14 Jul 2025

Can Pritzker Argue His Worth by Reducing SNAP Over-Payments and Blunting SNAP Benefit Penalties?

By Rich Miller

The costs to Illinois’ government because of the new Republican congressional budget-reconciliation law will be steep. However, the state has some time to prepare itself, and possible Democratic gains in the U.S. House and Senate next year might be able to reverse or mitigate some of the steepest cuts to food-security and health-care programs before the vast majority of them take effect after the 2026 elections.

30 Jun 2025

Try One Election at a Time

By Rich Miller

“I ran for governor in 2018 to change our story,” Governor JB Pritzker told a Chicago crowd on Thursday as he announced his bid for a third term. “I ran for governor in 2022 to keep telling our story. And I am running for governor in 2026 to protect our story.”

23 Jun 2025

Illinois House Dems Put Aside Their Assassination Fears Long Enough to Discuss Michael Madigan

By Rich Miller

I reached out last week to several members of the “19” – the Democratic House members who refused to vote to re-elect House Speaker Michael Madigan in 2021, thereby forcing him into retirement. I asked for their reaction to Madigan’s 90-month federal prison sentence handed down a few days earlier. Because it was a holiday (Father’s Day), I didn’t expect to hear much back.

16 Jun 2025

One Governor Does Not a Firewall Make ... but Perhaps Two Do

By Rich Miller

As I write this, multiple news outlets have reported that the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is preparing to deploy its Special Response Teams to five major U.S. cities, including Chicago, in the very near future. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s chief of staff Cristina Pacione-Zayas told reporters last week: “There will be tactical teams, mini-tanks, other tools they use in which they plan to do raids, as we saw in Los Angeles.”

09 Jun 2025

Ambitious Illinois Lobbyists Need Only Know When Lethargic Last-Minute Lawmakers Take Their Coffee

By Rich Miller

I asked Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch last week about the failure to pass an omnibus energy bill (the Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act) during the just-ended spring legislative session.

02 Jun 2025

Alexi Giannoulias and Susana Mendoza Both Want the Mayoralty, But Neither Wants to Be the First to Admit It

By Rich Miller

For quite a while now, most folks in politics have assumed that Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias and Comptroller Susana Mendoza will probably run for mayor of Chicago in 2027. The incumbent Brandon Johnson is spectacularly unpopular, and a real hunger is developing in the city (again) for new leadership.

26 May 2025

Illinois Medicaid Coverage After Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill Will Be a Big, Bitter Pill to Swallow

By Rich Miller

The U.S. House’s Energy and Commerce Committee released its recommendations for budget reconciliation early last week. A preliminary review by the Congressional Budget Office projected that, if implemented, at least 8.6 million Americans would lose their Medicaid coverage during the coming decade. That translates to well over 300 thousand Illinoisans.

19 May 2025

It’s Speaker Welch’s Fingerprints on the Blade Sticking Out of Fred Crespo, in Case You’re Wondering

By Rich Miller

House Speaker Chris Welch took the extraordinary actions last week of permanently kicking Representative Fred Crespo (D-Hoffman Estates) out of the House Democratic caucus, stripping him of his legislative staff, removing him from his appropriations committee chair’s position, and booting him from the bicameral Legislative Audit Commission.

12 May 2025

Pritzker Reiterates: Now’s Not the Time for Budgeteers to Make It Rain

By Rich Miller

I spent some time talking with a top legislative budget negotiator last week who said rank-and-file legislators will very soon have to come to terms with a state budget environment unlike anything many have ever seen before.

05 May 2025

A Couple of Three Things Pritzker Should Know Should He Take the Fight to Trump

By Rich Miller

During a rip-roaring speech in New Hampshire last week, Governor JB Pritzker called for mass national protests and “disruption,” assailed “do-nothing” Democrats for their “simpering timidity,” and labeled President Donald Trump a “madman” who cannot be reasoned with. The Jewish Ukrainian-American governor said of Trump: “Stop tearing down the Constitution in the name of my ancestors. Do not claim that your authoritarian power-grabs are about anti-Semitism. When you destroy social justice, you are disparaging the very foundation of Judaism.”

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