State Rep. David McSweeney (R-Barrington Hills) has a solution for a group of billionaires – Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s relative Liesel Pritzker Simmons among them – pleading with the presidential candidates to tax them more.

The prayers of the Cottrell family were answered Friday morning when Jose Rodriguez, 27, a resident of Bloomington who is in the country illegally, the alleged driver of a van that struck and killed 39-year-old Corey Cottrell of Normal on June 22, showed up for his arraignment.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has confirmed to Prairie State Wire that Jose Rodriguez, who struck and killed Corey Cottrell, 39, of Normal on June 22, is in the United States illegally. Border Patrol agents, in fact, issued the 27-year-old from Honduras an expedited removal order all the way back on April 17, 2013, according to a statement from ICE.

The Cottrell family is praying for one small measure of relief from staggering grief: the prosecution of the man charged with running a red light in Bloomington on June 22 and killing 39-year-old Corey Cottrell of Normal.

Dirty needles littering Illinois sidewalks and playgrounds will almost certainly be one of the side effects of legislation establishing a statewide needle exchange program for intravenous drug users, news reports of exchange programs in other states show.

Legal challenges to the newly minted Reproductive Health Act (RHA) that lifts all restrictions on abortion in Illinois will come in response to narrow applications of the law, Clarke Forsythe, senior counsel at Americans United for Life, told Prairie State Wire.

The recently approved state budget hardly makes Illinois the beacon of fiscal prudence that Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker and legislative leaders claim it is, budgetary analysts at Wirepoints say.

Sometime this summer the U.S. Department of Environmental Protection (EPA) is expected to move the six-county Chicago region from a “moderate” nonattainment category for ground-level ozone (smog) to a “serious” one.

To spike their pensions, New Trier high school teachers, a few years from retirement, had six percent annual bumps in salary written into their 2016-2019 contracts.

State Sen. Jim Oberweis (R-Sugar Grove) believed he had a gentleman’s agreement with his Democratic counterparts to keep a cap in place that prevented teachers from spiking their pensions. And then at the last minute he didn’t.

Senate Republican Leader Bill Brady’s undisclosed financial interests in the gaming industry, and his public celebration with Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker over legislative approval of a massive expansion of gaming in the state, the budget and other controversial bills marks a new low point for the Republican Party.

A pro-life legal expert says the right to abortion would become the “summit” right in Illinois if the Senate, as expected, passes the Reproductive Health Act, which the House approved Tuesday.

House Speaker Michael Madigan used his absolute power over the legislative process to move legislation to the floor on Friday that exchanges Illinois’ constitutionally mandated flat income tax with a progressive tax.

In a recent article critical of a proposed move to a progressive income tax, the Heartland Institute’s Matthew Glans and Lennie Jarratt point out that one of the arguments for the tax is an empty one: revenues the state has been collecting through the current flat tax are among the most robust in the Midwest.

Sports wagering legislation in Springfield punishing two online gaming companies is a blind for protecting the in-state interests of billionaire casino mogul, Neil Bluhm, according to one of the nation’s leading legal experts on gaming.

Illinois is missing out on the economic boom benefiting most states, a fiscal update from the Pew Charitable Trusts shows. Years of overspending and fiscal mismanagement has the state actually contracting in some economic categories.

Under a new policy, the Illinois Department of Revenue (IDOR) has been rejecting income tax credits it verified and accepted in the past, a top certified public accountant (CPA) says. As a result, thousands could overpay on their income taxes.

Legal pressure is ramping up on government unions to abide by a nearly year-old U.S. Supreme Court decision, Janus v. AFSCME, making it unconstitutional for them to deduct dues from the paychecks of non-union employees.

Former GOP Chairman Pat Brady delivered yet another sucker punch to his own party by donating to far-left Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, former State Rep. Jeanne Ives (R-Wheaton) told Prairie State Wire.

A high-ranking official with the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) said that the training and fitness standards for correctional officer trainees have plummeted so far under IDOC Director John Baldwin that he fears for the safety of the guards and inmates in the state’s 35 prisons.