* The Tribune’s Alice Yin has some more information on a new super PAC…

I’m told this super PAC will be targeting politicians taking “MAGA” money, w a focus on Dem candidates who have Trump/ICE-connected donors https://t.co/xIwzjfTOhh

— Alice Yin (@byaliceyin) February 3, 2026

* Rich and I are wishing the Illinois Credit Union League’s Keith Sias a speedy recovery!…

*** Statehouse News ***

* Center Square | GOP candidates for Illinois governor challenge Pritzker on state finances: “I believe that when we crack this budget open and start showing the people where all this is going, I think we’re going to have most of what we need to work with to start tamping down on property taxes, energy prices and especially working with our pensions,” Bailey told The Center Square. Bailey said the state budget rose from around $32 billion in 2017 to more than $55 billion this year.

*** Chicago ***

* Tribune | Mayor Brandon Johnson says up to Cook County state’s attorney to prosecute federal agents: Speaking at a City Hall news conference, the mayor sought to redirect focus from his office’s authority by saying it’s up to Burke to approve criminal charges. But he declined to say whether any specific incidents fit the bill, a sign that his office does not have imminent plans to test out the order. “So I personally, I’m not looking at cases,” Johnson told reporters when asked if he was going to act on his new decree. “I don’t have jurisdiction authority over the state’s attorney, right? … We’re prepared and willing to always lead and to go first to create a pathway for accountability, and then, like any other case, the state’s attorney has their jurisdiction to decide if they’re going to move forward with prosecution. But that’s the autonomy that the state’s attorney has.”

* Chicago Mag | The Battle of O’Hare: Industry analyst Robert Mann Jr. characterizes the conflict as a battle of press releases and big egos: “Mr. Kirby is attempting to essentially extend United’s lead in Chicago, and this put up a marker for [American CEO] Mr. [Robert] Isom, who has decided that he would like to even the score.” The professional history between Kirby and Isom may color the acrimonious relationship. In 2016, American pushed Kirby out as president, sending him packing with a $13 million severance package, and promoted then-COO Isom. Kirby quickly landed at United, where he started as president, then ascended to CEO in 2020.

* Block Club | Families Scammed By Convicted Mortgage Fraudsters Are Still Fighting For Their Homes:
Dunn’s family was one of more than 100 swindled by Diamond. In January 2025, after Diamond pleaded guilty to wire fraud, U.S. District Judge Franklin Valderrama sentenced him to more than 17 years in federal prison and ordered him to pay $2.7 million in restitution. Several of his accomplices were also sentenced to prison last year. But the saga is far from over. As the leaders of the scheme serve their time, some of their victims are still fighting to get control of their family properties. They often find it difficult or impossible. After battling the lenders used for the reverse mortgages, dozens of victims have already lost in court, stripping them of their properties for good.

* WTTW | Push to Expand CPD’s Curfew Power Stalls After Last-Minute Revision: However, Hopkins introduced a significantly revised measure moments before the City Council was set to vote on his third effort to expand the city’s curfew to stop teen gatherings. Hopkins said the revised measure is “vastly improved” and “avoids the constitutional question” raised by the original version. The new proposal does not mention the city’s curfew, but gives the city’s top cop the power to issue what it calls “a dispersal declaration” in areas where police leaders have determined they have probable cause to believe there will be a “disruptive youth gathering.”

* Sun-Times | Only 1 in 4 of Chicago’s indie music venues is profitable. Owners say that data spells potential trouble: Adds Bruce Finkelman, the founder and managing partner of the hospitality collective 16” on Center, whose portfolio includes Empty Bottle, SPACE, Thalia Hall and the Salt Shed: “If we don’t get some of our business and government leaders to understand what the economic state of these venues is and the importance to the economic and cultural engine of Chicago, as the study clearly reports, then we’re in some trouble.” The biggest issue for many independent venue owners are the skyrocketing operating costs that have been affected by rampant rates of inflation since the COVID-19 pandemic. “It’s something that everybody is feeling with the cost of living increases,” said Finkelman. And as he’s seen with 16” On Center’s varied portfolio, the predicament affects rooms of all sizes, no matter the capacity: “It’s plaguing everybody in the independent infrastructure.”

* Crain’s | Plan for 28-story apartment tower adds to growing number of high-rises in Lincoln Park: A venture of Chicago-based Honore Properties and Elmhurst-based Peerless Development is seeking city approval for a 340-unit rental building at 1415 N. Dayton St., which currently holds a four-story loft office building. The team had initially targeted the property for an adaptive reuse project, like the office-to-residential conversion it’s completing at 811 W. Evergreen Ave., but the building’s configuration proved too challenging. Instead, the developers intend to use air rights from three nearby properties for a much denser development, something Honore founder Michael Shenouda said was “quite the puzzle” to put together.

*** Cook County and Suburbs ***

*
Greg Hinz | Two veterans, two visions, one high-stakes Cook County primary : Reilly, 54, a leading member of a City Council bloc that increasingly has frustrated Mayor Brandon Johnson, is trying hard to hang Johnson around Preckwinkle’s neck, alleging that she effectively mentored him in his prior post as a member of the county board and then helped elect him mayor. I’m not sure that’s fair. Preckwinkle wasn’t responsible for the conduct of board members or Johnson’s political sponsorship by the Chicago Teachers Union, and her campaign help came only in the runoff election against conservative Paul Vallas, not in the far more competitive initial election round. But that said, Preckwinkle, who will turn 79 just after the March primary, has given Reilly a fair amount of ammunition to work with.

* Tribune | Northwestern will open the new Ryan Field on Oct. 2 vs. Penn State — its 3rd home game of the season: Northwestern will open the new $862 million Ryan Field on Oct. 2 against Penn State, the athletic department announced Tuesday. The Friday night game will be played 100 years to the day of the first football game at the original stadium, then known as Northwestern Stadium. It will be the first of five games this season at the new stadium, followed by Ball State on Oct. 10, Rutgers on Oct. 24, Iowa on Nov. 7 and Illinois on Nov. 28.

* Lake County News-Sun | Lake County’s Kevin Bickner headed to his 3rd Olympics for ski jumping: ‘There’s nothing like it’: Out of retirement and ready to prove himself again, national ski jump record-holder and Wauconda native Kevin Bickner is returning to the Olympic stage for a third time this month, sharing what it’s like going from rookie to team veteran, and how he balances the sport with a “normal life” after reigniting his motivation. Bickner previously competed in the 2018 and 2022 Olympics. In 2017, he set the current American national ski jumping record, flying 244.5 meters, about 802 feet, during a jump in Vikersund, Norway. That’s a distance of nearly two and a quarter football fields, and just 80 feet short of the entire length of the Titanic.

* Naperville Sun | Naperville ranks No. 12 in US for number of remote workers, study finds: The third-largest city in Illinois was recently recognized for having one of the highest rates of remote workers in the country, according to a study by SmartAsset, a company that provides educational content for consumers to make better financial decisions. SmartAsset ranked 357 of the largest U.S. cities based on the percentage of people working from home. The study used data from the 2023 and 2024 U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

*** Downstate ***

* Capitol News Illinois | Search warrant reveals FBI is investigating former Carlyle police chief: The FBI is investigating Pingsterhaus, a 30-year law enforcement veteran, for possible wire fraud and theft of federal funds, according to the search warrant, obtained by Capitol News Illinois and the Illinois Answers Project. The FBI rents space in the Carlyle police station in downstate Clinton County. No criminal charges have been filed against Pingsterhaus, who resigned in December, and neither the city nor the FBI would discuss the nature of the allegations.

* WGLT | Normal refutes the need for extra fire station at town council meeting: The Normal firefighters union, Local 2442, has repeatedly claimed in town hall settings and at town council meetings that closing the College Avenue station would negatively impact response times and has urged the council to keep it open after the new east side station came online. At Monday’s meeting, a presentation was made that focused on town staff surveying response times for the 2024 calendar year, plotting response times for each incident, overlayed with expected response times calculated from a prediction model. The model did not account for traffic.

* WCIA | Willard Airport, 700 homes left without power in Champaign-Urbana: The outage affecting the most customers is concentrated in Champaign and Urbana between I-74 and U.S. Route 150. The outage at Willard Airport started at 11:40 a.m., according to Ameren’s outage map. The first homes to lose power in Champaign and Urbana went dark at noon, growing over the next 45 minutes to include about 700 homes. Equipment damage was blamed for starting one part of the outage. The causes of the other outages were not made clear.

*** National ***

* WaPo | U.S. Manufacturing Is in Retreat and Trump’s Tariffs Aren’t Helping: Manufacturers shed workers in each of the eight months after Trump unveiled “Liberation Day” tariffs, according to federal figures, extending a contraction that has seen more than 200,000 roles disappear since 2023. An index of factory activity tracked by the Institute for Supply Management shrunk in 26 straight months through December, but showed a January uptick in new orders and production that surprised analysts. The Census Bureau estimates that manufacturing construction spending, which surged with Biden-era funding for chips and renewable energy, fell in each of Trump’s first nine months in office.

* WaPo | Homeland Security is targeting Americans with this secretive legal weapon: Homeland Security is not required to share how many administrative subpoenas it issues each year, but tech experts and former agency staff estimate it’s well into the thousands, if not tens of thousands. Because the legal demands are not subject to independent review, they can take just minutes to write up and, former staff say, officials throughout the agency, even in mid-level roles, have been given the authority to approve them.

* Ken Klippenstein | Feds Identify “Leader of Antifa”: Twenty-nine year old Chandler Patey has been regularly protesting outside his local ICE facility in South Portland for months, offering up his apartment to fellow protesters to use the bathroom or wash off pepper spray, according to local news. To the Department of Homeland Security, “he is the leader of Antifa in Portland, OR.” […] The government’s elevation of an ordinary citizen like Patey to terrorist mastermind is the result of a subtle bureaucratic process revealed in this and other DHS documents I’ve obtained. They show that since almost the beginning of the Trump administration, DHS has been desperate to pull together evidence—no matter how thin—of an epidemic of left-wing domestic terrorism.

* NYT | How the Supreme Court Secretly Made Itself Even More Secretive: Over the years, journalists and authors have sought to penetrate the court, and the justices have tried varying methods to guard its secrets. Some generations of clerks, but not others, said they were asked to sign a different kind of confidentiality pledge. The New York Times has not reviewed the new agreements. But people familiar with them said they appeared to be more forceful and understood them to threaten legal action if an employee revealed confidential information. Clerks and members of the court’s support staff signed them in 2024, and new arrivals have continued to do so, the people said.

* Tech Crunch | Firefox will soon let you block all of its generative AI features: Firefox will begin catering to those who don’t want AI in their browser. On Monday, Mozilla announced that Firefox will soon let users block all current and future generative AI features. Users will also have the option to block certain AI features in Firefox, while keeping others, Starting with Firefox 148, which is rolling out on February 24, users will find a new AI controls section within the desktop browser settings.