State & Local News Headlines

Illinois is moving its government services online at a pace that touches nearly every resident. From paying state taxes to filing court documents, the digital shift is reshaping how citizens interact with public institutions — and it raises real questions about access, privacy, and what gets left behind. Understanding these changes is no longer optional.…

A proposed Illinois law that could open the door to commercial self-driving taxis does more than address transportation policy. For Zigmas Pekarskas, co-founder and CEO of Stake Hunters and an observer of regulated digital services across the Turkish-speaking betting market, the bill’s introduction crystallizes a trust problem that runs through every software-driven, compliance-dependent service in…

Darren Bailey works the crowd at Adams County GOP Lincoln Reagan Trump Dinner QUINCY–Just one day after Democratic incumbent Governor JB Pritzker was making the national media rounds at the opening of President Barack Obama’s new center, Republican challenger Darren Bailey was making the rounds at the Adams County Lincoln Reagan Trump Dinner at the…

The project, under construction on Chicago’s South Side since 2021, will open its doors to the public today CHICAGO — Almost 250 years to the day of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, former President Barack Obama, the 44th and first African American president, officially opened his Obama Presidential Center before a star-studded crowd…

CHICAGO — A federal appeals court in Chicago said Monday that prosecutors presented “significant and compelling evidence” against former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore and lobbyist Michael McClain of Quincy, even as it formally vacated their convictions in the high-profile “ComEd Four” corruption case. The 16-page opinion from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals comes…

QUINCY — State Senator Jil Tracy (R-Quincy) is announcing that fire departments, fire protection districts and emergency service providers throughout the 50th Senate District have been awarded more than $370,000 through the Illinois Office of the State Fire Marshal’s (OSFM) 2026 Small Equipment Grant Program. “Our firefighters, EMS personnel and first responders play an important…

The budget timing is especially critical, Chief Financial Officer Wally Stock said, because the district is expected to hit the current fiscal year's borrowing limit of $1.25 billion in August.

The battle between a billionaire and the teachers union mirrors wider power struggles within the party.

To chip away at Chicago’s $36 billion pension crisis and erase the city’s structural deficit, the 23-member group of civic leaders is also suggesting offering retirees lump-sum payouts in lieu of monthly pension checks and restoring the automatic escalator locking in annual property tax increases at the rate of inflation. Because Gov. JB Pritzker signed […]

A separate proposal going before the City Council would permanently create the Department of Gun Violence Reduction with a budget of more than $100 million. The proposal also includes 15 community engagement specialists, a data analyst to track the illegal gun market and emergency relocation funding for victims whose lives are in danger.

“We know that from CPS and the city, we have been meeting weekly for months, that they believe they may have to cancel two weeks of school this year,” Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jackson Potter said. “Two full weeks of school, or layoff 1,700 additional people.”

Ideal US Talent Worker OpCo LLC announced under Illinois' WARN Act that nearly 1,400 employees in five Chicago-area counties would be laid off as part of a "restructuring" within the company. The counties with impacted workers include Cook, Kane, Kendall, Lake and McHenry, according to the filing.

"There must be an impermeable, strictly enforced barrier between the political activism of the CTU and the foundational lessons taught to Chicago’s children. May Day was the ultimate case study of CPS letting that barrier completely collapse, choosing to look the other way while hiding behind a convenient veil of plausible deniability."

“So the mayor put a bid in six months ago, $3.3 billion, for parking meters that we don’t have the money for, didn’t disclose that to anybody in the City Council, and then agreed to a non-disclosure agreement, did not have to talk about said agreements, and now is unwilling to share all this information,” […]

Kalshi’s federal lawsuit, filed in Chicago, seeks an injunction against the transaction taxes ranging from 1.75 to 3.5 percent that state lawmakers voted to slap on every “exchange wager” beginning next month on the prediction markets that have exploded in popularity. But Kalshi — and the Trump administration’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission — maintain that […]