It might be America’s worst teachers’ union—and knowing American teachers’ unions, that’s saying something. Since its takeover by a radical-left-wing, militant caucus in 2010, the Chicago Teachers Union has pushed a radical-left agenda through numerous strike actions and controversially aided the mayoral campaign of Brandon Johnson, a former lobbyist for the union, in the city.

Just last month, the union allegedly used school time to rally students to vote for a tax hike ballot measure supported by the union and now-Mayor Johnson.

Health insurance procedures will look different in Illinois if legislation advancing through Springfield becomes law, but some are concerned about the cost to taxpayers.

In the latest push for health insurance reform, Gov. J.B. Pritzker is taking aim at what he calls “predatory health insurance practices” with his Healthcare Protection Act.

The city and state are in the planning stages to combine Chicago’s legacy homeless shelter system with its system for migrants, according to government officials, and turn it into a unified shelter structure, an idea advocates for the homeless have long championed.

The “One System Initiative” will shift a “permanent shelter management to the non-profit workforce,” Illinois Department of Human Services spokesperson Daisy Contreras said in a statement. Currently, the city contracts with Favorite Healthcare Staffing, whose sizable overtime has contributed to tens of millions of dollars in city payments to the firm staffing the city’s migrant shelters.

With a month-and-a-half left in the General Assembly’s spring session, Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration is readying its proposal to address Illinois’ chronically underfunded pension system.

But the governor this week also acknowledged in the strongest terms yet that any plans to finally get the state on track toward fully funding retirement plans for public school teachers, university employees and state workers could be derailed by a looming legal fight over a 14-year-old law.

Over a trillion periodical cicadas will emerge this spring across much of the United States after over a decade spent underground. Millions of the loud, large insects will appear in Illinois. Nonetheless, it will be a rare event.

While annual cicadas emerge every midsummer in Illinois, 2024 will feature an earlier, once-in-several-lifetimes event when two specific groups of periodical cicadas both appear as early as May. Brood XIII and Brood XIX emerge at intervals that only coincide once every 221 years. And they only occur adjacently in one area: a handful of counties in Illinois.