Free Republic

“Don’t you think this will be the year of the insurgent?“ Jeanne Ives said as she strolled across the lawn of the Illinois Statehouse. The state representative from Wheaton is challenging Gov. Bruce Rauner in the March 20 Republican gubernatorial primary. Rauner, who is self-funding his campaign, has more than $55 million in his war chest. Ives has raised about $3 million. Ives sees herself as leading a conservative insurrection against the governor. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that she uses military terms to describe this political fight. Ives was an Army officer and is a 1987 graduate of...

The company plans to call back about 500 employees United States Steel Corp. X +4.25% said it would restart a blast furnace in Illinois to handle the higher demand it expects from President Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs on foreign steel. The steelmaker said it also plans to call 500 employees back to work at the Granite City mill. U.S. Steel idled its blast furnaces there two years ago as a flood of cheap imports pushed down domestic steel prices. Steel producers have been hurt in recent years by increasing competition from foreign competitors, particularly China, that have ramped up production...

The emergency room at Northwestern Memorial Hospital was packed with flu patients when Caleb Stevens hobbled through the doors on crutches one evening in January, his leg pulsing with pain from a week-old gunshot wound. The clerk at the intake desk was unfazed when Stevens said he had been wounded in Syria. She took his passport and told him to join the rest of the people in the waiting room. So he sat with his mom for 20 minutes, his right leg wrapped in a cast, a splint and bloody bandages. He was still wearing a red-and-white Christmas sock someone...

Is Republican state Rep. Jeanne Ives really a creature of Democratic boss Mike Madigan? Gov. Bruce Rauner says so on his commercials. So it must be true, right? No. A friend saw the Rauner ad against Ives and texted, “So she’s a Madigan candidate?” No, I told him. Absolutely not. But when you have millions and millions to spend, like Rauner, you can say almost anything if you pay for it, and if media don’t call you out on it. Ives, the conservative Republican from Wheaton who is challenging Rauner in the primary for governor, is no Madigan toady. The...

Nancy Pelosi is about to lose some progressive friends after deciding to endorse Rep. Dan Lipinski in his re-election bid in Illinois's 3rd congressional district. Lipinski, you see, is one of the very few conservative Democrats left. He has a record of opposing abortion, gay rights and Obamacare. Asked at her weekly press conference Thursday if she supports him, Pelosi replied, "Yes, I do." It is an endorsement even the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has refused to offer. Other Democrats have gone one step further, endorsing his primary challenger, Marie Newman. “This is not a rubber-stamp party,” Pelosi told The...

Soon, Gov. Scott Walker, R-Wis., is expected to sign pro-life legislation, expanding on his unbroken history as governor of supporting pro-life policies. This is in contrast to his neighbor to the south, Gov. Bruce Rauner, R-Ill., who actually expanded taxpayer funding for abortion. On Election Day 2014 I watched election results come in at the Hilton Chicago with the Chicago GOP and the Rauner campaign. As a campaign manager for a state house representative, I celebrated as the Republicans retained control of the U.S. House and won the Senate. Late into the evening, I cheered as Bruce Rauner pulled off...

Declaring that America is in the midst of a gun violence crisis, Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Monday urged state lawmakers and Gov. Bruce Rauner to approve a series of gun control bills and called on the public to hold officials’ feet to the fire this week and in the upcoming elections. Lawmakers could consider a group of bills on Wednesday that would require gun dealers to be licensed, raise penalties for the illegal use of body armor, address waiting periods for gun purchases, and ban “military-style” assault weapons high-capacity magazines and “bump stocks,” Emanuel and Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson...

A man who witnessed a stabbing in Oswego Township grabbed an AR-15-style rifle from his house and stopped the attack without firing shots Monday, according to the Kendall County sheriff's office.

It doesn’t come as a surprise to find the most appropriate discussion headline behind the Parkland, Florida school shooting did not come from an MSM news article, but rather from a person who understands the origin of the issue. Writer Jack Cashill publishes an article in American Thinker today appropriately titled: “Incompetence Wasn’t The Problem in Broward County“. Mr. Cashill, a person adept at tracing complex issues to their truthful origin, has it entirely correct. Nothing about the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was based on structural incompetence; the horrific event was an entirely predictable outcome of intentionally...

WASHINGTON—U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) released the following statement after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a request by the Trump Administration for expedited consideration of its challenge to an injunction blocking the Administration’s termination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program: President Trump created this crisis six months ago, and his administration continues to use every available legal option to prevent Dreamers from keeping their DACA protection. The need for the Dream Act is no less urgent following the Supreme Court’s decision, which does not change the reality that tens of thousands of Dreamers are losing their...

The Supreme Court was sharply divided Monday during high-profile arguments in a case that could deal a blow to public-sector employee unions across the country – and the justice seen as a key vote was not showing his hand. At issue are so-called “fair share” fees that nonmembers pay unions to help cover the costs of contract negotiations. Justices split on the issue 4-4 when it came up two years ago – but with Justice Neil Gorsuch now filling the vacancy left by the late Antonin Scalia, all eyes were on him Monday morning in Washington. Gorsuch, however, said nothing...

One of the great hypocrisies of our time is the number of pro-abortion senators and congressmen who also claim to be Roman Catholic. Being pro-abortion and Roman Catholic is like being pro-LGBTQ rights and Muslim. Both sets are a contradiction of terms. Thankfully, the bishop of Senator Dick Durbin's (D-Ill.) diocese recognizes this contradiction of terms and is denying the senator communion until he repents of his grave sin. Senator Durbin's office has yet to comment on the matter, but his views on abortion are well known. Last year, Durbin insisted in a CNN interview that Democrats who are personally...

CHICAGO In an awkward onstage appearance this week, Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner drank a glass of chocolate milk to demonstrate his belief in diversity. "It's really, really good," Rauner said after taking a sip of the sugary drink. "Diversity!"

Bishop Thomas John Paprocki of the Springfield Roman Catholic diocese has reaffirmed that U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, should not be allowed to receive Holy Communion because of a recent vote on an abortion issue. According to a statement issued by Paprocki on Feb. 13, Durbin was among 14 Catholic members of the U.S. Senate who voted against a bill that would have prohibited abortions starting at 20 weeks after fertilization. The bill, dubbed the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, on Jan. 29 got only 51 of a needed 60 votes to move forward in the Senate. “Because his voting...

Eight people were killed and at least 30 others have been wounded in Presidents Day weekend shootings across Chicago. The most recent fatal shooting...

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) cares about diversity. In fact, he cares about it so much that he drank your mom’s favorite chocolate milk concoction at a corporate event honoring Black History Month. The supposed-metaphor happened after Hyatt Hotels’ vice president and global chief diversity officer Tyronne Stoudemire presented a bottle of Hershey’s chocolate syrup and said that it represents “diversity” through “women, people of color, people with disabilities, the aging population, and generation X, Y, and Z.” Standing on stage right next to him, Gov. Rauner held a glass of milk as Stoudemire poured chocolate syrup right into it....

Speaker Michael Madigan’s undisputed political power came under attack Tuesday amid new criticism over his handling of harassment complaints as the March Democratic primary increasingly turns into a referendum on his leadership. Madigan faced increasing calls for him to step down from the state Democratic chairman post he has held for two decades, as well as demands for an independent investigation of complaints that have led him to shed two top loyal political lieutenants in a week. The misconduct scandal comes as the long-serving speaker and his private interests as a property tax appeals lawyer already had been a focal...

When Mark Janus got his first paycheck working as a child support specialist for the state of Illinois in 2007, he was stunned to see a nearly $50 deduction for union dues. He had worked for the state in the 1980s and didn’t remember anything like it. “I’m going like, ‘I’m not a member of the union. What’s going on here?’” he said. Worse yet was where he saw the union dues going, such as to efforts demanding wage increases at a time when Illinois was struggling with a crippling pension debt. Now Mr. Janus is taking his case to...

The president (Trump), who has been dismissing this attack on our country as a “hoax” and “fake news” for over a year, leapt to defend, not the country, but himself. “Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President,” he tweeted, dodging the point. (By 2013, Trump had already spent $1 million exploring a potential bid.) “The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong — no collusion!” Maybe yes. Maybe no. More indictments will come, and we’ll see who among Trump’s inner circle, or Trump himself,...

As Marvel's latest superhero movie, "Black Panther," draws praise and rakes in millions of dollars at the box office, Twitter trolls have emerged across the country attempting to stoke racial division by spreading false reports about the film's largely African American fans. Over the last few days, users have posted false claims that they were attacked by blacks while going to see "Black Panther," the first movie from Marvel Studios led by a predominantly black cast. "It's very unfortunate that a film that is poised to become a cultural icon is being marred by this fake news," said Darnell Hunt,...