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* Crain’s | How dark money helped the only Republican Cook County official win re-election: The official is suburban Commissioner Sean Morrison, who also happens to be the Cook County GOP chair. I wrote in September about how $200,000 mysteriously appeared in Morrison’s campaign fund in September, money that originally was donated by hedge fund mogul Ken Griffin to a group that opposed Gov J.B. Pritzker’s graduated income tax amendment in 2020. … While the Coalition to Cut Taxes isn’t registered with the elections board, it is registered as a not-for-profit with the Illinois Secretary of State’s Office. The group’s registered legal agent is Chicago attorney John Fogarty–the same John Fogarty who is general counsel for the Illinois Republican Party.

* Daily Beast | Inside the Billionaire-Backed ‘Hub for Election Denial’: VoteRef has focused its efforts not just in Arizona, but the Midwest. (The Uihleins live in Illinois and have focused much of their giving in Wisconsin.) Over the past year, VoteRef has disclosed the personal information of millions of voters as part of a broader effort to empower members of the public to search for alleged “errors” in voter rolls. (Some states make it illegal to publish voter registration rolls.)

* Tribune | Mayor Lori Lightfoot files for reelection: ‘Only rational choice is to return me to office’: “With the filing today, one chapter in the campaign ends and another opens,” she said after submitting a stack of nominating papers that, sitting on the Board of Elections table, almost reached her shoulders. Surrounded by supporters and Chicago first lady Amy Eshleman, Lightfoot quipped that her pile of more-than-40,000 signatures “looks like enough to me” before expressing that the next focus is on telling voters “why the only rational choice is to return me to office.”

* Blair Kamin | How do we achieve equity-driven urban design in Chicago? The city’s future depends on it. : We should keep that joyous scene and its intimations of equality in mind as Mayor Lori Lightfoot and multiple challengers battle to determine who runs Chicago and the direction the city takes in the post-pandemic, post-George Floyd era. For while the need to stanch gun violence likely will dominate the campaign, another issue, no less urgent, deserves to be on the agenda: building a more equitable Chicago.

* Salon | The postliberal crackup: The GOP’s post-midterm civil war starts with the New Right: Earlier this month, after the midterms failed to deliver a promised “red wave,” those fights spilled into the headlines, as Republicans’ disappointed hopes led to some of the first open shots in what’s been a cold civil war over the party’s future. Partly that fight revolves around whether Donald Trump or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will lead the GOP into the 2024 presidential election. But it goes much deeper than that, and the fight also has implications that go well beyond the right.

* Telegraph | Illinois receives $14.4M to buy locally produced food: The two-year program will involve direct purchases from eligible farmers and multiple aggregation sites where goods will be consolidated and then distributed to schools, nonprofits and food banks.

* ABC 7 | Joliet Amazon workers stage walkout on busy Cyber Monday: The protest took place around 3 a.m. on Monday morning. This is the second walkout in two months.

* Illinois Public Media | The pseudoscience spreading to police precincts around Illinois: A phenomenon known as 911 phone call analysis is being used by more and more police departments across the country, including in Illinois. It’s a pseudoscience that claims that what someone says, how they sound and how they act during a 911 phone call, can determine if they are calling for help, or if they are trying to cover for a crime they have committed.

* Patch | $200,000 Settlement In Black Joliet Officer’s Discrimination Lawsuit: The city of Joliet has agreed to a $200,000 settlement to resolve retired Joliet Police Officer Lionel Allen’s racial discrimination lawsuit against the city, Joliet Patch has learned.

* WGLT | In post-Roe America, pilots take the abortion battle to the skies: The idea for a volunteer organization that would transport women seeking abortion care, and physicians who provide it, to states where it is safe and legal to do so, began with a volunteer stint Mike did at Midwest Access Coalition. “As a pilot, I was looking for some way that I could use my skills to help people,” Mike says. “And being someone who believes in someone’s ability to make their own choices, I thought helping people access abortion could be it.”

* Grist | Herschel Walker, South Park, and the Prius: How loving gas-guzzlers became political: When states moved to ban rolling coal, some drivers pushed back, the New York Times reported in 2016. “Why don’t you go live in Sweden and get the heck out of our country,” one diesel truck owner wrote to an Illinois state representative who proposed a $5,000 fine for removing emissions equipment. “I will continue to roll coal anytime I feel like and fog your stupid eco-cars.”

* Can a Millstadt Republican represent all of IL House District 114? Black leaders worry: Their concerns became a reality with Republican Kevin Schmidt of Millstadt unofficially taking the House District 114 race over incumbent Democrat LaToya Greenwood of East St. Louis. The Associated Press declared him the winner, though the ballots must still be canvassed and certified. … In 2016, she had 8,195 votes from East St. Louis as part of her 26,029-vote total. Those totals dropped this year to 4,990 in East St. Louis and 17,177 districtwide, according to unofficial election results. Meanwhile, the number of votes that Stuart received in St. Clair County for District 112 increased from 4,495 in 2016 to 6,891 in 2022. Hoffman’s totals in St. Clair County in District 113 decreased from 23,533 in 2016 to 20,621 in 2022.

* KMOV | Border protection officers seize counterfeit Super Bowl rings headed for Jerseyville, Illinois, feds say: The shipment arriving from China contained 422 rings with the image of the Lombardi Trophy. An import specialist determined the rings to be counterfeit.