Free Republic

This November, Pritzker will face his favored opponent, Bailey, in what will be a heavily contested race for the gubernatorial seat in the Prairie State.. On June 28, Illinois held its gubernatorial primary election, which featured several Republican candidates, including Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin, State Senator Darren Bailey, and political outsider Jesse Sullivan. Irvin, a popular local official who happens to be black, had been the favorite among the GOP candidates. But a funny thing happened in the months leading up to the vote. When the ballots were tallied, Irvin ended up in third place, well behind Bailey and the...

President Joe Biden may face a primary challenge if he runs for re-election in 2024. Analysts speculate Illinois Governor JB Pritzker may be eyeing the White House despite his claims that his focus remains on the state's upcoming gubernatorial race. Pritzker said Wednesday it is 'certainly possible' Biden would face a Democrat challenger, but added: 'It's not something I'm encouraging.'

One of the most powerful yet unremarked-upon drivers of our current wars over definitions of gender is a concerted push by members of one of the richest families in the United States to transition Americans from a dimorphic definition of sex to the broad acceptance and propagation of synthetic sex identities (SSI). Over the past decade, the Pritzkers of Illinois, who helped put Barack Obama in the White House and include among their number former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, current Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and philanthropist Jennifer Pritzker, appear to have used a family philanthropic apparatus to drive...

The communications offer a rare look at the relationship between Pritzker and Cupich, who privately heaped praise on the governor and worked with him behind the scenes to guide church protocols.Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s strict COVID-19 response over the past two years drew considerable resistance from the public at times, but he found a behind-the-scenes ally in Cardinal Blase Cupich, text messages between the two leaders show. Pritzker and Cupich were in frequent contact, according to newly obtained records that show they texted and emailed each other repeatedly from early 2020 into this year. The written communications — obtained from the...

President Joe Biden continues standing by the mask mandates advised by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), even as Democrat governors announce their decisions to lift them. News broke that New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker will announce their decisions to lift mask mandates in their states after a flood of other Democrat governors led the way forward.

Governor J.B. Pritzker enjoys a “comfortable lead” over a group of largely unknown Republican primary challengers who have yet to make much of a name for themselves, according to a pollster who touts his firm as the “most accurate polling company in Illinois.” “We released a poll before the 2020 election and before the 2018 election, and we got Pritzker’s election four years ago,” Victory Research pollster Rod McCulloch said. “I think we were 1.2% off.” “We were right on the money on the Fair Tax in 2020, and the Trump vs Biden race, just 1% off,” he said. The...

Ex-Democrat Illinois governor turned “Trumpocrat” Rod Blagojevich said he believes current Gov. J.B. Pritzker tried to keep him in jail because the Democrat establishment is “afraid of what he knows” and “what [he] will say soon.” In a video obtained exclusively by Breitbart News, Blagojevich, who was Illinois governor from 2003 to 2009, can be heard talking about his relationship with the current governor, some of the events leading up to his time in federal prison, and his standing with the party he left behind.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), one of former President Trump’s most vocal Republican critics in Congress, said he sees himself as “the only candidate” capable of defeating Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) in next year's election. “If I ran for governor, I think I’m the only candidate that could win, at least that’s out there now,” Kinzinger said in an interview on Crain’s “A.D. Q&A” podcast.

There’s a lesson here not only about Illinois pensions but about how easily the press will let Gov. J.B. Pritzker thumb his nose at a crisis.We reported Wednesday that the total unfunded liability for Illinois state and local pensions passed the $500 billion mark. That includes pensioner healthcare liabilities, which are constitutionally guarantied just like pensions. It is based on numbers from Moody’s Investor Services which uses assumptions comparable to those used in the private sector and are less optimistic than those the state uses. Read Wirepoints Special Report: Illinois pension shortfall surpasses $500 billion, average debt burden now $110,000...

CHICAGO — More than 1,000 people demonstrated Saturday to protest the verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, rallying in Federal Plaza before marching throughout Downtown. azmine Salas, an organizer with Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, said the protest was about showing demonstrators would not give in “to the racism and fear.” “I think we’re in this moment where vigilantes are feeling very empowered. Their poster child Kyle just got off,” Salas said. “But I think as Chicagoans, as a majority Black and Brown city, we are extremely powerful. … Today it’s about really showing our power, not...

“Shooting unarmed citizens is fundamentally wrong,” wrote Gov. JB Pritzker in his statement on the Rittenhouse verdict, which is pasted below. Moment in the video when Rittenhouse shot rioter aiming a pistol at him. That’s a lie. Pritzker should retract the statement and apologize. One had a pistol pointed at Rittenhouse at the moment Rittenhouse fired, captured in video. More fundamentally, Pritzker knows full well that it is entirely appropriate and lawful to use a gun in self-defense when facing imminent bodily harm of any kind, which the jury rightly concluded was shown by the evidence respecting each of the...

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has signed a bill changing the Health Care Right of Conscience Act that drew historic levels of citizen opposition, but it doesn’t take effect until next summer.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has declared gun violence in Illinois a public health crisis with an executive order. Officials on Monday unveiled a $250 million investment to implement a public safety plan over the next 3 years, and curtail gun violence around the state. According to data from the 2020 Uniform Crime Report, the crime rate in Illinois was 6.9% higher than the overall national crime rate. There were a total of 1,151 murders committed in Illinois in 2020, up 38% from the previous year. Chicago, a city struggling with high rates of gun violence, was the setting of 774 of...

It’s been more than 20 months since Gov. J.B. Pritzker began managing the state’s response to COVID-19 through executive order and the Democrat-controlled legislature remains hands-off. Pritzker’s first orders, with accompanying emergency declarations, were in March 2020. The orders concerning COVID-19 have evolved since then and range from a stay-at-home order that lasted more than ten weeks, business closures with varying degrees of capacity and threats of sending state police to enforce, school closures, mask mandates and most recently vaccine mandates for a variety of sectors. Lawmakers left the capitol after the end of the veto session Thursday and won’t...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — U.S. governors want a seat at the table as international leaders prepare to gather in Scotland at a critical moment for global efforts to reduce fossil fuel emissions and slow the planet’s temperature rise. At least a half dozen state governors — all Democrats — plan to attend parts of the two-week United Nation’s climate change conference in Glasgow, known as COP26. Though states aren’t official parties to talks, governors hold significant sway over the United States’ approach to tackling climate change by setting targets for reducing carbon emissions and transitioning to renewable energy. Governors slated...

Illinois employers are hurting from a lack of workers while the state unemployment rate remains high. When a parent can stay home and make $51,627 on unemployment, the prospects of getting more workers back to work this summer appear dim. Illinois’ unemployment rate rose to 7.2% July 15, the 8th worst in the nation, at the same time employers are having trouble filling job vacancies. The average Illinoisan earns $55,770 a year at work. If that person stayed home with their kids and collected unemployment, it would be $51,627. For a parent earning around the state average, that’s $4,000 less...

Most fights in one-party states are internecine. In Illinois, the Democrats who control Springfield have all but declared war on Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who is trying to prevent her city’s further decline. The Chicago Teachers Union is threatening to walk out—again—over the school district’s plan to reopen high schools next week. “Critical sticking points include accommodations, high school schedules that minimize virus transmission, remote work—particularly since the majority of students will remain remote—and vaccines for high school students and their family members,” the union said Monday. The union would rather not reopen at all this school year. And thanks...

“Toll free in ’73.” That was the campaign slogan over five decades ago that promised tolls on Illinois interstates would be a temporary revenue sources. Today, the tolls are higher and the tollway authority is more permanent than ever. Lawmakers promised tolls would help fund 186 miles of interstate construction and would be removed when the roads were paid off. After that, highway maintenance would be funded by the gas tax. In 1968, the General Assembly made the Illinois Toll Highway Authority permanent. What started at just 10 cents at the exits and 25 cents at the plazas has grown...

Life is too short to live it in fear of dying.More than eight months after “15 days to flatten the curve,” our so-called medical experts, politicos, and pundits are bidding us to avoid our family at all costs over the holidays, lest we die. This Thanksgiving week, family separation is the name of the game, with governors and local authorities implementing onerous restrictions to discourage people from leaving their homes.“If you are planning to spend Thanksgiving with people outside your household, we urge you to reconsider,” wrote a group of governors in the pages of the Washington Post. These authors...

I will not be lectured by people who say that eating in a restaurant with health protocols is riskier than shutting down the largest economy in the world.My parents and in-laws haven’t seen their grandkids in nearly a year. Because we live states apart, the most time we spend together is during the holidays and a week in the summer. Due to the lockdown this year, the grandparents have only been able to see our kids during video calls. It could be worse; some dear friends of ours buried a parent during the lockdown with no guests or funeral, and...