Illinois’ emergency management statute grants the governor broad powers to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, and the General Assembly has shown no interest in amending it.
GOP officials are objecting to legislation they say was written "by the Chicago machine" to specifically carve out of contention two Madison County Republican circuit judges planning to run this November for the seats they currently occupy by appointment.
The House Redistricting Committee on Wednesday afternoon passed an amendment that would create new judicial subcircuits in Madison and Bond counties' Third Judicial Circuit.
Democrat lawmakers are expected to ram through legislation in Springfield, possibly Wednesday, creating new judicial subcircuits in four state court systems, including Madison and Bond counties' Third Judicial Circuit.
Democrat mapmakers were "motivated by partisan political considerations," a panel of federal judges said, so it doesn't matter that they divided Latino and Black populations up among various districts, rather than maximizing majority minority districts
The plaintiffs representing Black and Latino voters argued Illinois Democrats’ new legislative maps are gerrymandered to break up voting blocs, diluting minority voting power during the next decade.
Republicans and Latino and Black advocates told a panel of federal judges that Illinois Democrats drew a new state legislative district map solely to protect Democratic incumbents and boost their party power, stepping on Black and Latino voting rights in the process.
Madison, St. Clair and Cook Counties together ranked No. 5 in the American Tort Reform Association’s (ATRA) annual “Judicial Hellholes” report, up from last year’s No. 8 ranking.
Illinois just reached an alarming milestone: each Illinois household is now on the hook for, on average, $110,000 in government-worker retirement debts. That figure is the result of dividing Illinois’ $530 billion in state and local retirement shortfalls among the state’s 4.9 million households. In 2019, the burden was $90,000 per household.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker may be celebrating the lower deficits his budget office just projected for the next five years, but Illinois’ latest “improvements” owe little to what he and the General Assembly have done since the governor took office. To the contrary, most of Pritzker’s recent actions have only served to increase the burden on ordinary Illinoisans going forward. We detail those actions later in this piece.
The proposed new map, filed with federal judges, would nearly triple the number of majority Latino state House and Senate districts, compared to plan approved by Democrats and signed by Gov. JB Pritzker in September
Attorney Tom Devore has represented clients in a string of lawsuits vs Gov. JB Pritzker since May 2020 over Pritzker's use of executive powers and COVID-related mandates
With additional protection in the Illinois Constitution, state employees and even public officials could be shielded from discipline and corruption reforms thwarted.
EAST ST. LOUIS – Classifying video streamers as cable companies so that local government can tax them would warp Illinois cable law and produce absurd results, Netflix and other streamers argued in U.S. district court on Nov. 5.