* ICYMI: Funny messages on Illinois highway signs to be banned, feds say. NBC Chicago…

- The U.S. Federal Highway Administration has given states two years to implement changes outlined in a new manual released last month.
- Overhead electronic signs with obscure meanings, pop culture references or those intended to be funny will be banned in 2026 because they can be “misunderstood or distracting to drivers,”
- Some examples of IDOT signs include “No Texting, No Speeding, No Ketchup” and “OMG, Are you texting? I can’t even.”

* Isabel’s top picks…

* Tribune | Illinois Supreme Court to decide if police may search vehicles based on smell of marijuana or if it’s an ‘aroma of legality’: Appellate courts have split over the question, forcing the high court to make the call. At issue are efforts to keep the roads safe and prevent illegal trafficking, while protecting a constitutional right against unreasonable searches.

* CNI | Smart Start preschool expansion ahead of schedule in first fiscal year: The Smart Start program passed last May as part of the state’s operating budget, which allocated $250 million to expand early childhood education programs, including wage support for child care workers, early intervention programs and home visiting programs. It also included a goal of adding 5,000 pre-k spots in areas where access was lacking – and the state has exceeded that number by over 800 seats.

* Madison Record | McGlynn denies motion to stay gun ban challenge, says it’s time to ‘decide what you’re fighting over’: Plaintiffs challenging Illinois’ so-called “assault weapon” ban moved to stay proceedings with agreement from the state’s lawyer, but U.S. District Judge McGlynn told them it was time to move forward. In a conference on Jan. 12, he told them to prepare for an evidentiary hearing like a trial.

* Here’s the rest of your morning roundup…

* Our Quad Cities | Local law enforcement reacts to new Illinois law allowing non-citizens to become police officers: “There’s certain steps to becoming a police officer,” said Sheriff John Booker with the Whiteside County Sheriff’s Office. “It’s not just, ‘Okay, today I’m going to be a police officer,’ take a test and you’re hired tomorrow. It’s a long process.” The Whiteside County Sheriff explained only part of the process to becoming a police officer that takes more than three months to complete.

* Crain’s | Bally’s casino workers vote to unionize: Three groups of workers at the temporary Bally’s casino in River North have voted to unionize. The votes were certified this week and affect hundreds of workers at the company’s temporary casino at the Medinah Temple.

* Wes-Gazette | Casino payout: Pension funds, riverfront among early beneficiaries: Funding for riverfront development, city sewer upgrades, construction of an addition to the Boys and Girls Club and paying down city fire and police pensions: Those will all benefit as a result of the opening of Danville’s Golden Nugget Casino. Planning for some of the projects is underway, while others, like the start of the pension paydown, are ongoing endeavors.

* Daily Southtown. | Two solar energy facililties get green light in Monee Township: Nexamp has proposed a 5-megawatt solar farm on about 44.26 acres of land at 26845 S. Will Center Road in Monee, about 0.2 miles from South Will Center Road and West Pauling Road. The company has also proposed a 2-megawatt solar farm to be built on about 19 acres of a 29.26 acre parcel of land on the northwest corner of South Will Center Road and West Pauling Road.

* WLPO | State AFL-CIO Endorses Candidates, But Not in Every Race: Of 127 candidates backed by the union giant, 126 are Democrats. The lone Republican is Brad Stephens, a candidate for State Representative who’s a union member and the Village President of the Chicago suburb of Rosemont, adjacent to O’Hare. The union has not endorsed a candidate in the 76th District, where three Democrats and two Republicans are vying for the seat being vacated by Democrat and union champion Lance Yednock.

* WBEZ | Black parents are caught in the middle of Chicago’s school choice debate: Blackburn and Presswood are two Black mothers in the middle of an intensifying debate about school choice, the system that allows Chicago parents to send their children to charters, magnets and selective enrollment schools, rather than be tethered to the school in their attendance boundary.

* Daily Egyptian | FAFSA complications causing distress for Southern Illinois families: The old FAFSA would require potential students, or their parents, to fill out a long, complicated form that would feature roughly a hundred questions regarding the family’s living situation.
The goal of the new FAFSA was to simplify the process, with only around 50 questions. The new application was designed to make it much easier for the government to provide benefits to families in need. However, it has been proven to be a more tenuous process, at least in the beginning.

* Sun-Times | Two downstate men accused of trying to break window with flag poles during Jan. 6 Capitol riot: Two men from southern Illinois have been arrested and are facing criminal charges for allegedly trying to break a window at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, joining the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by supporters of former President Donald Trump. Justin LaGesse, 37, and Theodore Middendorf, 36, both of McLeansboro, about 300 miles south of Chicago, are charged with felony destruction of property, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court.

* NBC | Capitol Police investigated more than 8,000 threats against lawmakers last year: U.S. Capitol Police investigated 8,008 threats against members of Congress last year, according to new case numbers released Thursday. Last year’s tally marked an increase from a figure released for 2022, but it’s below the 9,625 cases the agency investigated in 2021 when the Jan. 6 riot occurred.

* NPR | How social media algorithms ‘flatten’ our culture by making decisions for us: “[There] are equations that measure what you’re doing, surveil the data of all the users on these platforms and then try to predict what each person is most likely to engage with,” New Yorker writer Kyle Chayka explains. “So rather than having this neat, ordered feed, you have this feed that’s constantly trying to guess what you’re going to click on, what you’re going to read, what you’re going to watch or listen to.”

* SJ-R | How some superintendents decide on closing schools or E-learning days in bad weather: Students can sometimes be on a bus for 40 minutes to get to their schools, Superintendent Fred Lamkey said. If a bus breaks down or loses heat in the middle of the country, it can take 25 to 40 minutes to get a substitute out. That’s just one of the scenarios Lamkey and other superintendents had to consider when deciding whether to implement an emergency day or an e-learning or remote learning day, as they did on Tuesday because of the extreme cold.

* Sun-Times | University of Illinois system freezes in-state tuition at all 3 of its campuses for 2024-25 school year: The Board of Trustees approved tuition rates for the 2024-25 academic year Thursday. Rates will remain unchanged for the seventh year of the last 10 years, the school said in a press release. “I want to thank our trustees for their vote to freeze tuition for in-state undergraduates again,” University of Illinois System President Tim Killeen said. “This decision maintains our ironclad commitment to affordability. Few things we can do have a more positive impact on the working families of Illinois than holding down the cost of a life-changing college education.”