Free Republic

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is negotiating a new contract with the public schools system and is understood to be calling for an extra $50 billion to pay for wage hikes as well as other demands such as fully paid abortions for its members, new migrant services and facilities and a host of LGBT-related requirements and training in schools. To put the figure into context, the total base tax receipts for the state of Illinois last year were $50.7 billion.

At $1.5 million per job, this new incentive package from the state is at least 15 times the norm. For this much money, the state could have just handed out a million bucks to 827 people, instead of creating 550 jobs.Gov. JB Pritzker announced Thursday that the State of Illinois will provide an $827 million incentive package for Rivian to invest $1.5 billion to expand its electric vehicle factory in Normal, Illinois. The expansion is expected to create at least 550 full-time jobs within the next five years, and will build Rivian’s next model EV, the R2. Rivian initially got...

The Democratic Party is bracing for massive protests during the Democratic National Convention, comparing it to another chaotic event from the 1968 convention. As pro-Hamas protests continue to rage through college campuses due to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, concerns that similar protests will occur during the DNC convention this August in Chicago. Former President Barack Obama’s chief of staff William Daley told the Washington Post that the chaotic college protests that have occurred in the past week have “taken the demonstrations to a different level.” “It portends that you have the potential for big demonstrations. Whether they get violent —...

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was caught on camera bolting from local reporters who wanted to ask him about the recent arrest of an alleged cop killer. Johnson was at a National Day of Prayer service Thursday in the Windy City, with his chauffeured car waiting in an alley, according to reports. Local reporters darted after the mayor, hollering for him to wait and to comment about the arrest of Xavier Tate Jr., who allegedly killed Chicago Police Officer Luis Huesca in a carjacking last month, according to video.

During the first three months of this year alone, over 1,000 illegal aliens from Venezuela were arrested for committing crimes in Chicago.

Move over California and New York, a new state is in contention for the 'most dysfunctional' in America. Illinois is grappling with a string of issues which have triggered a rise in residents departing the state. The state has struggled to add jobs and its public pension debt has ballooned to nearly $150 billion. Meanwhile, its population has declined, hurting tax income.

But the election bill given final approval by Senate Democrats Thursday on a 35-3 vote, with 18 Republicans voting “present” in protest, would further help Democrats maintain control in the next General Assembly. Under the measure, local political party organizations could no longer appoint candidates to fill out legislative ballots where the party did not field a primary candidate. Current law allows the appointment process within 75 days of the primary.

A group of black residents tore into Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson on Wednesday over his plans to spend an additional $70 million to feed and house illegal aliens, and to drive their point home, they wore former President Donald Trump’s signature MAGA hats during a meeting at city hall. Johnson has been continually ramping up spending on migrants, but his attention to Biden’s border crisis has sent many of Chicago’s black residents to despair as their communities lose resources so Johnson can redirect city finances and services to migrants. The self-professed “progressive” mayor has already thrown $300 million at migrants,...

Former President Donald Trump was greeted by enthusiastic supporters at a Chick-fil-A in Atlanta, Georgia, while on the campaign trail and ordered 30 milkshakes and chicken for everybody. Video shows the former president speaking to workers at the location, asking, “Can I have 30 milkshakes and also some chicken? We’re going to take care of the customers.” He then asks if business is good, to which the workers reply, “Yes.” Milkshakes for everyone at Chick-fil-A in Atlanta, Georgia pic.twitter.com/9kWnLpgGTv — Karoline Leavitt (@kleavittnh) April 10, 2024 Donald Trump just walked into a Chick-fil-A in Atlanta and ordered 30 milkshakes for...

In a recent development, multiple cases challenging state bans on so-called assault weapons are now appealing for immediate Supreme Court review. A recent YouTube video shared that these legal battles, with implications far beyond their state boundaries, have taken a pivotal step forward, driven by what many are calling a critical mistake by the state of Illinois in response to these lawsuits. Here’s the full story. The State of Illinois, like many others, has faced legal challenges to its bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. However, in a strategic move, supporters of the Second Amendment have leveraged these disputes...

Program will address ‘insidious problem’ with racism in medicine: nurses association Nursing students at the University of Illinois soon will receive “diversity, equity, and inclusion” training via virtual reality courtesy of a $20,000 grant to address racism. The American Nurses Association, which awarded the grant through its National Commission to Address Racism in Nursing, says the funds will address an “insidious problem” with racism in nursing. But other medical professionals and scholars say the project is a waste of money. The university’s College of Nursing plans to use the grant to hire a software engineer to create virtual reality training...

FOX News political analyst Gianno Caldwell is from Chicago and says that people in the city have had it with the influx of illegal immigrants and are very serious about voting for Trump in November. Caldwell says that he is in regular communication with other Chicagoans and that there are enough of these voters to turn Illinois red in the 2024 election.

The Freedom Center is exposing these academic institutes and programs as “The Top Ten Jew-Hating Academic Departments” in a new report. We will be publishing one school per day as a series on Frontpage. The Department of Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign is #9 on our list. In a “Letter to Our Students on Palestine” dated from December 18, 2023, the Department of Latina/Latino Studies sought to whitewash the atrocious actions of the anti-Israel terror group Hamas and demonize and delegitimize the world’s only Jewish state. The date of the letter’s posting is significant in that it...

Chicago Bears have released some stunning AI-generated images of a new stadium that could be built on the city waterfront - but not all residents in The Windy City are impressed. The NFL team shared the pictures on Wednesday afternoon, before Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson led a press conference about the proposals. According to FOX32 Chicago, the stadium will cost around $3.2billion to build with the Bears paying for $2billion themselves. It would hold 65,000 people with a target opening of 2028. The stadium will not only host sporting events - music concerts will be held there as well and...

A group of House Democrats on Tuesday announced they would move to codify federal protections for transgender people. The proposal, dubbed the “Transgender Bill of Rights,” would codify the Supreme Court’s 2020 Bostock v. Clayton County decision that protects employees against discrimination for being gay or transgender. The proposal would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to explicitly include protections for gender identity and sex characteristics, expand access to gender-affirming care and ban conversion therapy. It would also require the attorney general to designate a liaison dedicated to overseeing enforcement of civil rights for transgender people and invest in...

FBI authorities served subpoenas at Illinois’ Dolton Village Hall on Friday afternoon as Mayor Tiffany Henyard (D) fields corruption accusations, per Fox 32. Henyard was recently named “America’s worst mayor” because of her questionable spending habits and abuse of office, Breitbart News reported Monday. The outlet noted she is also accused of covering up an alleged sexual assault by one of her colleagues against another employee:

In 1985, Harold Washington issued an executive order that relaxed federal immigration laws under then-President Ronald Reagan, whose administration “aggressively used [the] detention of Central Americans as a device to deter migration from that region, where violent civil wars had caused tens of thousands to flee,” according to University of California Davis law professor Kevin Davis. Since Aug. 31, 2022, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has bussed or flown to Chicago nearly 40,000 individuals seeking asylum in an effort to use the welcoming aspects of Washington’s executive order as a political cudgel. On April 14, Mayor Johnson called out the...

Layoffs continue across the freight and logistics industry, with companies in Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan and Texas announcing job reductions and facility closures over the past two weeks. Universal Logistics Warren, Michigian-based Universal Logistics is permanently shuttering two of its subsidiaries and laying off a total of 677 employees, according to notices recently filed with the state. The layoffs are related to Universal-operated entities Logistics Insights Corp. and Universal Dedicated of Detroit, an auto parts warehousing and logistics facility. Both operations were in Detroit. Universal Dedicated of Detroit’s closure will affect 230 truck drivers who worked from the facility. Logistics...

Scientists have created an interactive map that shows how parts of Illinois may be swallowed up by Lake Michigan as climate change bites. The Great Lakes in the Midwest comprise the largest unfrozen freshwater stores on Earth, but experts have forecast that rising water levels could have serious consequences. More than 30 million people live along the lakes' roughly 4,500 miles of coastline, which stretches across the U.S. and Canada, and touches upon the cities of Chicago, Detroit and Buffalo, New York. That means millions of families could be hit hard by new, higher water levels, which could potentially wash...

REFERENCED VIDEOS AT LINK..................... Last year, a man in his mid-20’s named Dexter Reed was charged with three counts of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and one count of possession of a firearm with a revoked “Firearms Owners Identification Card,” which is required in the state of Illinois before you can possess a weapon or ammunition. Because no one really spends time in jail in Illinois anymore, Reed was free on pretrial release for these felony charges as recently as this past March. It goes without saying that at that point, any functioning member of society who somehow found...