* Subscribers know more. ICYMI: Republican Darren Bailey treads water in governor’s race as GOP candidates struggle to raise campaign cash. Sun-Times…

- Republican nominee for governor Darren Bailey treaded water in the opening stretch of his rematch against Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker in the Nov. 3 general election, raising about $1.33 million for his campaign fund while spending more than $1.28 million in the three full months since winning the March 17 GOP primary, state campaign finance records show.
- From April through June, the Pritzker campaign spent nearly $6.9 million on airtime and other advertising, records show. The second-largest expenditure was nearly $858,000 on payroll for 49 campaign staffers, several of whom previously worked in the governor’s office under Pritzker.
- Bailey reported spending more than $914,000, roughly two-thirds of the total his campaign raised during the quarter, on direct mail fundraising and related postage. The campaign spent just $39,000 on the salaries of five staffers, plus another $26,000 on “general campaign consulting,” mostly paid to campaign strategist Jose Durbin.

* Related stories…

• CNI: Pritzker spends big in second fundraising quarter as Bailey struggles to keep up

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

*** Isabel’s Top Picks ***

* Tribune | Judges frequently order pretrial detention even when risk score is low: report: During the period observed in the report, Cook County judges ordered detention in nearly 74% of cases before them in that court call, which included most felonies for which prosecutors sought detention, except for homicides and some sex offenses which are heard in a different call. Further, the report found, judges ordered detention in nearly 60% of cases in which a pretrial risk assessment tool deemed defendants low risk for flight or further offenses.

* The Atlantic | Canada’s Forests Will Burn and Burn: Wood-boring pests that flourish in milder climates have swept north and east, through tens of millions of acres. Droughts and dwindling snowpack have stressed the trees. They are ready to burn. Many people simply don’t grasp the sheer magnitude of the boreal forest or what it would take to manage fires across its enormous area, Jed Kaplan, a professor in the Department of Earth, Energy, and Environment at the University of Calgary, told me: “You can’t control these fires. You cannot put personnel, fire engines, over an area that is the size of the entire American South, or something like that. It’s just way too big of an area.”

*** Statehouse News ***

* Fox Chicago | Not Live: Gov. J.B. Pritzker : FOX Chicago’s Lauren Scafidi sits down with Governor JB Pritzker for a candid 43-minute conversation you won’t see on the nightly news. From his childhood bedroom posters and high school theater days to deep-dish debates, the future of the Chicago Bears, passing out shots of Malört and taking Wes Moore to Wiener Circle, meet the human side of “JB.”

* Press release | Illinois’s 2026 Prevailing Wage Rates Published: Each year, IDOL determines prevailing wage rates by reviewing total compensation—including hourly base wages and annualized fringe benefits—commonly paid to workers performing similar work on public works projects within each locality. […] To view the 2026 prevailing wage rates by county and construction trade, visit the Illinois Department of Labor’s Prevailing Wage Act Rates webpage.

* WAND | Giannoulias, advocates call on Pritzker to sign auto insurance reform plan: Senate Bill 714 could ban insurance companies from increasing auto premiums by more than 10% without notifying consumers 30 days before their renewal date. The Illinois Department of Insurance would also be responsible for ensuring rates are fairer. “For years, Illinois families have watched their auto insurance premiums climb higher and higher even when they had spotless driving records, never filed a claim and did everything right,” Giannoulias said Thursday.

* Obit: Long-time lobbyist Thomas Michael Patrick Nolan has died:

*** Chicago ***

* Tribune | Layoffs on table due to budget shortfall, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson administration officials say: While acknowledging the final shortfall wouldn’t firm up until next month, Budget Director Annette Guzman told aldermen at a Budget Committee meeting that they would need to find fresh cuts or revenues in order to close it before the end of the year. […] “If we’re looking at a $90 million gap, that equates to about 2,000 city jobs on the corporate fund, to be exact,” Guzman said, affecting workers at Streets and Sanitation, the Department of Transportation, and especially, the Chicago Police Department. “There’s no way to do it without hitting CPD. They’re the highest wage earners in the city and they also, percentage wise, have one of the largest workforces.”

* Bolts | Chicago Police Promised to ‘Fix’ Secret Traffic Stops. A Year Later, the Problem Has Only Gotten Worse: In the two years since Reed’s death, the number of traffic stops by Chicago police each month has dropped by tens of thousands, and the department has proposed a traffic stop policy that imposes some restrictions on searching drivers but still allows officers to make stops for minor issues such as registration violations in search of evidence of unrelated crimes. Amid these changes, however, Chicago police have continued to conduct hundreds of thousands of off-the-books traffic stops, failing to disclose them to a state oversight agency in violation of Illinois law, Bolts and Injustice Watch have found.

* Sun-Times | City Council deadline to accept or reject parking meter deal extended until Sept. 30: Finance Committee Chair Pat Dowell (3rd) told her colleagues late Wednesday she was informed that the revised July 24 deadline had been extended for nine weeks by Mark Rotatori, a partner at Jones Day, the law firm retained by the Law Department to advise the City Council on the offer from Stonepeak Partners.

* Sun-Times | Chicago’s top mayoral aides pull back on promise to make second half of pension advance in full: Acting Chief Financial Officer Steve Mahr said the city is conducting an analysis to determine when and how much it can afford to pay of the $130 million that remains on the $260 million pension advance at the center of the budget battle.

* Bloomberg | Bank of America Exits Chicago Plan to Sell Overdue Parking Debt: Bank of America is no longer working with Chicago on the sale of debt owed to the city from fines and fees, and officials have been unable to advance the deal so far this year, according to the mayor’s office. The third-largest US city has been trying to sell about $1 billion in outstanding debt such as overdue parking tickets. Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration had selected Bank of America as the placement agent for the sale and began talks about the work last month. Chicago now is “actively evaluating alternative options,” according to a July 7 letter from Comptroller Michael Belsky to the city council.

* Tribune | Illinois elections officer recommends Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez’s name not be on 4th District ballot: A hearing officer is recommending the Illinois State Board of Elections block independent candidate Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez from the ballot in the 4th Congressional District contest to succeed retiring U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García. The recommendation determined Sigcho-Lopez did not gather enough valid signatures to make the November ballot. The decision is not final, but undermines Sigcho-Lopez’s candidacy just days after another election judge made a similar recommendation for fellow independent candidate Mayra Macías.

* Block Club Chicago | Will City Council Scale Back Mayor’s Proposed Protections For Renters?: Fair and Accountable Illinois Rental Ordinance sponsors — which include 16 of the 31 members of the coalition that blocked Johnson’s budget — argued Johnson’s proposal would increase the cost of owning and developing rental housing, expenses they said would ultimately be passed on to tenants through higher rents. Instead, the coalition believes the Fair and Accountable Illinois Rental Ordinance would preserve protections against abusive landlords while eliminating relocation fees and other requirements they believe could discourage building and hurt the city’s housing supply.

* ABC Chicago | Chicago air quality remains at hazardous levels from Canadian wildfire smoke: The smoke and haze blanketing the Chicago area is causing low visibility and could create some delays here at O’Hare Airport. The unhealthy conditions are not only disrupting travel, but also interrupting many outdoor activities. The pollution forced several major events in the city to be rescheduled, including a Millennium Park summer music series performance and the Chicago Fire match at Soldier Field.

* ABC Chicago | Mag Mile comeback: Magnificent Mile vacancy rates decline as new retailers fuel comeback: Vacancy rates on the Magnificent Mile have fallen from pandemic-era highs as new retailers, attractions and investments continue to fill storefronts along North Michigan Avenue, according to data analyzed by the I-Team and industry reports. Empty storefronts have been a persistent challenge for downtown Chicago in recent years, with politicians and real estate experts attributing the problem to the pandemic, oversized retail spaces in an increasingly online marketplace, high property taxes and, according to some, crime concerns.

* WBEZ | Spending in Chicago school board election exceeds $1.6 million as limits lift in race for board president: With attorney Victor Henderson loaning $500,000 to his own campaign, the race to lead the city’s first fully elected school board has no donation limits. Super PACs gearing up to get involved in the board elections haven’t started spending big yet.

* NBC Chicago | Trump admin defends ICE detention of 22-year-old woman: The Trump administration is responding to the case of a young woman detained in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility as her Chicago-based lawyer is fighting to secure her release. Maria Rosa Lopez was 17 years old when she fled El Salvador alone and came to the U.S. in 2021, eventually settling in Illinois. The federal government granted her Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, or SIJ status, a protection Congress created in 1990 for abused, abandoned and neglected children.

* Tribune | New play about Chicago Mayor Harold Washington is coming to Lookingglass Theatre: Titled “Prince Hal,” a riff on a famous character in William Shakespeare’s “Henry IV,” the drama by J. Nicole Brooks will portray Washington as a reluctant candidate for greatness who is buoyed by finding supporters among everyday Chicagoans in a West Loop tavern, a plot that suggests parallels with the Shakespeare history play. Brooks, a Chicago-based actor, writer and director, previously wrote “Her Honor, Jane Byrne.” “Prince Hal,” slated for the late summer of 2027, is the second in a planned trilogy for Lookingglass about Chicago mayors. Washington, a Democrat, was the 51st mayor of Chicago from 1983 until his death in 1987.

*** Cook County and Suburbs ***

* Daily Herald | And now, there’s 15 — Preckwinkle explains NITA choices as new transit board coalesces: “I thought it was important to bring a variety of perspectives and experience to the board that would be useful in their deliberations and efforts to implement a single cohesive system instead of a siloed one we have now,” Preckwinkle told the Daily Herald. Gov. JB Pritzker has yet to announce his five choices for the 20-member board that will oversee Metra, Pace and the CTA. NITA will replace the Regional Transportation Authority starting Sept. 1 as a result of transit reform legislation passed in 2025.

* Cook County Record | Judge: No civil right for girls-only bathrooms at schools:A federal judge has shut down a teenage girl’s bathroom access lawsuit against a a southwest suburban school district, saying the district didn’t violate female students’ civil rights by allowing biologically male transgender students to use the girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms and other sex-segregated facilities when the young woman was a student at Bolingbrook High School. U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman delivered the ruling on July 13 in Chicago federal court, agreeing to the request from the Valley View Community Unit School District 365U to dismiss the lawsuit lodged by the student, identified only as F.F., and her father, James Ellard Fisher.

* PJ Star | Major financial corporation announces more layoffs in Illinois : Capital One Financial has announced plans to lay off more workers in Illinois due to financial restructuring. The company reported its intention to lay off at least 276 more workers from its Riverwoods site, according to a supplemental Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification on June 2. The layoffs are expected to take place between Aug. 6 and Sept. 4, according to information submitted to the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.

* Tribune | Ex-Summit police chief gets three years in prison in shakedown scheme: Former Summit police Chief John Kosmowski has been sentenced to three years in federal prison for taking a bribe from a local bar owner in exchange for assisting with a liquor license transfer. Kosmowski, 58, was convicted by a jury last year of conspiracy, bribery and obstruction of justice. U.S. District Judge Steven Seeger handed down the 36-month sentence on Wednesday. He was ordered to report to prison on Oct. 15.

* Daily Herald | ‘Unconscionable breach of trust’: District 70 fires teacher accused of possession of child sex abuse materials: tenured Libertyville Elementary District 70 teacher facing charges related to possession of child sexual abuse materials was fired Tuesday by the school board. Acting on the recommendation of Superintendent Rebecca Jenkins, the board voted unanimously to dismiss Marshall Sheffer, an 18-year veteran of the district who taught at Highland Middle School. Shaffer has 17 days to request a hearing through the Illinois State Board of Education. He is suspended without pay until that time passes or a hearing is held and concluded.

* CBS Chicago | Renee Messelin, first Black woman soldier to serve overseas, honored at Lincoln Cemetery memorial: A powerful ceremony on Thursday honored World War I veteran Renee Messelin, the first Black woman soldier to serve overseas for the U.S. military. Some connections are instant. Others take a little more time. Carolyn Timbie traveled from New Hampshire to Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Illinois for a connection two generations in the making. Messelin served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps in World War I. She was one of more than 280 who women answered the call to serve by connecting calls for the U.S. Army in France.

*** Downstate ***

* Effingham Daily News | Help for tornado victims questioned as low-interest disaster loans become available: A preliminary assessment by the Effingham County Emergency Management Agency revealed 30 homes were a total loss and 29 were heavily damaged. […] Effingham County Board Chairman Joshua Douthit said he met recently with U.S. Rep. Mike Bost and county leaders to assess whether they meet the thresholds for assistance. The county is applying for a grant to get reimbursed for cleanup and repairs related to the tornado. However, Douthit pointed out that this support does not extend to citizens.

* WGLT | Normal plans to partner with Bloomington on data center forum: Reece said their experience has been helpful with Bloomington giving Normal an opportunity to participate in the city’s public forum on Aug. 26 at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts. “We want to work together with the City of Bloomington, and I appreciate their willingness to allow us to participate with their August community forum,” said Reece. “So, our planning and zoning staff has worked with the City of Bloomington to line up details for speakers and what that forum can look like.”

* WGLT | McLean County loans Hudson $81,000 to cover property tax error: The error occurred when the McLean County Clerk’s office incorrectly taxed 612 nearby properties as if they were in located in the village. That spread the bill among more properties, meaning properties within the village didn’t pay enough. Hudson Mayor Mark Kotte thanked board members for the loan. “It basically made 50% of the property tax a loss to the village, and to the village of Hudson. That is quite a bit of money. We would have had to make some drastic changes if we didn’t get that money this year,” he said.

* WCIA | $375K coming to Champaign, Vermilion Co. libraries: Illinois Secretary of State and State Librarian Alexi Giannoulias previously announced that the money will be given out through three different grants. And according to State Senator Paul Faraci (D-Champaign), 13 public libraries and school districts across Champaign and Vermilion counties will get more than $375,000 from those grants.

* WCIA | Champaign road currently closed due to pavement buckling: In a press release Thursday, the City of Champaign said Olympian Drive is being temporarily closed between Market Street and Apollo Drive. Public Works crews are currently installing traffic control devices to establish a detour via Apollo Drive, Mercury Drive and Market Street back to Olympian Drive. Pavement repairs are set to begin as soon as a contractor becomes available to complete the work, and the road is set to reopen once the repairs are finished.

*** National ***

* AP | Trump uses primetime address to raise doubts about U.S. elections ahead of midterms: A twice-elected president complained about his one personal defeat, alleged a cover-up by officials in his own first administration and surfaced claims about countries attempting to harm his own prospects while staying silent on steps taken by other nations to boost him. Trump used the remarks to justify his push to pass a strict voter ID bill in Congress that has not advanced because it lacks enough support from Republicans. “America is back and doing really well, but we still have a major challenge that must be urgently addressed, because no country can be great without fair and honest elections,” he said.

* The Boston Globe | Trump administration limits student visas to four years, changing longstanding policy: The new rule caps visa holders’ duration of stay at four years unless they receive an extension from US Citizenship and Immigration Services, amending a decades-old policy that said as long as the students made progress toward their degree or research purpose, there was no defined expiration date. The new rule, which also restricts the international students’ ability to transfer schools or change majors without approval in their first year, will go into effect in mid-September.

* WRAL | Ghost gun company ordered to pay $100M in the death of a Kentucky teen in historic verdict: In a wrongful-death lawsuit, the family of Henry Willis said he was just 18 when he purchased the Glock G19 pistol “build kit” from Husky Armory’s website in 2023. He assembled the handgun in his garage — telling his father it was a transistor radio — and used it to end his life six days later. Everytown Law, which represented the family, said the $104.2 million payout was the largest ever reached against a gun seller, surpassing the $73 million settlement awarded to the families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting by the rifle-maker Remington.

* CNBC | These are America’s 10 worst states to live in for 2026: With just 779 licensed childcare facilities in a state with nearly 7 million people, Indiana finishes at the bottom for childcare availability on a per capita basis. And what is available is expensive, eating up 15% of the median income for a household with two working parents in the Hoosier State. In June, Indiana’s childcare agency unveiled a sweeping new policy proposal aimed at expanding access by, among other things, easing licensing requirements. Critics allege the proposal sacrifices quality.