Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar

Monday, Aug 31, 2026 - Posted by Rich Miller

* My latest weekly syndicated newspaper column…

Hours after the social media giant Meta agreed last Wednesday to settle a case brought by 47 state attorneys general and implement reforms to protect children from social media harms, the Illinois Federation of Teachers issued a demand that all of Illinois’ portion of the $17.1 billion settlement — $768 million — be designated “to address the funding crisis for school districts across the state.”

“The Governor has said he supports more funding for education but didn’t know where it would come from,” said IFT president Stacy Davis Gates in the release. “The settlement with Meta just made that answer even easier. Schools from Peoria to Belleville to Chicago are counting on the Governor and the General Assembly to prioritize students the way we’ve seen them prioritize big tech and billionaire stadium owners.”

The Chicago Teachers Union, which is part of the IFT, is demanding that the state come up with $165 million during the upcoming fall veto session to prevent layoffs at the Chicago Public Schools. A statewide package that helps Chicago and the rest of the state would amount to hundreds of millions of dollars more.

But the $768 million from the settlement is obviously not a permanent revenue source. So, I asked the IFT why the state should use temporary money to fund long-term education funding. After all, CPS got itself in big fiscal trouble by using short-term federal COVID-19 funding to pay for long-term school spending. That fateful budgetary decision brought the school district directly to the brink it faces today.

“Permanent solutions of course are better,” conceded an IFT spokesperson, pointing to work being done by progressive legislators and stakeholders to find permanent state revenue sources. However, the spokesperson said via email, “if the state is receiving $768M for the harm big tech companies have done to children, sure makes sense to put it toward the educational institutions that serve them.”

Except underfunded schools is not the problem that the settlement money is designed to address.

According to the settlement terms, the cash is supposed to be used for “remedial or restitutive purposes.”

Those purposes include: Youth crisis intervention services; after school or summer programs; digital awareness public education funds; implementing phone-free school zones; hiring digital literacy counselors; digital mental health programming and “grants to school districts or other local government entities to accomplish any remedial purpose encompassed here.” The money is also supposed to be used to reimburse the attorney general’s office for costs associated with bringing the lawsuit.

The Children’s Funding Project in partnership with the Afterschool Alliance has even developed model legislation designed to help states spend the money to directly address the harms done by Meta under the auspices of its Fund IRL coalition. A statement from the group said it and its coalition partners “will continue to work to ensure that every available dollar intended to repair harm to young people is tracked, and that state leaders hear directly from young people and the organizations serving them as decisions about those resources are made.”

Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office emphasized to me that the money should mainly be used for remediation of the harms done to children by Meta and other large social media companies.

Raoul’s office also insisted that the money cannot be used for General Revenue purposes, but should instead be treated like the massive opioid settlement for targeted remediation of the harms caused by the industry, instead of the way the legislature and previous governors used the tobacco settlement money to temporarily patch state budget holes back in the day.

The point here is that the IFT and CTU shouldn’t be pouncing on every bright, shiny nickel that bounces into the playing field. The union absolutely must have the support of progressive legislators if it has even a little hope of eventually finding a funding solution. Demanding the Meta money be diverted from other significant progressive priorities for its own purposes will only undermine its goals. This ain’t rocket science.

I really think sometimes that the CTU and the Bears are operating from the same flawed, secret playbook. Both have legit cases to make at the statehouse, but both constantly step on their own messaging and alienate people who should be their friends.

The Meta settlement will provide some money to CPS and all other school districts. But if the IFT sticks to its guns and insists that the legislature ignore the settlement terms and give them all of the cash, things could get really ugly.

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Another accusation, but a different outcome… so far

Monday, Aug 31, 2026 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Subscribers were told a lot more about this case earlier today, but here’s my weekly syndicated newspaper column from August 21st, while we were on break…

Yet another sexual harassment allegation has been made against an Illinois House Democrat. But this time, the House speaker’s operation is fully supporting its incumbent.

Rep. Amy “Murri” Briel’s former deputy chief of staff Laura Jackson claims that, among other things, Briel, D-Ottawa, sexually harassed her, supplied her and the campaign staff with “unlimited” amounts of Adderall and gave “bonuses in marijuana.” Jackson said she ultimately had a three-hour meeting with the Legislative Inspector General.

Before we go any further, you should know that Jackson made her claims in a 44-minute video released by Linc Strategy, a Republican consulting group that has worked for Briel’s Republican general election opponent Liz Bishop. The interview was conducted by Marjorie Kline of Wilson Grand Communications, a national Republican advertising agency.

A district office employee in former Rep. Harry Benton’s office claimed she resigned after repeated sexual harassment by Benton, D-Plainfield, in the spring of 2023. His ultimate resignation this summer set off a firestorm of criticism against House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch for waiting so long to do anything, which has metastasized into criticism of Welch’s service as House speaker.

Ironically, a Benton staffer reached out to Benton’s Republican opponent around the time of her fellow staffer’s resignation, saying via text that Benton “needs to go.” A meeting never took place, however, and that staffer, Jessica Dixon Heitman, eventually replaced Benton in the House.

According to Jackson, “Rep. Briel almost daily told me that I needed to take an older woman lover,” telling the Republican consultant Kline it was “difficult to focus on tasks while knowing that my boss has these feelings that she’s openly sharing.”

“It was probably every day that I talked to her there was something about me that was sexualized, to the point that on the night of inauguration, I stood in front of her with tears in my eyes and said that I wish that she would see me as something more than just my looks, than just physically,” Jackson said during the GOP interview.

“During the campaign, there was a lot of extreme Adderall use,” Jackson claimed in the Republican video. “I take accountability on my part for taking it, but there was also a supply of unlimited Adderall to keep us going through that campaign,” she told Kline, referencing Briel’s first Illinois House campaign in 2024.

Briel won by a slim margin of just 595 votes in 2024. Jackson told Kline that the Adderall kept coming while votes were being counted. “After that, Rep. Briel never gave me another Adderall at all, which made it very difficult for me because, yes, I was partaking.”

Jackson also claimed that Briel “would give bonuses in marijuana, up to two ounces that she would drive back from Michigan.”

Briel released a statement a day later claiming these were all disproven allegations.

“The statements in the video produced by her MAGA political operatives were previously taken to the Legislative Inspector General in 2025 and were found to be without merit. I am calling for the immediate release of the Legislative Inspector General’s report on this matter,” Briel said.

Legislative Inspector General Michael McCuskey told the Sun-Times last week that he deemed Jackson’s complaint unfounded a month after she filed it in April of last year.

Jackson has a different version of events. “[The Legislative Inspector General office] just told me that I was an at-will employee and that there wasn’t really anything that they could do for me,” she told my colleague Isabel Miller last week, adding, “I was never told that anything was unfounded or anything like that. I was just told the at-will employee part.”

The “unfounded” declaration gives the House Democrats license to move full speed ahead. The Sun-Times quoted the executive director of the House Democrats’ political operation as saying, “We will not allow a misleading political attack to distort Rep. Briel’s record or diminish our commitment to the values she has consistently fought for.”

However, the Bishop’s campaign spokesperson Steven Shearer made it clear that the Legislative Inspector General’s decision will not be accepted as the final say. “It should not be up to one man to be the cross-examiner, the judge, the jury,” Shearer said. “We’re going to let the voters be the jury on this, and they can decide how credible it is that Rep. Briel hired her twice, hired her on her campaign and then hired her as the chief of staff in her legislative office.”

If the House Republicans can raise the money, this could be one of the hottest legislative races of the fall campaign.

* Meanwhile, from the Tribune…

When Illinois Legislative Inspector General Michael McCuskey last month released his report substantiating sexual harassment allegations against former state Rep. Harry Benton, one of the victims listed in the report — a female lobbyist — issued a statement accusing McCuskey of inaccurately characterizing her side of the story.

McCuskey, 78, a former longtime state and federal judge, denied there were any inaccuracies and said, “My judgments have never been attacked by an individual doubting my credibility!”

But the lobbyist has doubled down on her criticism of McCuskey in a recent letter to Illinois’ four top legislative leaders and obtained by the Tribune. In the four-page letter, the lobbyist says McCuskey “violated the confidence of other victims and me, broke standard investigative norms, and made inappropriate comments” to her during their interview and in other interactions with her about her allegations against Benton.

“Specifically, he shared the names of the other victims and other confidential information about their cases with me without prompting, among other inappropriate statements and missteps,” the lobbyist wrote to Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, House Republican Leader Tony McCombie, Illinois Senate President Don Harmon and Senate Republican Leader John Curran. The Tribune is not identifying the female lobbyist because she is a victim of sexual harassment.

Click here for the full letter.

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Isabel’s morning briefing

Monday, Aug 31, 2026 - Posted by Isabel Miller

* ICYMI: Illinois prosecutors fed ICE information about immigrants, leading to arrests and deportations. Sun-Times…

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*********************************************

* Gov. JB Pritzker has no public events scheduled today.

*** Isabel’s Top Picks ***

* Tribune | Illinois ignores rules and red flags as ‘servant leader’ runs up $100M state tab, then closes 2 hospitals: Records suggest the health facilities review board did little to vet Prasad and his partner before agreeing to let them take over the hospitals in Oak Park and Uptown in 2022. Then, when Prasad resurfaced with pleas for taxpayer dollars, the Department of Healthcare and Family Services handed over tens of millions in loans while doing little to track how the money was being spent.

* Heartland News | ‘The only option we had’: Gov. Pritzker stands by decision to scale back operations at Choate: “You know, this is one facility, with one set of issues, and I said this a couple of years ago, that if we couldn’t resolve some of the challenges there, that the only option that we really would have is to, to stand down on that facility and then make sure that the people who are working there are able to work elsewhere and the folks who are living there get the options that they want,” Governor Pritzker said. As for the workers impacted by the changes, Pritzker said there are more available jobs within the Department of Human Services in southern Illinois than there are workers to fill those jobs.

* Capitol News Illinois | Moody’s upgrades Illinois’ credit rating: According to an analysis by Moody’s, the state’s financial metrics have improved with balanced budgets and Pritzker’s conservative approach to budgeting. State spending, outside the core areas of healthcare, pensions and education, has grown by less than 1% in each of the last two years.

*** Statewide ***

* AccuWeather | Illinois sets US state record for most tornadoes in a year: Illinois has had 243 preliminary tornado reports so far in 2026, exceeding the counts of any state for a full calendar year, dating back to 1950, according to Storm Prediction Center (SPC) data. Preliminary records have been kept since 2004; the previous record was 229 tornadoes in Texas in 2015. SPC won’t issue final numbers for this year until 2027. Those numbers will take into consideration years back to 1950.

*** Statehouse News ***

* Capitol News Illinois | Illinois to receive up to $768M in Meta settlement over teen social media addiction: Nearly three dozen AGs, including Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, sued Meta in 2023 over teen social media addiction, following a two-year investigation into decisions made by company executives to encourage more engagement on its social media platforms. The lawsuits alleged engineers greenlit more addictive features like infinite scroll and autoplay despite internal company research showing the harms of compulsive social media use on teens’ brains, in addition to misleading the public about the safety of its platforms.

* Tribune | Gov. JB Pritzker pounces on President Donald Trump in campaign bus tour kickoff: His bid for a rare third term as governor is “about working people, about affordability, about making sure that people have what they need to get ahead, and also that we’re protecting them from the damage that Donald Trump and his administration is doing in Washington, D.C.,” Pritzker said outside the Adler Planetarium, flanked by Christian Mitchell, his running mate for lieutenant governor. Pritzker has intensified his criticism of Trump, his most ardent political foe, with some 70 days until the Nov. 3 election to hammer home for voters in deep blue Illinois that the race for governor is just as consequential as a presidential election, arguing that Trump’s policies have had an adverse effect on the state.

* WGLT | Darren Bailey urges voter engagement, addresses local issues at Bloomington GOP dinner: Bailey placed turnout in 2022 at about 45%. That, along with the $35 million spent by Pritzker, was enough to assure his defeat, he said. His speech to the group at the Doubletree Hotel in Bloomington was part pep talk and part warning — all focused on getting GOP voters registered and to the polls. He said about a third of the population isn’t registered. And of those who are, about 60% didn’t vote.

* Tribune | Gov. JB Pritzker appoints Jim Montgomery to head Illinois natural resources after Prisoner Review Board stint: Jim Montgomery, whose IDNR appointment takes effect Monday but won’t be permanent until state Senate confirmation, served as a director and commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation until 2021, according to the governor’s office and a LinkedIn profile. […] IDNR’s previous director, Natalie Phelps Finnie, departed at the end of June and was replaced by an interim director, Renee Snow, according to the governor’s office. The director’s role includes overseeing legislative affairs, land management and mines, among other responsibilities, according to IDNR.

* WGN | Illinois governor signs law setting new age and licensing rules for e-bike riders: Under the legislation, riders of e-bikes capable of reaching 20 mph must be at least 15 years old. For bikes that top out at 28 mph, riders must be at least 16 years old. E-bikes that travel faster than 28 mph face additional regulatory requirements. Those higher-speed vehicles must be titled and registered, and riders must possess a valid driver’s license and insurance.

* Daily Herald | ‘It’s all teed up’: Dillard’s last stop as RTA chief comes as new agency rises: “Good things are happening, the bad times are behind us,” Dillard added, noting ridership has climbed by 5 million in the last 14 months. “It’s all teed up very well, and now NITA must execute.” Twenty NITA board members will convene Sept. 10, when they are expected to select a chair. Meanwhile, RTA Executive Director Leanne Redden’s contract runs out at the start of 2027, and she’s not expected to stay, sources said.

*** Chicago ***

* Tribune | Chicago mayoral candidates talking tough on crime despite steep drop in homicides: The city experienced a historic peak of 719 homicides in 2022, a year before Johnson took office, and ended last year with 416, according to Chicago police statistics. In the same time, shootings plunged 48%, robberies 35% and car thefts 20% — and those levels have generally improved or held this year. It’s part of a broader trend that has seen violent crime plummet in cities across the U.S. in recent years, but one Johnson has regularly attributed to his own choices.

* Chalkbeat Chicago | Jennifer Custer drops out of race for Chicago school board president: In a statement, she said she filed paperwork Thursday with the Chicago Board of Elections to withdraw. Custer was the only candidate in the race whose petition signatures were not challenged. “I am exiting because it became abundantly clear that various special interests are prepared to spend millions of dollars in this race,” she wrote in the statement. “Going up against that kind of spending in our political system creates an uphill battle that I ultimately decided I did not want to put my family, endorsers, volunteers, and supporters through.”

* WGN | Exclusive: Chicago School Board president candidate responds to abuse allegations: In an exclusive interview with WGN’s The Point, candidate for Chicago School Board President Victor Henderson denies injuring his children or putting his hands on his ex-wife. “It never went too far,” Henderson said Wednesday from his downtown law office. “(The discipline) was always age-appropriate,” said Henderson, adding, “I never, ever touched my wife. Never. That didn’t happen.”

* WBEZ | CPS wins back millions in federal funding after Trump administration settles lawsuit: Chicago Public Schools has won back millions of dollars in federal grants that top education officials took away after concluding that the school district had violated students’ civil rights by having a Black Student Success Plan and policies that support transgender students. CPS sued the federal government in March alleging that the grants were taken away without following the process required by law. That case was settled on Thursday after the U.S. Department of Education agreed to return the funds by Friday, according to a court document dismissing the case.

* Chalkbeat Chicago | Chicago school board delays proposal to steer more dollars to Chicago Arts High School: District officials have balked at the proposal. In an internal memo obtained by Chalkbeat, Superintendent Macquline King told board members that CPS had already delivered on its promise to preserve the conservatory model “to the greatest extent practicable.” She noted that other arts high schools received $53,000 on average for their arts programming this year. And even with the backing of a now-dissolved foundation that actively fundraised for the school, its previous model had ultimately proved unsustainable, King wrote.

* Capitol News Illinois | Chicago officials raised concerns about South Chicago Chapel a year before discovery of 56 decomposing bodies, records show: Yet when a city inspector visited the business two days after the first complaint, he spent 20 minutes on the scene, took a few photos, including one of an empty gurney in the funeral home’s parking lot, dismissed the complaint after he was told that the smell came from a burning garbage can outside — and gave no indication in his 67-word narrative that he tried to go inside, according to the previously unreported document, obtained by Illinois Answers Project and Capitol News Illinois.

* Block Club | Back In Chicago, Former Loretto Hospital Executive Faces Embezzlement Charges: The former chief financial officer of Loretto Hospital is being detained at the federal correctional facility Downtown after spending two years overseas evading a pair of indictments charging him with scamming the hospital and the government. Ahmed appeared in court Friday and pleaded not guilty to charges that he embezzled $15 million from the cash-strapped Loretto, a struggling safety-net medical center in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side.

* Tribune | Late payments threaten business license of Chicago body removal contractor: The small funeral home company that holds the lucrative contract for the city’s body removal services may soon be dissolved due to its failure to pay business license fees to the state — a potential default on the $4.4 million contract that remains at the center of an ongoing lawsuit. Records from the Illinois secretary of state’s office show Wallace-Harrison Funeral Home Inc. provided an “unacceptable payment” to the state in late July. If the payment is not resolved within 60 days, “the entity is subject to involuntary dissolution,” according to a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office.

* Crain’s | The O’Hare Flyer may actually be doable. Here’s what stands in the way: A dedicated express service connecting the heart of a major city to its airport would be a first in the U.S., burnishing Chicago’s standing as one of the world’s premier aviation and rail hubs, and giving its mojo a boost. […] The team behind the O’Hare Flyer says the $2.25 billion project will be privately funded, and it expects service to be running within five years. The idea is to use an existing 20-mile route owned by three freight railroads.

*** Cook County and Suburbs ***

* Sun-Times | After lobbyist who’s under 65 got tax breaks for seniors, Cook County made him pay up. Then, it renewed them: Armando W. Saleh, a former Cook County employee turned lobbyist, got more than $20,000 in property tax breaks meant for low-income senior citizens — even though voting records and other government documents say he’s 56 years old. How? Saleh submitted a passport to the Cook County assessor’s office that showed him as being 15 years older, according to a Chicago Sun-Times investigation of the government office.

* ABC Chicago | Kane County groups holding forum on data centers at Elgin Community College: Several Kane County groups are hosting a public forum Monday night on the growing debate over data centers. The discussion will focus on how data centers are regulated, their massive electricity demands, cooling systems and how much control local communities should have.

* Daily Herald | Elk Grove Township panel rejects challenge to 708 board referendum: If approved, the township would impose a new tax to fund grants for organizations that assist people with mental illness, intellectual and developmental disabilities, and substance use disorders. A volunteer panel appointed by the township would distribute the funding.

* WBEZ | All Seasons Orchard in Woodstock to unveil larger-than-life homage to Dolly Parton: The popular seasonal attraction in suburban Woodstock has paved a new course through its crops and on Saturday will unveil its larger-than-life homage to the country superstar who passed away Tuesday at age 80. It’s a 6-acre corn maze carved in Parton’s likeness, with her wide smile and big bouffant part of the course, along with the inscription, “An American Treasure.”

*** Downstate ***

* Capitol News Illinois | Former Sangamon County deputy convicted of murder dies while in custody: Sean Grayson, who was 32, died after serving less than a year of his 20-year prison sentence, defense attorney Dan Fultz said. Grayson shot Sonya Massey, 36, while she was in her kitchen on July 6, 2024, after she called 911 to report a prowler outside her home. Grayson responded with another deputy, whose body camera recorded the events leading up to the shooting. That video showed Grayson shooting the unarmed Massey. […] Grayson’s attorneys confirmed in court documents that doctors diagnosed Grayson with colon cancer in 2023, before Massey’s shooting, but shared that the cancer had then spread to his liver and lungs.

* WGLT | More data center deliberation to come in Bloomington-Normal: Jurgens said a long public forum on data centers this week was just the early part of the discussion about data center policy. “I’m not sure anybody’s mind is necessarily going to be changed, but I think people are open to the information, and I think it’s great to get all that information out there,” said Jurgens.

* KWQC | Pritzker: Illinois is going to ‘fight like hell’ to find buyer for Joslin plant: “Soaring input costs and a historic cattle shortage have driven the Tyson plant in Joslin to close alongside the Tyson plants in Utah and Washington State,” Pritzker said. “My administration is working relentlessly to support laid off workers. Frankly, I picked up the phone, and I called the UFCW leader there and I called the CEO of Tyson and I said, ‘what can we do to get that plant back open again?’ The Tyson folks said, ‘We want to sell the plant. We’ll sell it as soon as possible if we can find a buyer,’ so you know what? The state of Illinois is working like hell to find one.”

* WCBU | Pritzker says state won’t trade farmland for data centers during Central Illinois stop: Gov. JB Pritzker said he doesn’t want to see McLean County farmland given up for data centers. He said the state should be pumping the brakes on the industry rather than rolling out the red carpet for it. “I don’t think specifically that we ought to be giving away or selling off a bunch of farmland for data centers,” Pritzker said in an interview with WGLT during a campaign stop Tuesday in Towanda. He added that Illinois has not pursued the massive hyperscale data center campuses that have landed in states such as Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania.

* WCIA | WPBL facing misuse of company funds allegations in inaugural season: Most of her concerns come down to the league’s Ceo, Keith Stein. Kim said she needs more information on a $60,000 payment made to one of Stein’s companies from the league. She is also concerned Stein might actually be related to one of WPBL’s other investors, something that was not disclosed when the league was founded.

* WCBU | Peoria puts MacArthur Flats senior housing complex back on track: The Peoria City Council on Tuesday voted unanimously to approve an updated redevelopment agreement with Peoria Opportunities Foundation for the MacArthur Senior Flats project on the city’s South Side. Director of Community Development Joe Dulin said a previously approved agreement for the project contained some technical errors regarding legal descriptions.

* Fox23 Now | DuQuoin State Fair kicks off 11-day run in southern Illinois: The 2026 fair opened Friday, Aug. 28, and runs through Labor Day, Sept. 7. The fairgrounds are open daily from 8 a.m. to midnight. Admission is free for both adults and children this year. Opening day festivities include the annual Twilight Parade, which steps off at 6 p.m. Friday. This year’s parade theme is “Miles of Smiles.”

*** National ***

* The Guardian | Trump’s DHS is using an obscure law to secretly snoop on journalists, non-profits and unions: ‘It’s outrageous’ : Less than a month later, the DHS served Google with a different request for the YouTube information. This time, DHS utilized a different method that didn’t require approval from a judge, only a sign-off from a DHS official. It served Google an administrative summons citing an arcane provision of federal law – 19 USC 1509 – dealing with customs imports. The provision gives the DHS broad power to inspect records in order to determine whether duties and taxes are being correctly levied on imported items. It also instructed the recipients of the summons to keep it secret.

* The Telegraph | The country music stars taking on data centres: Tucker is among the cattle ranchers saddling up for a fight. The Telegraph spent an evening with the Country Music Hall of Fame star on her ranch in Burnet County, in central Texas, which sits directly in the path of new ultra-high-voltage transmission lines planned to power, among other things, Texas’s new data centres.

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Good morning!

Monday, Aug 31, 2026 - Posted by Rich Miller

* I love this Dolly cover…

How was August for you?

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Protected: SUBSCRIBERS ONLY - Supplement to today’s edition

Monday, Aug 31, 2026 - Posted by Rich Miller

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