Governor JB Pritzker told reporters not long ago that he was worried about the plateauing COVID-19 hospitalization rate and said he wouldn’t yet lift his statewide mask-mandate. But the governor told me something around the same time during an interview that he hasn’t yet said publicly: He’s most concerned about what may happen in January and February and upbeat about the spring and summer.

The current topsy-turvy political landscape was on full display in the Illinois House and the Senate last week as the chamber debated and passed a bill to slightly narrow the scope of the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act.

Catholic priest and Chicago community activist Michael Pfleger has now twice called on Governor JB Pritzker to declare a “state of emergency” over his city’s notorious gun-violence problems.

At the end of August, after the Illinois Senate had been unable to find a consensus on the massive climate/energy bill, and punted the issue to the House, I asked Senate President Don Harmon during a press conference why he hadn’t addressed Governor JB Pritzker’s list of problems, legal and otherwise, with the Senate’s proposal. “I don’t know if the governor’s team understood how fundamental some of those provisions were to getting the agreement among all stakeholders,” Harmon replied. That seemed to me to be quite an extraordinary statement about the governor and his team.