* ICYMI: Waymo wants to bring self-driving taxis to Illinois. Does the Land of Lincoln want them?. Tribune…

- Waymo has been advertising in Illinois for some time, urging residents to contact their legislators to encourage them to bring Waymo here.
- Republican state Rep. Brad Stephens of Rosemont is among several lawmakers this year who’ve introduced legislation that could bring those vehicles to Illinois, though none of the bills have advanced through the legislature.
- A lobbyist for ABATE of Illinois, which advocates for motorcyclists, off-roaders and all-terrain vehicle riders, said the group has concerns about safety and transparency when it comes to Waymos. “Driverless technology, while it is advancing, continues to show failures in everyday situations that humans have no issue with,” said Josh Witkowski, a lobbyist for ABATE.

*** Isabel’s Top Picks ***

* Sun-Times | ICE agents use tear gas in Elgin as hourslong standoff ends in man’s arrest: Elgin-born state Sen. Cristina Castro was among those present Saturday afternoon as agents detained the man. “Some folks were throwing him blankets and food, and ICE had all this region surrounded [and] eventually broke in, grabbed him, and yanked him out,” Castro said. Several dozen protesters were in the neighborhood providing supplies to the man as he stayed on the balcony, witnesses said.

* Tribune | Illinois researchers say versatile grass could be used for sustainable fuel, building materials and more: The versatile grass has a multitude of end products and uses, including compostable packaging, livestock bedding and erosion control. It can also be used as a solid fuel for electricity and heating, like coal, wood and municipal waste. Scientists are hoping it will open doors to new markets, such as renewable natural gas, sustainable aviation fuel, building materials, and chemicals for household and industrial products. One variety in particular, Miscanthus x giganteus, has demonstrated “unsurpassed productivity” in the Midwest, according to researchers.

* Crain’s | CME data center outage caused by human error, Cyrus One says: Onsite staff and contractors at the facility in Aurora, Illinois, failed to follow standard procedures for draining cooling towers ahead of freezing temperatures, a spokesperson for CyrusOne, a company owned by KKR & Co. and Global Infrastructure Partners, said in a statement to Bloomberg News on Saturday. That resulted in the cooling system being overloaded and rising temperatures.

*** Statehouse News ***

* Daily Herald | State Rep. Marty Moylan to resign from Illinois House Dec. 16: Democratic state Rep. Marty Moylan of Des Plaines has followed up his decision not to seek an eighth term by submitting his resignation this week to take effect Dec. 16. His resignation letter is dated Dec. 1 and marked as received by the clerk of the Illinois House of Representatives on Dec. 4. “It has been my greatest honor and privilege to serve my district and my state as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives and the Illinois General Assembly,” Moylan wrote. “I extend my deepest regards and gratitude to you and your staff for their diligence and hard work as we served together to improve the lives and futures of the people of the state of Illinois.”

* Windy City Times | Ridge Knapp campaigns for 13th District seat in one of Illinois’ most queer-represented races: Knapp later worked full-time on Congresswoman Lauren Underwood’s 2020 reelection campaign, served as a data analyst in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office under Kim Foxx, and most recently joined President Biden—and later Vice President Harris’s—reelection campaign on its national analytics team. He said work inside government shaped how he thinks about policy impacts on marginalized people. “At the State’s Attorney’s Office, I got a chance to work with data and policy and look at making sure our criminal justice system was actually just—no longer overly criminalizing marginalized communities,” Knapp said. “My sense of justice is informed by that work, but also by my father’s experience with homelessness.”

* WAND | Behavioral healthcare parity law awaiting Pritzker’s approval: A bill awaiting Gov. JB Pritzker’s signature could increase access to behavioral healthcare and substance use treatment by improving insurance adequacy. This comes after state lawmakers spent three years working on the mental health parity plan. The proposal calls on the Illinois Department of Insurance to utilize a new formula to calculate minimum reimbursement rates for providers and publish them in a bulletin for insurance companies. Sponsors said proper compensation could encourage more behavioral healthcare specialists to join insurance networks.

*** Chicago ***

* Block Club | Homeland Security Boss Kristi Noem Met By Protesters While Attending Navy Pier Christmas Charity Event: Protestors, many of whom sang Christmas carols and held signs, had been gradually pushed back from Navy Pier by Chicago police after the beginning of the event. But as Noem gave her address, they could still be heard. Noem has been a public face of Trump’s immigration raids in Chicago, even joining federal agents on a sweep of a Home Depot parking lot in Austin. She also gave media briefings on the operation, falsely saying no U.S. citizens have been detained during the immigration enforcement operation.

* Tribune | Chicago Bears drop from No. 1 seed to No. 7 after loss to Green Bay Packers: “We had a lot of options there,” Johnson said. “Don’t know exactly who is going to pop necessarily but between the options that we have and then Caleb using his legs, was hopeful we could find a way to get a yard there.” Williams sort of waited, allowing Nixon time to close, and then put air under the throw as if to give the 6-foot-6 Kmet a chance to outplay the 5-10 Nixon for the ball. The throw never made it that far. It was an easy interception for Nixon. “I think he can take (the first down running) but I don’t know what he saw,” Kmet said. “I’m just running my route. It’s unfortunate. It sucks.”

* WBEZ | Here comes Krampus: How the half-goat, half-demon became a cultural phenomenon: “Krampus became more than a fad in America. It became a cultural phenomenon … and it all started here in Chicago,” [graphic designer/illustrator Monte Beauchamp] recently told the Chicago Sun-Times. […] Beauchamp introduced America to Krampus in its pages in a feature about century-old postcards in 2000. The issue became so popular, it led to a partnership with comics publisher Fantagraphics to produce the first book in America about the character, 2004’s “The Devil in Design: The Krampus Postcards.”

*** Cook County and Suburbs ***

* Tribune | Federal immigration agents use tear gas on Elgin crowd on day of Kristi Noem’s visit to Chicago: The standoff began around 10 a.m. Saturday when about 15 agents showed up to arrest an unidentified man at an apartment building on the 1600 block of Maple Lane in Elgin. Elgin police said there had been a traffic crash that morning involving a federal agent and the man, who then fled to the building. The crowd, blowing whistles and shouting at agents to leave, grew throughout the morning, eventually swelling to at least 200 people by the afternoon. By 2:30 p.m., the man the agents were attempting to arrest was still on the second-floor balcony. About 30 agents tried to negotiate with him, while protesters told the man not to talk to them.

* CBS Chicago | Federal agent involved in crash, chemical agents dispersed in Elgin, Illinois, police say: Mari Elena and Eddy are part of a rapid response group in Elgin and were among dozens who arrived at the scene on Saturday, monitoring the agents’ activity. The confrontation led to agents tackling a person to detain them and using chemical irritants to try to disperse the crowd. “They tear-gassed at us, and then more people, more people started showing up protesting, and then more agents,” Mari Elena said.

* WaPo | The US citizens getting caught in Trump’s immigration crackdown: If you rolled past Bedrosian Park after the final bell rang at Waukegan High School on any given weekday this fall, you were likely to find Diego Rosales and his mop of unruly black hair, basketball in hand, permanently grinning and playing down to the level of local middle-schoolers. Until Oct. 6, when Rosales watched two dark SUVs come to an abrupt stop while he waited for the bus to school. Rosales brought his eyeglasses to his nose just in time to see three White men in green fatigues, cloth masks and body armor emerging from the vehicles with pistols on their hips. They stared and then rushed toward him. […] Surveillance footage from a nearby school captured Rosales in full sprint, curving around a building and through a parking lot, backpack in hand, the agents trailing by a stride. After a three-block race, they tackled the teenager to the pavement and shouted a question: “Where were you born?”

* Sun-Times | Stealing from one of the last surviving Tuskegee Airmen gets ex-Cook County judge 4 years of probation: Patricia Martin, former presiding judge of the juvenile court’s child protection division, bilked a decorated WWII vet out of more than $380,000. She pleaded guilty to theft and also was ordered to pay $122,763.73 in restitution.

* Aurora Beacon-News | Aurora’s proposed 2026 budget, with controversial cuts, heads to final approval: The city is proposing a $680.8 million budget for 2026, which is $78.8 million less than this year’s. While most of the year-to-year change could be attributed to a one-time increase in revenue from bonds the city took out this year for big construction projects, the general operating fund proposed for 2026 also saw cuts, including to roughly 140 positions.

* Tribune | Political veteran George Cardenas fighting to stay on March primary ballot: George Cardenas has been a fixture in Southwest Side politics for decades, a consummate insider who followed five Chicago City Council election wins with another victory that took him to the obscure but powerful Cook County Board of Review. But now he finds himself in a fight befitting a novice, after a challenge to the petition signatures his campaign collected left him 273 short of what he needs to run for reelection in March’s Democratic primary. On Friday, seated across from a foot-tall stack of evidence, his legal team began the painstaking, line-by-line rebuttal to try to claw Cardenas’ way back onto the ballot.

* Crain’s | Rivian planning sales and service center in Northbrook: The electric vehicle maker has leased the site at 1818 Skokie Blvd. for a 39,000-square-foot facility to be built by Mount Prospect-based Wingspan Development Group, a spokesperson for the company confirmed today. “It’s a great partnership with the village of Northbrook and Wingspan and in support of our continued growth in that market,” said Peebles Squire, senior manager of corporate communications at Rivian.

* Tribune | White Eagle in Niles closes after decades as a hub for Polish community and political powerhouses: The phone at the White Eagle in Niles keeps ringing, with longtime customers asking for one last pierogi or a final bowl of its famed mushroom barley soup. An older woman cried when she learned it wouldn’t be possible, recalled office manager Diane Palazzo of Victoria Venues, the current owner. The banquet hall had quietly closed its doors several weeks ago.

*** Downstate ***

* NYT | A Small Illinois City at the Center of a Seismic Shift in Abortion Access: Two of Carbondale’s three clinics offer a range of health services, but Alamo Women’s Clinic only does abortions, both procedural and medication, all on-site. It does not dispense abortion pills through the mail, a practice targeted by anti-abortion groups and conservative states. Fewer than five percent of Alamo patients are from Illinois. Some women come by train, but most drive, traveling with partners, family or friends. Like women who seek abortions nationwide, many of them already have children and need to return home on the same day.

* WGLT | Bloomington and Normal join McLean County in suggestion they back away from legal cliff and restart talks in sales tax dispute: The most recent county letter offered one such change to the agreement — an 18-month pause in collection of shared sales tax revenue while other issues are worked out, coupled with an extension of the agreement identical in duration to the pause. That differs from a previous city and town proposal that would have paused sharing, but not extended the agreement. The county had called that idea a cut, not a pause.

* WCIA | Community unites as Piatt Co. village enters second day without running water: The Village of Bement has been under a boil order since early Saturday morning, but as of Sunday afternoon, there was no water to boil. The problem started after a water main broke Saturday around 1 a.m., affecting the pressure from the village’s water tower. Neighbors said that the lack of tap water was impacting everything from flushing toilets to taking showers. Community members, Piatt County Emergency Management Agency and the police and fire departments were handing out water on Sunday at the Lion’s Club Community Center.

*** National ***
* AP | Unseen photos of Rosa Parks return to Montgomery, Alabama, seven decades later: The photos were taken by the late Civil Rights photographer Matt Herron, and they depict Parks at the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 — a five-day-long, 54-mile (87-kilometer) trek that is often credited with galvanizing political momentum for the U.S. Voting Rights Act of 1965. History lessons tend to define Parks by her act of civil disobedience a decade earlier, on Dec. 1, 1955, which launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott. On Friday, some boycott participants and many of the boycott organizers’ descendants gathered to mark 70 years since the 381-day struggle in Alabama’s capital caught national attention, overthrowing racial segregation on public transportation.

* The Wichita Eagle | Kansas may get mile-deep nuclear reactor, and the groundbreaking is Tuesday: Deep Fission will hold a ceremonial groundbreaking on Tuesday at Great Plains Industrial Park. Company leaders hope to receive U.S. Department of Energy authorization and get its nuclear reactor up and running by next Fourth of July. The company is part of a presidential pilot program that aims to demonstrate new reactors by then. After that, Deep Fission hopes to pursue commercial operations. “The industrial park is looking to bring in, to attract industry and possibly data centers or other large uses of electricity,” Deep Fission CEO Liz Muller said in an interview with the Kansas News Service. “But in order to attract them, it needs to have a source of electricity.”

* The Hill | ACA approval hits new high: Gallup: More Americans approve of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) than at any point since it took effect more than a decade ago, according to a new Gallup survey. In the survey, released Monday, 57 percent of respondents approve, and 35 percent of respondents disapprove of the landmark legislation, which, the survey notes, was “signed into law by President Obama” and “restructured the U.S. healthcare system.”