Former President Donald Trump wields a powerful spell over Illinois Republicans with a majority declaring him as their top choice for the White House in 2024 and even more believing legally he should still be there. More than two-thirds of the state’s GOP voters believe Trump actually won the 2020 election. And nearly nine out…
ROCKFORD — Last fall, Cara Wolfe and Aubrey Barnett started their first year teaching English Language Arts (ELA) at Flinn Middle School in Rockford ready to change things up. In 2020, standardized test scores at the school were in the lowest-performing 5% of Illinois. Now add a few years of COVID disruption on top of…
CHICAGO — Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin, the Republican with the most money and best polling position so far, served as a political pinata Thursday for his five GOP rivals for Illinois governor during their first public debate with him on the same televised stage. Topics during the hourlong WLS-TV/Illinois League of Women Voters/Univision debate ran…
Leer este reporte en español. OVERLAND, Mo. — On a recent morning in teacher Geri Ross’s classroom at Marion Elementary School, second graders sat at clusters of desks, singing songs and reading stories in Spanish. The walls were decorated with colorful posters depicting letter sounds, math concepts and vocabulary in both English and Spanish. After…
LOUISIANA, Mo. — In the small community of Louisiana, Missouri, it’s not uncommon to see what looks like massive white wings traveling down the road, strapped to flatbed tractor-trailers. Once a bustling commercial port, the historic Mississippi River town 90 miles north of St. Louis has become a hub for an unusual commodity: used wind…
SPRINGFIELD – Illinois Republican lawmakers in Washington have condemned the mass shooting in Texas but they’re defending gun rights. US Representative Rodney Davis issued a statement calling Tuesday’s shooting “pure evil,” but says taking guns away from law-abiding citizens won’t stop the violence. He proposes strengthening school security, investing in resource officers, and gun safety…
WASHINGTON — In the wake of the 27th school shooting of 2022, Democrats in Congress are asking for more than thoughts and prayers. After the death of 19 children in Uvalde, Texas, today’s discussions on Capitol Hill centered around the need for bipartisan action to curb gun violence. U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos, whose 17th Congressional…
SPRINGFIELD — Gov. JB Pritzker has signed the “Jelani Day” bill into law, amending the Missing Persons Identification Act in hopes of preventing a repeat of what the Day family experienced last year. When Jelani Day went missing, his body was not found for nearly two weeks. Once found, Day’s remains went unidentified for three…
PEORIA — Decades after Jubilee College ended operations as a frontier educational institution, it was operated as a federal Indian boarding school. That troubling part of the Peoria County historic landmark’s legacy may soon receive official recognition. A new report commissioned by the U.S. Department of the Interior sheds light on the locations where Indigenous…
Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin held a rare press conference Monday that turned into repeated questions about the possibility of overturning Roe v. Wade. The fundraising frontrunner among Republicans in the Illinois governor’s race repeatedly dodged questions Monday about his stance on a possible national abortion ban and whether he voted for former President Donald Trump…
Abortions will still be legal in the state of Illinois if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns the federal constitutional protections enshrined by the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. But Planned Parenthood of Illinois president and CEO Jennifer Welch warns the state would become an oasis in a Midwestern “abortion desert” if a draft majority opinion…
MARSEILLES, Ill. — There was music, but it wasn’t a celebration. It was a commemoration of those lost in the fight for fair pay and safe conditions. That fight turned bloody 90 years ago in Marseilles. During the throes of the Depression, local laborers protested a company bringing in out-of-state, underpaid workers to build a…
AURORA — After hearing about the number of veterans who die by suicide, one northern Illinois man decided to do something about it. A total of 167 Illinois veterans took their lives in 2019, according to Illinois Department of Public Affairs. The average number of Illinois veteran suicides from 2015 through 2018 is 159. https://cpa.ds.npr.org/s528/audio/2022/04/0421vetf.mp3…
Before closing out its truncated spring legislative session earlier this month, the General Assembly approved language that will be put to voters in November, asking whether Illinois should amend its constitution to add a so-called “Workers’ Rights Amendment” to guarantee the right to collectively bargain in a state with a long tradition of strong organized…
It’s never been a better time to sell manure. “We have been inundated with calls,” said Andy Scholting, president and co-founder of Nutrient Advisors, a Nebraskan manure broker. “We’ve certainly never seen so much demand for manure fertilizer.” Farmers are blowing up the office’s phones, hoping to find an alternative to expensive synthetic fertilizers. Prices…