Rich Miller

Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch has said he thinks he can flip somewhere between four and six Republican-held House districts to Democratic control, upping his super-majority to between 82 and 84 seats, from his current 78. Which Republican districts are flippable? I talked with a high-level source close to Welch’s caucus who pointed to the […]

A Facebook post last week by state Sen. Willie Preston, D-Chicago, created a stir, caused one of his fellow Democratic Senators to bow out of a planned joint fundraiser and, ultimately, the entire fundraiser was canceled. It’s all a good illustration of the ill-informed, rapid-fire insanity of our social media-fueled era. Sen. Preston posted an […]

“I support Karina’s Law,” Gov. JB Pritzker emphatically told me. It’s the strongest statement he’s made about the bill, which stalled in the Senate last spring. The proposal would mandate that police remove firearms from a person who has been served with a domestic violence order of protection. But there still appear to be some […]

An oft-repeated $1.1 billion demand from Chicago’s mayor would actually wind up costing state taxpayers $5.5 billion. And Gov. JB Pritzker is turning a big thumbs down. Chicago Public Schools made the huge mistake of putting a ton of temporary federal pandemic aid into its permanent spending base for years and that money is just […]

A little-noticed bill passed both the Illinois House and Senate that will generate $300 to $400 million a year for local governments, including $95-127 million for the Regional Transportation Authority. The bill (SB3362) will help capture sales tax revenue from more out-of-state retailers and in-state retailers who ship to Illinoisans in out-of-state locations. The new […]

During the last couple weeks of the spring state legislative session, Senate President Don Harmon got whacked twice by allies, including Gov. JB Pritzker, but still managed to keep his cool. On May 14, the pro-choice powerhouse group Personal PAC issued a blistering press release blasting the Senate super-majority for an “unacceptable decision” to strip […]

As you’ve probably heard by now, Illinois Republican Party Chair Don Tracy announced his resignation last week, apparently effective the day after the Republican National Convention concludes on July 18. The announcement came after far-right activists forced out the state party’s vice chair, Mark Shaw, and the resignation of the party’s finance chair, Vince Kolber. […]

“What was supposed to be a simple storage warehouse for the Metra transit agency has now buried the nation’s fourth-busiest commuter rail system in a sinking money pit, the ABC7 I-Team has learned.” The Chicago broadcast station’s scoop last week is an almost perfect encapsulation of why northeastern Illinois’ mass transit fiefdoms need to be […]

A state law essentially designed to prevent Republicans from appointing legislative candidates to the ballot after the March primary was ruled unconstitutional by a Sangamon County judge last week, but her ruling only applied to the 14 Republican plaintiffs in the case who are running for the Illinois House and Senate. The law prohibited local […]

Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch gave added meaning to the phrase “winning ugly” during the early morning hours of May 29. I’ve never seen anything like it, so let’s take a look. House members were told to be in their seats by noon on May 28 after the Senate had easily passed the entire budget […]

I’m not sure I’ve seen a stranger roll call than last week’s House vote on Senate Bill 2978. The data privacy bill is an initiative of Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, and he was on the House floor during the debate. The far-right ginned up social media opposition to the bill by claiming that […]

Back in April, the executive director of the American Nurses Association Illinois, Susan Swart, told my associate Isabel Miller that advanced practice registered nurses are losing their jobs because of ongoing and severe state licensing delays. Swart said some of those nurses are waiting “a year to 18 months” to get their licenses from the […]