According to the 2020 Census, Cook County is 40-percent white, 26-percent Latino, 22-percent Black, and 8-percent Asian. Chicago is 21 percent of the state’s population. But the statewide ticket recently endorsed by the Cook County Democratic Party is overwhelmingly made up of white Chicagoans (JB Pritzker, Alexi Giannoulias, Mike Frerichs, and Margaret Croke), with two Black Chicagoans (Lieutenant Governor candidate Christian Mitchell and Kwame Raoul) and no Latinos or Asian Americans.

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.

“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.”

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.”