Free Republic

Just days after Illinois Democrats introduced legislation to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficking network and its possible ties to the state, party leaders are now scrambling to pull the bill. The sudden reversal comes after explosive revelations that former President Bill Clinton testified under oath that he once flew Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Jeffrey Epstein’s private plane. On March 2, Democratic State Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid of Bridgeview introduced House Bill 5723, known as the Illinois Epstein Files Investigation Act. The legislation was backed by several lawmakers, including State Sen. Graciela Guzman.

Former President Bill Clinton may have just handed Illinois voters a political earthquake. In a recent closed-door deposition before the House Oversight Committee, Clinton admitted under oath that he brought now-Gov. JB Pritzker and his wife on Jeffrey Epstein’s private plane. “I think that I had my first trip for the man who’s now the Governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker and his wife,” Clinton reportedly testified.

Juliana Stratton, the state’s lieutenant governor, is running her first TV ad beginning Friday, a spot featuring a series of people, including Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., all saying “F--- Trump.” “F--- Trump, vote Juliana,” one person after another says in the ad. At least half a dozen bleeps will be audible to obscure the salty language when it airs on TV, according to the campaign. For her part, Stratton does not take part in the cursing. “They said it, not me,” Stratton says as she appears on the screen.

Gov. JB Pritzker is demanding President Trump refund the state of Illinois more than $8 billion after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down his sweeping reciprocal tariffs Friday. The court ruled 6-3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, does not authorize the president to impose tariffs. Now businesses are pressing the Trump administration to issue tariff refunds, and Gov. Pritzker has joined in their call. In a letter to Mr. Trump that Pritzker shared publicly, he wrote, "Your tariff taxes wreaked havoc on farmers, enraged our allies, and sent grocery prices through the roof. This morning, your...

Mayor Brandon Johnson (D-Chicago) issued an executive order directing City Police to monitor ICE enforcement officers and look for potential felonies that could be prosecuted. He justified this order, saying "our state and city are sanctuaries for illegal immigrants. ICE is invading us in an attempt to negate our sovereignty over the areas we rule. We have a right to resist and repel this invasion." Gov. JB Pritzker (D-Ill) praised Johnson's "aggressive defense of his city from the unwanted ICE invasion. I know the Trump Administration has emphasized that its focus is on so-called 'criminal illegal aliens'--those that supposedly have...

Gov. JB Pritzker (D-Ill) told Jennifer Welch, host of the "I've Had It" podcast that "the Trump era is worse than the COVID era. During COVID the nation was guided through the crisis by a very loving President Biden. He urged everyone to get vaccinated and wear masks. At one point, he even mandated that employees get vaccinated or lose their jobs. To show he meant business he terminated thousands of soldiers and sailors for refusing to take this vaccine. He deployed the FBI to urge the censorship of misinformation about COVID and the vaccine. This is the sort of...

Illinois governor doubles down on comparing current moment to Nazi Germany rise during podcast appearanceGov. JB Pritzker, D-Ill., said during a podcast on Tuesday that the current political "moment" was "slightly worse" than the COVID pandemic, despite the many deaths COVID caused. "I've Had It" host Jennifer Welch asked Pritzker how he was doing, and the governor said that while every day was a blessing, he's often asked about whether the current Trump administration was comparable the situation Americans were in during the COVID-19 pandemic. "It’s been challenging," he said. "I've been asked, is this like COVID, you know, the...

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz ended his campaign for re-election, a stunning reversal and likely the end of the political career of a man who many pundits projected would be the Democratic nominee for president as early as 2028. But if a once-popular governor can be toppled by widespread welfare fraud, where does that leave other Democratic presidential hopefuls? The revelations of staggering levels of fraud in Minnesota — and Walz’s preemptive exit from the big stage — should send a chill down the spines of Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, and JB Pritzker, who are likely sitting on powder kegs of...

During the COVID pandemic federal legislation was passed to grant forgivable loans to small businesses so they could survive the shutdowns imposed on them by state and local governments. Almost 400 Illinois state employees fraudulently applied for and received $2.8 million of these loans. Additional fraudulent loans were obtained by county and city employees. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) is charging thousands of individuals and so far has seized over $1.4 billion in stolen relief funds. Gov. JB Pritzker (D) blamed Biden Administration officials "for not adequately vetting the loan applications. Our hard-working government employees saw there was money...

Citing the global threat of overpopulation, Gov. JB Pritzker (D-Ill) and the Democrat majority in the state legislature passed a law requiring all healthcare providers, including those who have ethical or religious objections, to tout the public benefits of abortion. Pritzker justified this compelled speech by asserting that "unconstrained population growth poses a severe threat to public health. We cannot allow zealots who hope to use the innocence of the unborn to divert us from taking the essential actions needed to avert the inevitable famine that will result from the careless creation of more mouths to feed. Hundreds of folks...

The U.S. Department of Justice sued Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Attorney General Kwame Raoul over the state’s new law aimed at limiting immigration enforcement in courthouses. The law, signed by Pritzker this month, bars immigration enforcement from courthouses and opens the door for easier legal action against federal agents over alleged civil rights infractions. It follows the Trump administration’s sweeping deportation campaign that has targeted the state, specifically the Chicago area, for months. The lawsuit claims that the law is unconstitutional and states have no regulatory authority over federal actions, such as immigration enforcement.

Pope Leo stated Dec. 23 that he had joined Chicago Archbishop Cardinal Cupich in pleading with Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker not to sign a controversial assisted suicide bill into law and was “very disappointed” when Pritzker ignored their intervention and signed the bill. “I spoke very explicitly with Governor Pritzker about that,” the Holy Father said outside Castel Gandolfo in response to EWTN Vatican correspondent Rudolf Gehrig’s question about the bill. Pritzker visited the Vatican and had an audience with the Pope in November. “At that time, the bill was already on his desk,” the Holy Father said Tuesday....

"Guns don't kill, people do." True or false, truth or lie, "people" do use their thoughts and words to help push their decisions to invalidate, as non-persons, other classes of "biological-organisms"-with-23-paired-chromosomes-which-are-totally-indistinguishable-from-humans; and whether or not to sentence the "non-persons" to termination because they want their land or money, or because if those 23-chromosome things are allowed to live it will curtail their ability to "do it" with whomever and whatever their supreme will dictates (what Ralph Nader called "gonadal politics"). So, yesterday, Jonathan Turley ("Democratic Despotism: The American Left Moves from Censored to Compelled Speech") noted: In Illinois, Democrats have...

My youngest daughter, Katie, who was only 20 years old, was killed on Jan. 19. Her only “crime” was being a passenger in a car in Urbana, Illinois. The man who took her life, Julio Cucul-Bol, was an illegal immigrant who was driving drunk when he slammed into the Honda Civic she was riding in at nearly 80 miles an hour. He fled immediately and was then aided by associates in Urbana and Chicago as he tried to escape justice.

Democrat Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker expanded his state’s culture of death on Friday by signing a bill into law legalizing assisted suicide for terminally ill people. Illinois is now the 12th state, plus Washington, DC, that allows physicians to assist terminally ill people in killing themselves — all in the name of “choice,” compassion, and easing end-of-life suffering. Pritzker signed the bill despite concerns from opponents that such a law could be a slippery slope (look no further than Canada) and could be used to coerce people with disabilities and financial hardships to choose death. […] The bill, called the...

A 35-year-old woman who uses a wheelchair was sexually assaulted at a CTA station in the Loop on Thursday morning, according to a Chicago police report. The woman was at the Jackson Red Line station when a man assaulted her around 2:57 a.m. She sought help from a CTA canine security officer and was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital for treatment. CPD said she was in good condition.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Todd Lyons sent a letter to Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul calling on him to put the safety of Americans first and honor ICE arrest detainers of the more than 4,000 criminal illegal aliens in the state’s custody including murderers, sexual predators, and those convicted of or charged with weapons offenses. Illinois' failure to honor ICE detainers has resulted in the release of 1,768 criminal illegal aliens since January 20. The crimes of these aliens include 5 homicides, 141 assaults, 23 burglaries, 4 robberies, 24 dangerous drugs offenses, 15 weapons offenses, and 10...

“The mayor is incompetent, and the governor is … a big, fat slob,” he said with a comically-timed pregnant pause. “He ought to invite us and say, ‘Please make Chicago safe.’ We’re gonna lose a great city if we don’t do it quickly,” Trump warned. Minutes later in his remarks, Trump was in full comedian-in-chief mode, mercilessly trolling Pritzker while mocking Chicago’s soft-on-crime policies. “I looked at the various cases, granting mercy, discovering the terrible trauma that everyone’s going through, and I had a little bit of a Pritzker joke. I was going to talk about Pritzker in size, but...

A man with a 30-year criminal record, reportedly at least 72 arrests, and around 15 convictions, lit a 26-year-old woman on fire on a train in Chicago Monday night. She is fighting for her life in critical condition. Mayor Brandon Johnson on Thursday called it an “isolated incident.” The “isolated incident” highlights everything that is wrong with progressive politics and Democrat leadership in all too many of our cities: let the criminals run free, forget about the victims, and vilify the police. But it only got worse for the Windy City Friday night, as the rampant violence and death the...

*** These are the hideous progressive sounds of Chicago political corruption: The jails are opened as the Cook County Democrats congratulate themselves …. And there is another sound that defines it. “Burn alive B****!” That is what a career violent predator with more than 50 arrests–at least 10 of them for violent felonies–is alleged to have shouted the other night in Chicago after dousing a female ... with gasoline on the Blue Line CTA train and setting her on fire. She is reportedly in critical condition. *** Lawrence Reed, 50, was out on pre-trial release for allegedly knocking a psychiatric...