify. Explain what you’re doing before it’s a done deal instead of passing it in the middle of a night without a hearing,” Cabello said. As of Monday, Cabello’s House Bill 5798 to repeal the digital assets tax had 22 Republican cosponsors.
Stratton faces Republican candidate Don Tracy, who served as the former chair of the Illinois Republican Party, and independent candidate Whitfield Harrington Jr. in the Senate race.
For the Nov. 3 general midterm election, the referendum on the ballot in 12 counties reads “Shall the board of [specific] County correspond with the boards of the other Counties of Illinois outside of Cook County, about the possibility of separating from Cook County to form a new state, and to seek admission to the Union as such, subject to the approval of the people?”
The growing tax burden is a symptom of the overarching spending problem in Illinois. The state faces a mounting fiscal crisis driven by consistent overspending that is sapping economic growth and threatening Illinois’ long-term economic health.
"Last year, I welcomed a group of Texas legislators to Illinois. ... I invited them to Illinois because I wanted to support them in their fight [against gerrymandering], and when they came, I was proud to host them."
"Illinois law is supposed to cap year-to-year growth in property levies, but exemptions—especially for underfunded school pensions—have caused bills to soar. 'This system is rigged,' a pastor at a local church said. 'It can’t be fair.'"
Ted Dabrowski, founder of Fight for Illinois, said superintendent compensation should be examined alongside student outcomes and overall district spending when taxpayers are asked to provide additional revenue. He pointed to Dolton Public School District 148, where former Superintendent Kevin Nohelty received approximately $530,000 in total compensation in 2025, according to public records, and approximately 19 percent of students in the district are proficient in reading.
Illinois Superintendent of Education Tony Sanders ranked eighth on the list with a salary of $323,420.
A report by The American Tort Reform Association said businesses and insurers have filed nearly 300 RICO lawsuits since 2024, claiming that organized fraud rings allegedly involve law firms, litigation funders, medical providers and others. Association Vice President and Counsel Lauren Sheets Jarrell said the report flagged asbestos cases in Illinois.
She breaks down the economic impact for local communities, the push for reliable round-the-clock power, and how nuclear energy fits into Illinois' clean energy transition.
Statewide, consumers are seeing more choices since the state added 29 new dispensaries, increasing the number of stores by 10 percent. “Overall, you’re seeing price compression,” said Scott Redman, founder of the Illinois Independent Craft Growers Association. “That’s always been expected, and it’s going to continue. More dispensaries, unless they’re in locations that are underserved. It just divides the pie into more pieces.”
Jim Dey: "That’s why Unit 4 is sending out taxpayer-funded brochures that supposedly contain “neutral” information that pushes the property-tax increase and advocates are making the rounds to explain how the world will come to an end if voters say no. ... And what are taxpayers getting for their annual investment in local education? Not much in terms of educational results, if the state’s 2024 education report cards are considered, just equal-opportunity failure."
An Illinois Senate Democrat is furious that State Farm is raising homeowner insurance rates by 8 percent just months after massive insurance reforms were signed into law. Sen. Michael Hastings is now calling for lawmakers to pass stronger consumer protection plans.
Gov. JB Pritzker was critical of the agency in June: “FEMA is a mess. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, they've cut back significantly on the support that they give when there are emergencies. They are slow in responding with the dollars that they promise. And there are only so many dollars that a state has for what should be covered."
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"Party loyalty is the only explanation for a settlement by the city of Chicago to a collection of largely gangbanging, murdering thugs all claiming they were coerced into confessing to their atrocities by a retired detective, Ray Guevara."
In their joint statement, Cook County State's Attorney Eileen O'Neill Burke and transit union president Pennie McCoach said Chevazz Campbell, 37, had been on electronic monitoring following a retail theft conviction but had repeatedly violated his probation before the stabbing. "On at least four occasions … prosecutors filed to violate the defendant's probation because of repeated curfew violations, including multiple periods when he was out of compliance for hours at a time," they said. Campbell's violations were "repeatedly ignored," Burke and McCoach further stated, "because there is a lack of oversight."
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“We have a prompt payments act with the state government that if there are public dollars involved, and somebody is doing work and not getting paid, that's a violation of the law,” state Rep. Kam Buckner said. “These students were not just missing out on education, on their athletic experience, but many of them who are juniors and seniors are in the running for scholarships. This is affecting their recruiting process.”
"Chicago cannot erase the pension debt by outsourcing garbage collection. It cannot rewrite an existing employee’s pension merely because the city’s finances deteriorate. It cannot necessarily select employees for dismissal because their pension tier is expensive. The City, however, can decide how many people it employs, which functions the government performs directly and what retirement package it offers people who have not yet joined the workforce."
The Protecting Renters Ordinance has been significantly pared down since Mayor Brandon Johnson introduced it earlier this year, but a key remaining plank would fulfill a longtime goal of advocates and organizers: a comprehensive, city-managed public database showing who owns each of the thousands of apartment buildings in the city. City officials argue it is a step toward regular, proactive safety inspections for every unit in the city.
Chicago voters will see a question backed by Mayor Brandon Johnson on their Nov. 3 ballots that asks if the city should seek compensation from the Trump administration for the economic fallout from the immigration enforcement operation.
Wallace “Gator” Bradley says he logged 4,607 hours at $75 an hour and has submitted about 70 pages describing the work he says he did as an "urban translator" between 2013 and 2025. He listed dozens of City Council and Rainbow/PUSH Coalition meetings he says he attended, along with his preparation for those meetings.
District leaders held several meetings last month updating the community about a $5 million deficit, which they felt was only going to get worse because of declining enrollment and aging buildings. The move would force 713 students to change schools district-wide.
The ballot language is similar to a constitutional amendment that failed in the Illinois House earlier this year and a previous statewide ballot question from 2024. However, notably absent from the Cook County ballot question is language that specifies the additional 3 percent income tax would be only on income above $1 million rather than on all income for a taxpayer whose income tops $1 million.
"Last week, I stood in front of our new Leadership and Economic Opportunity Center that we built to steward young boys like our 11-year-old. High up on one of the window panes, someone shot a hole through the glass. This is the third window pane that has been broken. ... It wasn’t a liquor store or a vacant lot. It was a building — one of the first constructions on the South Side in who knows how long — going up where a motel notorious for crime once stood. And on a block that was known as America’s most dangerous."
The latest findings mark continued progress in the department’s yearslong effort to overhaul its policies and practices. But monitor Maggie Hickey warned that Larry Snelling’s retirement will test whether the reforms can withstand a leadership change, while staffing shortages remain a significant obstacle to fully implementing the changes.
"There are at least 67 zoning districts with at least 28 geographic overlays layered on top of these districts," their research found. "At least 180 specific land use types are listed in the zoning code and at least five government decision-making bodies make official decisions about zoning."
“What remains to be seen is whether the corporate-aligned caucus will have the collective courage to choose the interests and priorities of Chicagoans, or choose to cower before the influence and campaign donations of corporations,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said.
“What does it mean for Chicago to have no charter? It means that there is no coherent, enforceable structure to the way government works here. Inadequate transparency, fractionalist politics and almost constant fiscal crises are just some of the issues that haunt Chicago,” said Joe Ferguson, president of the non-partisan Civic Federation.
Terry King, 40, was released in that case because, under the SAFE-T Act, aggravated battery of a police officer does not qualify for pretrial detention unless the officer suffers great bodily harm.
Last year, Chicago's team collected a combined seven tons of trash, with 1,000 volunteers tracking submissions online with photo proof for every bag collected.
“When I brought forth legislation to increase fines and jail time for people committing crimes at the CTA, I was told by the mayor’s office that they were more interested in addressing the root causes of crime as to addressing future crime,” said Ald. Jim Gardiner. “The problem with trying to address the root cause of crime, while you’re digging for that root, the branches of the tree continue to grow out of control.”
More than two-thirds of the 45 candidates for 21 seats on the new board said in a questionnaire that they would not vote to raise property taxes to the limit if elected. For candidates hoping to win votes, the decision might seem like a no-brainer, but forgoing that tax revenue won’t be easy. Coming into this school year, CPS faced a $730 million deficit. If it hadn’t raised property taxes to the limit, the hole would have been almost $900 million.
On the top of the list of priorities for the agency’s leaders: public safety. NITA is building a public safety task force that will eventually introduce an anti-crime program by June 2029.
Angel Funez-Reyes, age 17, is the 18th person accused of killing or trying to kill someone in Chicago this year while on felony pretrial release. CWBChicago began this series of reports in November 2019 after then-Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans publicly stated, “We haven’t had any horrible incidents occur” under the court’s bond reform initiative.
Evanston officials have improperly distributed millions of dollars in road contracts for more than a decade, skirting an Illinois law that requires municipalities to seek authorization from the state and advertise in a weekly bulletin, records show. Now the city could be on the hook to pay back that money to its motor fuel tax fund.
“The city wants to avoid distractions for drivers, and wants to keep Chicago the most beautiful city in America,” U.S. District Judge Steven Seeger wrote. “The city was well within its rights to conclude that banning illuminated signs and dynamic displays containing commercial messages would promote those goals. Not everyone wants Chicago to look like Times Square.”
This year, Cook County property owners were charged nearly $20 billion in combined taxes, a more than 23% increase over just five years.
The current CPS inspector general, Philip Wagenknecht, was appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson in January 2025. And the IG’s office reports directly to the Chicago school board, where Johnson has appointed the majority of members, including the board president. Johnson, like Dominguez, was formerly a political organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union. The union and its affiliates are the top financial backers of their respective campaigns.
The lab will create 550 jobs, officials said Tuesday. Of these, 350 would be transferred from the medical center’s main campus in Hyde Park, along with 200 new jobs, said Catina Latham, senior vice president for community health transformation for UChicago Medicine.
A dispute over a seat on a crowded CTA bus escalated into a shooting that wounded two passengers — including a 65-year-old woman who wasn’t involved in the argument, prosecutors say. Cops used facial recognition and a community alert to identify two suspects.
"(Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris”) Welch’s upcoming reelection as House speaker is still in doubt, so numerous media outlets have claimed his nod to the CTU was an effort to bolster his position. But the O’Hare express train has support from several powerful statehouse groups, especially trade unions, which is a big reason it’s doubtful that those agency budgets will be stalled next spring. So Welch’s bluster might help him a bit back in his district, but likely not under the dome when he fights to retain the speaker’s gavel in January."
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To top it off, Stratton is funded mostly by Gov. JB Pritzker, who has long purported to be a rock solid supporter of Israel's right to exist. El-Sayed is anything but. SIGN UP HERE FOR FREE WIREPOINTS DAILY NEWSLETTER
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What Pritzker doesn't tell you that it cost taxpayers billions, not millions, in higher taxes to get those upgrades, vastly exceeding the savings. 
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Ballots start going out next week and Stratton has yet even to attempt to show that she’s qualified for the Senate. She has assessed that Illinois' media environment and one-party political culture will let her get away with hiding.
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