* More from the Politico interview of Gov. Pritzker…

Q: We’re going to talk about culture wars because you’ve made national headlines on that front, challenging Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, changing high school curriculum in regard to Black history. And how do you see that playing in 2024?

Pritzker: I guess I think of it in a completely different context than you’ve just laid it out. I believe that this is not a culture war. This is a fight about democracy. It’s a fight about, you know, are we in a liberal democracy, and I don’t mean liberal as in Democratic, I mean, we do we live in a liberal democracy or not? Is this a place where truth should prevail? Should w cut out portions of history because we don’t like how it sounds, or we don’t like what previous generations did and we don’t want people to know about it. It strikes me that our children especially need to understand the mistakes that we as a country have made in the past, to learn from those mistakes that, by the way, we have learned from many of those mistakes. We have more to learn all of us and more progress that we need to make. But ignoring it or white-washing it, it strikes me as bad for the future of democracy and the future of expanding rights. In the United States, which is what we’ve always done, we’ve always tried to expand rights. Now it feels like people are trying to contract rights. That’s the wrong direction. It’s not a culture war. It’s not about 2024. For me, it’s about right and wrong. And it’s about, you know, the future of democracy for the United States.

* Interesting news from the Senate…

Two Illinois Senate committees will be co-chaired by Republicans in a move that harkens back decades to a time when Republicans and Democrats more often worked together to recognize shared goals and achieve them.

“I appreciate Leader Curran reaching out with this idea. At one point in our not-so-distant history this was a common practice in the Senate. I think we both hope that it will foster bipartisan cooperation on how we can best meet the needs of people all across our great state,” said Illinois Senate President Don Harmon.

Sen. Dale Fowler, a Republican from Harrisburg, will serve as co-chair on the Senate Higher Education Committee. Sen. Michael Halpin, a Rock Island Democrat is the committee chair, and Sen. Celina Villanueva, a Chicago Democrat, is the vice chair.

Sen. Sally Turner, a Republican from Beason, will serve as the co-chair on the Senate State Government Committee. Sen. Patrick Joyce, a Democrat from the Kankakee area, is the chair, and Sen. Willie Preston, a Democrat from Chicago, is the vice chair.

“I am proud to share in announcing the appointment of Republican co-chairs to two vital Senate committees,” said Illinois Senate Republican Leader John Curran. “I appreciate President Harmon’s efforts in reaching out to discuss greater participation with the minority party. This is a real step toward a more bipartisan working relationship in the process of crafting and passing public policy. Having members from both parties at the helm of these committees will encourage greater collaboration and dialogue, and lead to better outcomes for the people of Illinois.”

Democrats hold a 40-19 majority in the Illinois Senate, which means Democrats also have majorities on all committees and Democratic Senators preside over those committees. The agreement between Curran and Harmon elevates Republicans on these two committees to co-chair roles. Bipartisan co-chairs is not a new idea. For instance, Democrat John Cullerton and Republican Kirk Dillard co-chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee in the early 2000s.

Information about Senate committee and Senators can be found under the “Senate” section of www.ilga.gov.

* Macon County State’s Attorney Scott Rueter says the quiet part out loud…

Eliminating cash bail would also eliminate a revenue source for the county, Rueter said. Bond money is collected for individuals to get out of jail, and if those individuals are convicted, their bond money goes to fund the court system.

“If you’re convicted, then your court costs are paid,” Rueter said. “That is actually, I think, to the tune in Macon County (of) about $1.6 million in revenue for the county to use to pay for the court system. With no cash bail, that revenue goes away. So the taxpayers will have to foot the burden of paying for that loss of revenue.”

* Isabel’s roundup…

* Politico | Dem governors pledge to protect abortion as neighbors add restrictions: “We’re not an island, we’re an oasis,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said in an interview with POLITICO on Thursday. “People come to Illinois to exercise what are their fundamental rights, and they’re being denied in other states, every state around us, and then another ring of states around them. So think about how if you want to exercise your rights, how far you have to travel if you don’t live in Illinois in order to exercise those rights.”

* CBS Minnesota | Gov. Walz signs “100 Percent by 2040″ energy bill into law: According to the Clean Energy States Alliance, 21 other states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have already established some kind of 100% clean-energy standards or goals, most with target dates between 2040 and 2050.

* Shaw Local | Wisconsin-based PAC raising money ‘to educate voters in McHenry County’: A political action committee registered with a Post Office Box based in Wisconsin, just outside St. Paul, Minnesota, has been set up to help “educate the voters in McHenry County,” records filed online with the Illinois State Board of Elections show. Dubbed McHenry County Citizens for Lower Taxes, the PAC was created by Thomas Datwyler on Jan. 21 and filed with the state elections board on Jan. 23, records show. Its address is listed as a P.O. Box in Hudson, Wisconsin, which sits along the Badger State’s border with Minnesota.

* The Triibe | Teaching through trauma: n my 16 years teaching in Chicago Public Schools (CPS), I have lost more students than years I have taught. During my teacher programs in college, I had fears surrounding how to create engaging lesson plans, how to make connections with students and how to help students who needed more support. I learned the basics of how to be a teacher in my college classes and then learned even more during student teaching (a.k.a. teaching internship) from experienced educators. My mom was an educator in Michigan, so I knew that teaching would be extremely rewarding and also extremely frustrating. The one thing I never learned, or was even remotely prepared for, was what to do when a student dies.

* Peoria Magazine | Peoria Power Couple: Derrick Booth and Jehan Gordon-Booth don’t work in the circus. Not officially, anyway, although in their high-profile jobs, some days it may seem so. Indeed, the husband-and-wife duo from Peoria has become quite adept at juggling. With busy and sometimes far-flung schedules, it’s a necessity.

* Sun-Times | State regulators approve Medinah Temple landlord of proposed temporary Chicago casino: State regulators are still evaluating Bally’s overall casino proposal, which they submitted in August. But regulators gave the OK to entities controlled by the politically connected owner of the Medinah Temple.

* Chalkbeat | COVID exodus: Where did 1 million public school students go? New data sheds some light.: The data the team compiled point to two main drivers of the public school enrollment plunge: family choices and population changes. After public schools went remote, a portion of families switched their children to private schools or homeschool. At the same time, immigration slowed and many families fled big cities, causing the school-age population in some places to shrink.

* Daily Southtown | South suburban towns receive grants for lead pipe inventory, but officials say money will be needed for replacement: Ten Southland communities will receive state grants for tens of thousands of dollars to create a lead service line inventory, but area officials say more money will be needed to replace lead pipes. The grant is part of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency’s Lead Service Line Inventory grant, which range from $20,000 to $50,000 to create a complete lead service line inventory, according to an agency news release.

* Tri States Public Radio | Book explores Black Americans’ thoughts about Lincoln: The book includes more than 200 pieces. Some of them are from well-known African American historians, poets, activists, and more. Others are from lesser-known Black Americans.

* NBC Chicago | Woman Who Ran Brothel on Chicago’s West Side Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy: Nesbitt and her employees accepted more than $1 million in cash or debit, credit and gift cards, the prosecutor said. Following Wednesday’s hearing, Sheppard told reporters that Nesbitt had “accepted full responsibility for all of her deeds.”

* Motherboard | American Cars Are Getting Too Big For Parking Spaces: Increasingly, cars are too big for parking spaces, especially in parking garages and other paid parking lots where developers pay close attention to space size. Like the proverbial frog in a slowly heating pot of water, our cars have gotten ever-so-gradually bigger with each passing year, but the parking space standards have barely budged. Now, in the third decade of the growing car size trend, people are starting to notice.

* AP | Several universities to experiment with micro nuclear power: “What we see is these advanced reactor technologies having a real future in decarbonizing the energy landscape in the U.S. and around the world,” said Caleb Brooks, a nuclear engineering professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

* Farm Journal | DeDecker Family Named Illinois Pork Family of the Year 2023: Mark DeDecker and his wife, Karen, are the proud owners of DeDecker Pork Farm in Cambridge, Ill., where they currently farm 2,500 acres of corn and soybeans and market 7,000 hogs annually with their son, Lance. The DeDecker family history in Henry County goes back over 75 years and spans over three generations.