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Isabel’s afternoon roundup
Friday, Oct 23, 2026 - Posted by Isabel Miller * Tribune…
* The Tribune’s Alice Yin…
* Center Square | Illinois elections board calls viral voting machine allegation ‘hoax’: While selecting judicial candidates, she said a message appeared on the screen stating, “People are not typically choosing this person!” […] However, the Illinois State Board of Elections rejected the allegation. “No voting machine in Illinois could display that message,” board spokesperson Matt Dietrich told The Center Square. “That post is a hoax.” Cook County Clerk Monica Gordon also issued a public statement addressing the video, calling its claims false and misleading. According to Gordon, voting equipment may display a notification when a voter leaves a contest blank or does not make all available selections, a situation known as an undervote. * WTTW | Johnson Makes Bid for Chicago Mayor Official By Filing Thousands of Signatures: To win a second term, Johnson will have to overcome a serious challenge from perhaps a dozen candidates, including Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias — who told reporters Monday that he filed approximately 60,000 signatures, is backed by the endorsement of much of Chicago’s organized labor community and has nearly $20 million in the bank. Johnson bucked tradition by filing his nominating petitions Friday afternoon, rather than first thing Monday morning — ensuring a shot at the first spot on the ballot — or next week, at the last possible minute, vying for the last slot on the ballot. […] Johnson will be listed sixth on the ballot. * Sun-Times | 3 years later, Kennedy Expressway traffic nightmare lives on: The analysis of traffic data found that June 2025 saw the worst backups ever on the outbound Kennedy, with drivers facing an average commute time of 74 minutes to get from Downtown to O’Hare between 2 and 3 p.m. on weekdays during that month. Average outbound travel times exceeded 65 minutes for each hour between noon and 7 p.m. on weekdays that month. On the inbound Kennedy, headed Downtown, the afternoon traffic jams have actually gotten worse since the end of the state project between the Edens junction and Downtown. * Bloomberg | Mark Walter borrowed from Chicago firm with investigators circling: In February, after getting served with subpoenas in a federal criminal investigation, the billionaire sports mogul Mark Walter’s insurance companies abruptly stopped lending to him. But within weeks, new loans started rolling in from a different source: a Chicago-based financial firm whose owners include his business protege, basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson. * WGN | New inspection to take place at South Chicago Chapel, where over 50 decomposing bodies were found over the summer: On Friday, a court-ordered inspection is set to take place at a Southeast Side funeral home where more than 50 decomposing bodies were found in various states of decomposition over the summer. […]The inspection comes at the request of an attorney representing the City of Chicago and follows months of complaints by neighbors over the odor emanating from the building. * Lake County News-Sun | T5-funded study says data center will bring in billions; opponents scoff at the numbers: Landolfi questioned where Davies and T5’s numbers are coming from. What assumptions are these based on? What is considered “full build out”? He expressed distrust of any analysis coming from the village or T5, including the Greener Impacts study. He criticized the release of the study to the news media prior to the public, arguing it is to avoid being “checked by the people it’s meant to persuade.” He called for a publication of the full study, including its methods, assumptions, and model inputs. * Lake McHenry Scanner | State evaluating whether Vista can keep trauma center designation after anesthesia services suspended at Waukegan hospital: An anesthesia group suspended all services at Vista Medical Center East in Waukegan Thursday over a missed payment and state surveyors will be at the hospital Friday to evaluate whether the hospital can keep its trauma center designation. The hospital still had its trauma center designation as of Friday morning but the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) is actively evaluating whether it meets all of the requirements to keep it, a department spokesperson told Lake and McHenry County Scanner. The spokesperson said IDPH surveyors would be at the hospital Friday but did not know whether they had already arrived. * Crain’s | Trademark fight pits Musk’s AI-chip dreams against Northwestern prof’s startup: Mirkin’s startup, Tera-print, trademarked the name Tera-Fab for its line of nano-printing devices five years ago. In March, Musk announced a project to create a massive new AI-chip factory near Austin, Texas, that he dubbed Terafab. (Chip factories are known as fabrication facilities, or “fabs,” and Musk plans to create a terawatt of AI chips per year at the plant.) After Tesla filed trademark applications for Terafab in May, Mirkin’s company sent out a cease-and-desist letter, according to court filings. But before Tera-print could sue, Tesla and SpaceX fired a pre-emptive strike, asking a Texas federal court to issue a declaratory judgment that “they are not infringing any trademark rights claimed by Tera-print and are not violating any related laws.” * Daily Southtown | Frankfort Fire Protection District asks voters for first rate increase since 2000: “The last three house fires we had, only two people showed up on the first vehicle,” said Chief Paul Kinsella. “Which is, in the fire service, they really can’t do much until other people get there. So it’s really a safety concern.” The fire protection district provides emergency services to a 42-square mile area that covers portions of Frankfort and Mokena, along with Frankfort and Green Garden townships. * Daily Southtown | Will County health officials investigate E. coli cases linked to pumpkin farm: “We are working closely with Bengtson’s Pumpkin Farm, and the owners and staff have been fully cooperative,” said Sean Conners, director of environmental health. “As a precaution, the farm has voluntarily closed its petting zoo and is arranging for animal testing. These steps are part of our broader investigation as we look at all possible sources of exposure.” Bengston’s confirmed on its Facebook page it closed the petting zoo out of an abundance of caution, though the rest of the farm remains open. * Daily Herald | Debate about Flock cameras postponed in Mundelein: The Mundelein village board will hold a regular meeting at 7 p.m. Monday at village hall, 300 Plaza Circle. It’ll be the first board meeting since the Lake County state’s attorney’s office on Thursday announced it won’t file charges against a police sergeant who fatally shot resident Mary Alice Love in May while she experienced a mental health crisis. * WGLT | How fundraising and endorsements may shape the midterm election in McLean County: Pritzker, the billionaire governor who has self-funded his own campaign and is outspending Republican rival Darren Bailey 25-1 in his bid for a third term, is sprinkling money from his massive war chest to Democratic candidates and causes across the country. By comparison, Pritzker gave $50,000 each to Champaign County and Sangamon County Democrats, $40,000 to Peoria County Democrats, $10,000 to Democrats in Tazewell County and $5,000 to Macon County [Decatur] Democrats. While the McLean County Republican and Democratic parties have spent similar amounts on their campaigns over the last year [Republicans have spent $133,368 compared to the Democrats’ bill of $132,703 since July 1, 2025], Democrats reported six times the amount of cash on hand [$72,813-$12,357] that Republicans had at the end of the last quarterly filing period on Sept. 30, according to Illinois State Board of Elections [ISBE] records. * WCIA | U of I College of Law launches new master’s degree, graduate certificates: The College of Law at the University of Illinois has officially launched a new master’s degree and seven graduate-level certificates, with courses beginning next semester. The new degree is an online Master of Science in Law (MSL). It and the new certificates are described as being “built for working professionals who need legal knowledge but do not intend to practice law.” * ProPublica | Sexual Assaults on Campus No Longer Scrutinized as Closely Under Trump’s Education Department: The analysis shows how severely the department’s Office for Civil Rights has retracted from its mission, launching an average of about 100 new investigations a month — 1,839 total from Inauguration Day in 2025 through July 2026. The OCR launched an average of 310 new investigations each month in 2024 during the Biden administration, according to data previously obtained by ProPublica. * The Atlantic | ‘If Anything Happens to This Guy … Everyone Is Screwed’: “Explaining to my wife how there’s this one guy. And he alone is responsible for most of the world’s distribution of PHP,” a software developer named Ian Landsman wrote on X. “And if anything happens to this guy, that’s just it. Everyone is screwed.” He was referring to Surý. Surý, who lives in Czechia, does not work for the PHP Foundation. But alongside his day job as director of domain-name-system engineering at the nonprofit Internet Systems Consortium, in a volunteer capacity, he maintains and helps automate patches for the coding language. His work, with that of just a handful of others, has allowed countless websites and organizations to fix these vulnerabilities quickly. Over the past 48 hours, he’s become arguably the unsung hero of the entire internet—despite the fact that the only compensation he receives is from modest donations. “Ondřej will save the internet today,” a user in the PHP Subreddit wrote. * AP | Trump administration files lawsuit to block possible Democratic win in Alaska Senate race: The Trump administration has filed a lawsuit to block certification of the Senate race in Alaska if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses the contest while another candidate, a former Chicagoan with the same name, is on the ballot, kicking off what many have feared could become a lengthy battle between the U.S. government and states over certifying an election where the president’s party is struggling.
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- NIU Grad - Friday, Oct 23, 26 @ 2:44 pm:
“he said proves how confident he is”
More like it would have been embarrassing for an incumbent mayor to enter a lottery to be last place on a ballot…more embarrassing than not having his signatures ready by Day One.
- Ben Tre - Friday, Oct 23, 26 @ 3:08 pm:
In what world did the Sun Times think that repaving the Kennedy would somehow make traffic congestion go away? And why no mention of the transit alternatives and how they are faring?
- Three Dimensional Checkers - Friday, Oct 23, 26 @ 3:18 pm:
One more lane never works because congestion causes traffic jams. You have a bunch of cars trying to get to one area that cannot accommodate all the cars at once. You solve congestion by giving commuters non-car options, so there are less cars on the stress.
- Rich Miller - Friday, Oct 23, 26 @ 3:22 pm:
===You solve congestion by giving commuters non-car options===
Pritzker never should’ve promised faster commutes.
===In what world did the Sun Times think that repaving the Kennedy would somehow make traffic congestion go away?===
Especially since a bunch of downtown expressway stuff is still under construction.