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* Tribune…
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration filed another lawsuit Monday against President Donald Trump’s administration, this time in a bid to protect threatened emergency preparedness funding.
The city’s federal suit, filed Monday, alleges the Department of Homeland Security has tied long-standing funding that pays for cybersecurity tools, hazmat suits, first-responder salaries and more to “unlawful conditions” outlawing the city’s “diversity, equity and inclusion” efforts.
Those conditions would require the city to certify that it does not operate “programs that advance or promote DEI, DEIA, or discriminatory equity ideology,” according to grant guidelines implemented by DHS in April.
The amount at stake is relatively small, as Chicago could lose up to $10 million next year, according to Johnson spokesperson Cassio Mendoza. But the city has pledged to draw a line against Trump attempts to target such equity standards, and leading the fight helps Johnson burnish his credentials as a bulwark against the federal government’s moves to cut funding to Democratic-led institutions.
For working families across our state, delivery is a lifeline, NOT a luxury. From groceries and meals to essential household items, people from all walks of life depend on delivery services to make ends meet, save time, and stay safe.
A new delivery tax would hit seniors, individuals with disabilities, and working parents juggling multiple responsibilities. It’s a burden Illinois families simply cannot bear.
Learn more today about how a delivery tax could impact your household.
* GovAct and Governors Safeguarding Democracy….
As the Trump Administration asks the Supreme Court to issue a stay through the emergency docket in the State of Illinois’ challenge to the President’s federalization of the National Guard. In response, GovAct and Governors Safeguarding Democracy have filed an amicus on behalf of 26 former governors from both parties, arguing for the Court to uphold state sovereignty under the Constitution.
Legal Timeline:
GovAct first filed the amicus brief at the 9th Circuit, in support of California’s motion for a rehearing en banc of the decision to grant an administrative stay to the lower courts TRO. Several months later, GovAct filed another amicus brief at the 9th circuit for their merits consideration of whether to stay the preliminary injunction.
GovAct then filed a brief at the district court in support of Illinois’ motion for a TRO. When the government requested a stay from the 7th Circuit, GovAct then filed a brief at the 7th Circuit against the government’s request for a stay. The 7th Circuit declined to stay the district court’s TRO, and the Government asked the Supreme Court to issue a stay through the emergency docket. GovAct is now filing a brief against this request for a stay from the Supreme Court.
Former Governors signing the brief include:
Jerry Brown (CA-D); Steve Bullock (MT-D); Arne Carlson (MN-R); Mark Dayton (MN-D); Jim Doyle (WI-D); Parris Glendening (MD-D); Jennifer Granholm (MI-D); Bill Graves (KS-R); Christine Gregoire (WA-D); Jay Inslee (WA-D); Tony Knowles (AK-D); Gary Locke (WA-D); Terry McAuliffe (VA-D); Janet Napolitano (AZ-D); Martin O’Malley (MD-D); Deval Patrick (MA-D); Marc Racicot (MT-R); Bill Ritter Jr. (CO-D); Kathleen Sebelius (KS-D); Steve Sisolak (NV-D); Eliot Spitzer (NY-D); Ted Strickland (OH-D); Tom Vilsack (IA-D); Bill Weld (MA-R); Christine Todd Whitman (NJ-R); and Tom Wolf (PA-D).
Click here for the full amicus brief.
* WCIA | SNAP benefits will soon be tied to error rates. These states are in the biggest trouble: If a state is unable to get its error rate below the 6% threshold in time, it will need to cover between 5% and 15% of the cost of SNAP benefits. Those with higher error rates generally must pay more, but states with especially high mistake rates will have as late as 2030 to comply. As a result of the cost shift, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that some states will end up reducing or eliminating SNAP benefits for about 300,000 people. Subsidies through child nutrition programs could also decrease for about 96,000 children.
* Politico | Why did State Farm hike rates in a state with no huge disasters?: Gov. JB Pritzker (D) said the “unfair” price hike was based on projected catastrophe losses that were “entirely inconsistent” with the state Department of Insurance projections. He accused State Farm of using Illinois ratepayers to make up losses from disasters in other states and called for lawmakers to add “commonsense consumer protection” to its insurance rules.
* Politico | What Trump Is Really Up to in Chicago, According to JB Pritzker: Pritzker may not have wanted a battle with the White House, but Trump’s decision to send National Guard troops over the governor’s objections to buttress an increasingly controversial ICE enforcement operation is certainly raising Pritzker’s profile. That’s particularly true as Democrats are desperate to find a path back to relevance after being shut out of power in Washington. In the interview, Pritzker said Democrats should be able to fight for lower health care premiums in a shutdown battle while also protecting American democracy from a Trumpian power grab.
* Crain’s | Former longtime Illinois GOP leader asking near $7M for lakefront New Buffalo home: Lee Daniels, a former DuPage County Republican legislator whose three-decade career in Springfield included one term as speaker of the house and nine as minority leader, is asking nearly $7 million for his home in New Buffalo, Michigan.
* Sun-Times | Chicago sues, challenging Trump’s anti-diversity requirements in federal anti-terrorism grants: The target of the new lawsuit filed Monday in federal court in Chicago is Trump’s decision to condition U.S. Department of Homeland Security grants on a city’s opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion in hiring and contracting. The Trump administration’s conditions to tens of millions of dollars in federal funding would require Chicago and other cities to certify in advance that they do not have “programs that advance or promote DEI, DEIA, or discriminatory equity ideology.”
* Chalkbeat Chicago | Chicago schools considering $60 million, four-year contract to track technology: The move comes after late 2022 reporting by Chalkbeat and WBEZ and an early 2024 report by the district’s inspector general that showed school and district officials were losing track of thousands of computers and other devices after a pandemic-era technology spending spree. That report highlighted what the watchdog deemed unacceptable numbers of lost devices and lack of accountability in safeguarding them.
* Sun-Times | Some Mexican immigrants are making plans to leave Chicago before ICE deports them: But the decision to go back to Mexico after years — or in some cases, decades — in the United States isn’t as simple as packing up a suitcase and buying a plane ticket. It’s why Castro has been hosting free online workshops to help people understand and navigate the practical steps and emotional aspects of starting over.
* South Side Weekly | A Tragic Homecoming For Man Killed By ICE Agents In Franklin Park: The Mexican Consulate in Chicago paid for the flight. The state covered the transport from Guadalajara. The municipality paid for the burial. Cabrera said Villegas González’ return to Michoacán was one among many. Each year, hundreds of bodies are flown back to Michoacán from U.S. cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and Houston. In 2025, at least 28 remains of Michoacanos who died in the United States have been repatriated to the state. Some cases draw public attention, he said, but many others remain private at the families’ request.
* Block Club | Border Patrol Arrests 11 Rideshare Drivers At O’Hare Parking Lot: Border Patrol agents made 11 arrests of undocumented immigrants at O’Hare parking lots Saturday, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary of public affairs Tricia McLaughlin said. The arrests were made in a lot designated for drivers using rideshare platforms like Uber and Lyft, according to CBS Chicago. Homeland Security did not provide names of those arrested, but said those detained are from countries including Colombia, Mexico, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Poland, Russia and Ukraine, the spokesperson said. Those arrested had criminal histories including domestic battery and driving while intoxicated, according to McLaughlin.
* Crain’s | Salt Shed owners eye adjacent property for big expansion: The vision: Build an open-air venue that could accommodate not only larger concerts than the Salt Shed can handle with its roughly 5,500-person limit for outdoor shows, but potentially serve as a destination for neighborhood street festivals and annual music festivals that increasingly run into issues with logistics and costs.
* Chicago Reader | Night time is prime time for releases at the Cook County jail: However, the sheriff’s office provided no hard data establishing a causal link between the Pretrial Fairness Act and the increasing trends of late releases. The office did provide two graphs claiming to “illustrate the increase in time that is largely attributable to PFA-related delays,” but those graphs only demonstrated the increasing trend of late-night releases itself, not how the PFA was causing them. Additionally, as Walberg noted, the PFA took effect in September 2023. The largest jump in releases between 11 PM and 3 AM occurred between 2021 and 2022. The number and share of daytime and early evening releases also fell from 2021 to 2022.
* Sun-Times | Illinois one step closer to keeping invasive carp out of Great Lakes: The fight to keep the carp under control and out of the Great Lakes may be getting easier. Last week, Illinois announced it had acquired land needed to move forward with a $1.15 billion barricade aimed at keeping the voracious Asian carp from entering the channel that connects the Mississippi River Basin with the Great Lakes. The barricade, called the Brandon Road Interbasin Project, is an underwater defense system long hailed as the solution to the carp problem.
* Sun-Times | Lyons mayor hit with federal tax lien of more than $150,000: Lyons Mayor Chris Getty was investigated but not charged in a federal corruption investigation that swept through Chicago and numerous suburbs in recent years. Now he faces new trouble: a federal lien demanding he cough up more than $150,000 in unpaid income taxes. Getty says the tax demand from the Internal Revenue Service has nothing to do with the criminal probe — which he insists is over as it pertains to him, with no wrongdoing found — but rather his divorce case. “The divorce triggered the tax liability,” Getty said. “I had to sell an asset,” which he declined to identify but said it “created a tax burden on myself.”
* WGN | Metra Electric service to be impacted on 3 weekends due to work associated with South Shore Line expansion: Metra Electric service will be impacted on three weekends in late October and early November due to construction work associated with the South Shore Line’s expansion plans, Metra said in a news release Monday. The project is part of a $650 million expansion of the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District’s South Shore service and is necessary to expand capacity north of 18th street to accommodate additional South Shore trains, according to the release.
* Lake County News-Sun | Almost 15K attend Lake County ‘No Kings’ rallies: ‘Many see our Constitution at risk’: The Crosses and Bush were among more than 14,500 people at “No Kings” rallies demonstrating for their concept of American principles at events Saturday in Gurnee, Highland Park and Buffalo Grove, criticizing what many consider the growing authoritarianism of President Donald Trump and his administration. Demonstrators lined three blocks of Grand Avenue on both sides of the street, as well as the parkway separating the roadway from the sidewalk. They also stood holding their signs along a block on both sides of Hunt Club Road.
* Tribune | ‘No Kings’ in La Grange protest draws thousands: ‘It’s a great turnout’: Earlier this year, Trump signed three executive orders seeking to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the public and private sectors. DEI helps minorities, she said. Branch said the rally “brings back memories from the 1960s.” “I lived in the South, in Mississippi, during most of the ‘60s, so I’m very familiar with what we have to fight for,” she said, recalling the Civil Rights movement. “It was hard work,” she said. “That’s why we are here today. We’re not going to sleep on this.”
* WAND | Trial Blog | Court proceedings begin in Day 1 of Sean Grayson Murder Trial: Of the 12 jurors in the second section, two were chosen to stay as the jury. The two jurors from the first round that were held, were also officially added to the jury. This brings the jury total up to eight. Seven of the jurors from the second round were dismissed. Three jurors from the second section will remain potential jurors, although they were not selected in this round.
* Capitol City Now | “There’s nothing political about a veterans’ home”: State Rep. Kyle Moore (R-Quincy), the city’s mayor during the crisis, said, “We were concerned that there were politicians on both sides of the aisle who called for permanently closing this Quincy veterans’ home,” in place since 1886 “This has been the biggest and most important building project in our Rebuild Illinois capital construction program, said the governor, adding, “There’s nothing political about a veterans’ home.”
* SJ-R | Manufacturing company shutting down Illinois facility, laying off 70 workers: Hassell said production will be transitioned to other U.S.-based facilities as part of a broader strategy to streamline operations. Employees at the Princeton facility will have the opportunity to apply for open positions at Ingersoll-Rand’s Alsip, Illinois, facility or its customer center in Elmhurst, Illinois.
* WCIA | Carle trick-or-treat event reunites nurses with former patients: All the kids in costumes were former patients in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), and the event gives nurses a chance to see how far the kids have come since they left the hospital as babies. […] It was the second year Carle has hosted the event since it returned after the COVID-19 pandemic and they hope to continue the tradition.
* Popular Information | ICE boosts weapons spending 700%: New spending in the small arms category from January 20, 2025, the day Trump was inaugurated, through October 18, totaled $71,515,762. Most of the spending was on guns and armor, but there have also been significant purchases of chemical weapons and “guided missile warheads and explosive components.” On September 29, 2025, ICE made a $9,098,590 purchase from Geissele Automatics, which sells semi-automatic and automatic rifles. The total spending by ICE in the small arms category between January 20 and October 18, 2024, was $9,715,843.
* IPM Newsroom | Drought is shrinking Mississippi River levels — again. That’s a big problem for farmers: The Mississippi River is again facing low water levels — pushing up barge rate and making it more expensive for farmers to export crops and import fertilizer. Stretched out over 2,000 miles, the Mississippi is essential for farmers to sell their crops. Nearly half of all U.S. corn, soybeans and wheat exports travel down the waterway to the Gulf of Mexico. Decreased rainfall starting late this summer shrunk the Ohio River, the main water source of the Mississippi. Before that, Mike Steenhoek, director of Iowa-based Soy Transportation Coalition, was hoping the river could avoid a fourth consecutive year of low water levels.
* Chalkbeat | A new study confirms a hunch: School cell phone bans can boost test scores: In the second year of the ban, average test scores on the higher-stakes spring test went up by 1.1 percentiles more in the schools where students previously used their phones a lot, compared with low-activity schools. The results were more significant for middle and high school students, and boys seemed to benefit more than girls. But the gains came with tradeoffs. Suspensions went up in the first year of the ban, the study found, especially for Black boys. And white students saw greater test score growth than Black students.
* WIRED | What the Huge AWS Outage Reveals About the Internet: The outages stemmed from Amazon’s DynamoDB database application programming interfaces in US-EAST-1, and AWS said in status updates that the problem was specifically related to DNS resolution issues. The “domain name system” is a foundational internet service that essentially acts as an automatic phonebook lookup to translate web URLs like www.wired.com into numeric server IP addresses so web browsers show users the right content. DNS resolution issues occur when DNS servers aren’t accurately connecting these dots and, to keep with the phonebook analogy, are providing the wrong numbers for a given name, or vice versa.
posted by Isabel Miller
Monday, Oct 20, 25 @ 2:37 pm
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Pat Quinn couldn’t sign this amicus brief?
Comment by Three Dimensional Checkers Monday, Oct 20, 25 @ 2:53 pm
Unsurprising, but the federal courts have given the go-ahead to allow the Trump administration to deploy federal troops in Portland, saying President has ability to use them to execute the law. Hopeful, but doubtful, the SCOTUS sees it the way the appeals court did here in Illinois.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-appeals-court-allows-trump-send-troops-portland-oregon-2025-10-20/?link_source=ta_bluesky_link&taid=68f68c960d4a7f00015e69e3&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=bluesky
Comment by TreeFiddy Monday, Oct 20, 25 @ 3:04 pm
=Pat Quinn couldn’t sign this amicus brief?
Who?
Comment by ArchPundit Monday, Oct 20, 25 @ 3:41 pm
= He accused State Farm of using Illinois ratepayers to make up losses from disasters in other states=
Hail storms don’t make headlines - but they result in massive Home owners and auto damage claims…
“Severe convective storms resulted in $60 billion in losses in 2024, according to the Insurance Information Institute, and insurers blamed hail as one reason for recent hikes to homeowners’ insurance rates in Illinois”
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12082025/illinois-hail-damage-insurance-rates/
Comment by Think again Monday, Oct 20, 25 @ 3:43 pm