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The largest data center project ever proposed in Illinois is at risk of being scuttled over $1. That’s how much developer PowerHouse Hillwood offered to put up when Commonwealth Edison demanded a financial guarantee of more than half a billion dollars to protect other customers from the costs of supplying electricity to its proposed data center campus in Joliet.
In an interview with Meet the Press, Gov. JB Pritzker says he believes that President Trump is working to make sure that “Democrats really don’t have a chance” in elections across the country just days out from the midterms.
According to a new report, Illinois is one of five states with more than $30,000 in debt per capita. With $31,582 in overall per capita debt, Illinois trailed only New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
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The nearly 39 percent pay increase drew criticism from the Illinois Policy Institute. "Teachers look for support in their classrooms and representation at the bargaining table," said Mailee Smith, vice president of policy and litigation at the Illinois Policy Institute. "A nearly 39 percent raise for a leader does not help with either of those, especially when the average Illinois teacher only makes a fraction of Davis Gates’ total combined annual salary of $445,000."
The state’s victim notification system known as VINE alerts crime victims when someone is released from jail, transferred or experiences a change in custody status. A clause in that $6M contract allows Appriss to share jail records with third parties. Privacy advocates warn this creates a pathway for information collected by Illinois jails to enter commercial databases used by ICE to identify and locate people for immigration enforcement.
"Rather than advancing school choice by easing the way out of the public schools, it expands opportunities for helping students stay there. Governors who hesitate to join should consider the benefits for those children. It’s becoming harder to find a good reason to turn it down."
State Rep. John Cabello introduced House Bill 4165 in October 2025, seeking to prohibit Illinois courts and other legal bodies from enforcing foreign laws or legal provisions that violate rights guaranteed under the U.S. or Illinois constitutions. Cabello said the measure was prompted by news reports about Sharia law in parts of London and his desire to prevent similar concerns from arising in Illinois.
The budget includes no fare increases, as NITA is expecting $1.3 billion in additional revenue next year from expanding the Chicago-region sales tax and redirecting some of the state sales tax on gasoline.
In an order issued Friday, October 30, Judge Martha Pacold wrote that Illinois officials including Attorney General Kwame Raoul cannot enforce state gaming laws, including the Sports Wagering Act, illegal gambling statutes, or the ‘Internet Wagering’ provisions of the Illinois Admin Code, on the trading of swaps, including sports event contracts, that are available via Commodity Futures Trading Commission-registered companies like Kalshi.
Ted Dabrowski: "I called the Peoria School District a 'systemic failure' in 2023, but that’s not really right. The system is working just as it should under the 'white guilt' mindset. It’s how you end up with so few kids reading, the nation’s highest property taxes and a bunch of metrics meant to sugar coat the failures. That’s the harsh assessment, but it’s true."
The Party for Socialism and Liberation and the UIS Black Student Union organized the rally and march.
One central dispute involves whether parents should be informed of the biological sex of students assigned to share rooms with their children on overnight school trips. Attorneys for Community High School District 128 argued that disclosing another student’s biological sex without consent could violate the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and the Illinois School Student Records Act.
Of the $443.4 million that went to his own campaign committee, JB for Governor, nearly half has gone to media and a notable $77.2 million transferred to committees such as the Democratic Party of Illinois and Democrats for the Illinois House.
"Democrats have condemned the attempted Republican power grab in Missouri, the way they have all over the country. One of the most prominent critics is the Democratic governor across the Mississippi River, JB Pritzker of Illinois. That’s ironic, to say the least, given what Illinois’ own hyperpartisan state legislative maps look like."
The initiative that reduced the state sales tax on qualifying school supplies, clothing and footwear from 6.25 percent to 1.25 percent marked Illinois' first back-to-school sales tax holiday since 2022, when the state implemented a similar program during Gov. JB Pritzker's previous reelection campaign.
No suspects are in custody, and an investigation remains underway.
“It is often true that the Department of Justice and federal officials will send observers to different parts of the country. Those observers are the same as other election observers from political parties,” ACLU of Illinois spokesman Ed Yohnka said. “Those things are perfectly appropriate, they're perfectly consistent with what the DOJ has done for years.”
Jim Dey: "The 84-year-old Madigan has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review his conviction. The Chicago Tribune reports that he’s calling for a 'closer examination' of what constitutes a public official acting 'corruptly' and whether an 'alleged promise to make a job recommendation' or vague support of ComEd’s legislation qualifies as an 'official act,' according to The Chicago Tribune."
Statewide, handful of municipalities are voting on measures pushing for the state to scrap its law penalizing companies that boycott Israel. “Illinois, which was really a laboratory for creating anti-BDS state laws years back, inevitably has become a site for backlash,” said James Loeffler, a Jewish historian at Johns Hopkins University.
The Vatican confirmed that the 71-year-old Chicago native submitted a mail-in ballot in Illinois ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections. The Vatican stopped short of revealing who got the pope’s vote, but TMZ reported that he has participated in both Democratic and Republican primaries over the years.
"Data centers are a tricky issue for Democrats because organized labor wants to build more of them and pretty much everyone else in the state doesn’t want anything to do with them, including the environmentalists, who worry the companies will try to use new carbon-based energy to operate them."
The Supreme Court has yet to decide whether it will hear his appeal. Madigan asked President Donald Trump for a pardon late last year.
"There's a reason road builders and related unions poured millions into passing this thing back in 2016: job security. Now that they've successfully lobbied to put restrictions on transportation spending into the Illinois Constitution, the industry is using the courts to enforce those restrictions against a county facing a substantial budget shortfall."
The money will modernize eight nuclear power plants in total, bringing enough power online to serve one million homes, said State Sen. Li Arellano.
“The Illinois State Board of Education’s recent guidance for mental health screenings and recordkeeping—promulgated under the auspices of state law—raise concerns that school districts may violate federal parental rights’ laws,” said Director of the Student Privacy Policy Office Frank Miller.
Illinois Policy Institute policy researcher Adam Gorcyca gave the example of Community Unit School District 300 in Carpentersville. “They proposed a $355 million bond question, and they estimated an annual property tax increase about $101 on a $400,000 home,” Gorcyca said. And St. Charles Community Unit School District 303’s $282.5 million bond referendum is projected to raise property taxes by $645 a year on a $500,000 home.
Illinois’ unemployment rate has trended above the national average since 2019. While this analysis doesn’t isolate the effects of Illinois’ minimum wage increase on statewide unemployment, the state’s broader joblessness trend paints a less favorable picture of its labor market than the Pritzker campaign advertisement suggests.
In addition, nearly 1-in-4 Illinois public school students were chronically absent in the 2025-2026 school year, meaning they missed 10 percent or more of the school year with or without an excused absence.
Top Chicago Stories
While the 44-6 vote effectively blows a $75 million hole in the mayor's 2027 budget proposal, alders argued the funds were always intended to continue chipping away at the city's $36 billion pension debt, not to help balance next year's budget.
"Today I’d like to talk about the PPLT. It hasn’t gotten as much attention — maybe because “PPLT” sounds like some technocratic thing you don’t have to care about."
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From January 2023 until Sept. 28 of this year, 560 people in custody were involved in suspected intoxication incidents, the Cook County Office of the Independent Inspector General said. Illinois State Police lab results found that multiple controlled substances made it into the jail, with synthetic marijuana products most frequently seen.
"There seems to be an increasing temptation to portray every disagreement over federal policy as a moral emergency requiring resistance rather than negotiation. The language of occupation, fascism, and liberation may excite activists, but it makes ordinary compromise more difficult. Federal agents become symbols of oppression rather than public servants whose conduct should be judged on the facts. Governors and mayors become resistance leaders rather than executives responsible for delivering public services. "
Hilario Dominguez, a candidate for Chicago school board president, received $1.72 million in reported support from CTU and aligned organizations, according to data from the Illinois State Board of Elections.
Any new construction in the Cabrini footprint still has to answer to a federal consent decree. According to CHA, the court requires that 33 to 40 percent of units be designated CHA housing, with no more than 20 percent as affordable housing and no more than 50 percent as market-rate — a structure the final framework adopts directly, designating 33 to 40 percent of units as CHA housing while capping affordable units at 20 percent and market-rate units at 50 percent.
The DOJ contends the suburb’s program unlawfully distributes taxpayer benefits based strictly on race and ancestry. In its complaint, federal prosecutors allege the program violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment as well as the Fair Housing Act.
“One of the reasons why ShotSpotter was such a failure is because it was the antithesis of my moral standards, right?” Mayor Brandon Johnson said. He maintained that the removal of gunshot detection technology as shootings have dropped has shown the tech isn’t necessarily needed, but his administration could implement it in ways more in line with his public safety goals.
A statement from Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office said the number of city buses with cameras grew to 52 last month, thanks to $1 million from the Northern Illinois Transit Authority.
White guilt liberals on Chicago's North Shore called teenagers Nazis without ever asking who they were.
"CPS’ record graduation rate is not a product of a quality education but of a system of diminished standards and abandoned accountability that socially promotes students. This is how you achieve a graduation rate of 83.4 percent when only one in five CPS students met SAT standards in reading and math, while 40 percent of high school students, including 72 percent of seniors, are truant."
The 64-unit building will adaptively reuse a 1920s bank building at an estimated cost of about $60 million. The city’s Department of Housing is contributing $11.4 million to the project, the Illinois Housing Authority is supporting the project with tax credits and the Chicago Housing Authority is providing rental assistance.
Andre Thomas, 57, was the CEO and Executive Director of Integrity & Fidelity, which works in parts of the city and south suburbs most impacted by gun violence. In a previous interview, Thomas expressed that investing money in impacted communities would be key in reducing gun violence. “No one with a 40-hour job is going out and shooting and killing,” Thomas told the Sun-Times.
Chicago’s City Council dealt Mayor Brandon Johnson a major budget setback today, voting 44-6 to divert $75 million from his proposed 2027 spending plan into a one-time payment to the city’s underfunded pensions. The overwhelming vote sets up a new confrontation between Johnson and aldermen over how to balance his $17.6 billion budget, forcing the mayor to find another $75 million in savings or revenue as negotiations over his spending plan get underway.
A 28-year-old passerby who joined a security guard’s pursuit of a suspected shoplifter was stabbed three times inside a West Side CTA station, leaving him blind in one eye and with little remaining vision, prosecutors said.
This year, there are measures to increase taxes on the rich in California, Colorado, Washington, Massachusetts and Cook County, Illinois. The states voting on taxing the rich also hold a large share of corporate America. California has 56 Fortune 500 headquarters, Illinois 29, Massachusetts 15, Washington nine and Colorado seven.
Will Mayor Brandon Johnson and the Chicago Teachers Union lose control of Chicago Public Schools? Will Republicans lose their last seat on the Cook County Board? How many votes can an independent candidate for governor pull from JB Pritzker and Darren Bailey? And how will voters respond to $158 million in sales tax referenda for school facilities?
The zones cover 30 percent of Chicago and were established in 1982 to encourage development in economically depressed areas. Analysis found that about 1,900 commercial and industrial properties sold to new owners within the six Enterprise Zones between 2021 and 2026, on which the transfer taxes that could have been paid by buyers would have been about $16 million per year.
As feds take over prosecution of Philadelphia police killer, why aren’t feds in Chicago recharging three Spanish Cobras for the execution murder of Officer Clifton Lewis?
A few races on next week's ballot could still shape commercial property markets and what happens in Springfield — most notably the historic Chicago Public Schools board races that have drawn big bucks from elite local business and real estate industry leaders.
Cook County Circuit Judge Jeanne Wrenn; attorney Lisa Duarte, a former top aide to Gov. JB Pritzker; and Patricia “Trisha” Rooney, a board member of the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority; are among the influential women with whom Jawad Fakroune had relationships as he moved through Chicago social circles. Fakroune, 46, was sentenced this year on extortion charges in federal court in Chicago and now awaits sentencing in a separate tax fraud case.
In Oak Park, the chief of police wrote that her agency is trying to prevent a Halloween teen takeover like last year's, when an estimated 500 teens swarmed downtown Oak Park, fights and gunshots erupted, and police called in help from six neighboring agencies, according to a department memo. And adults in Hyde Park planned to show out en masse on the streets to prevent large gatherings by teenagers because a series of large Halloween gatherings from 2016 to 2019 turned violent.
The issue in Alaska is that there are two Dan Sullivans on the ballot in what’s expected to be a close Senate race between the two main party candidates. One name on the ballot is that of a retired school teacher who was actually born and raised in Chicago’s south suburbs but has lived in Alaska for a half-century. His name: Daniel Sullivan Jr. The incumbent Republican is just below him: Dan. S. Sullivan.
The letter, addressed to the Board of Education and interim Supt. Eric Witherspoon, claims that the district’s current decision-making process does not comply with Illinois law requirements, specifically those of the Illinois School Code. The Illinois School Code requires a public participation process, including three public hearings, to discuss proposed school closures. It further requires the school board to consider methods to prevent the separation of students on the basis of race, color or nationality when revising attendance boundaries.
"It’s one thing when Mayor Brandon Johnson’s political opponents question his budget math. It isn’t every day, however, when a mayor’s own CFO joins the chorus."
Wirepoints Research and Commentary
New Trier High School made national headlines nine years ago as a "canary in a coal mine" for political indoctrination in public schools. The canaries lived. 
Among the consequences of economic growth that badly lags national averages are billions of lost revenue every year. Yet denial reigns in Illinois, fueling the vicious cycle of demand for higher taxes. SIGN UP HERE FOR FREE WIREPOINTS DAILY NEWSLETTER
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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. 
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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