Governor JB Pritzker has taken some heat for vetoing legislation to eliminate the state’s decades-old moratorium on constructing new nuclear power reactors. Pritzker was asked about the topic again last week and he said he would sign a version of the bill if it limited new construction to only what are called Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).

Serabi Medina’s family is currently raising money online to pay for her funeral. You’ve probably read or heard about how the nine-year-old girl was allegedly deliberately shot in the head and murdered by a neighbor in Chicago’s Portage Park neighborhood earlier this month. But the fundraising shouldn’t be necessary.

Illinois Republicans have been saying ever since a state budget deal was announced by the majority Democrats that not enough money was appropriated for Fiscal Year 2024 to pay for the new AFSCME [American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees] Council 31 employee union contract. Some have even predicted that the contract plus other spending pressures, including health-care for undocumented immigrants, will eventually lead to a tax hike.

The last time a sitting Illinois Republican congressperson faced a real primary challenge from a non-incumbent was more than seven years ago, when then-state Senator Kyle McCarter (R-Lebanon) challenged US Representative John Shimkus (R-Collinsville). Even so, nobody really thought McCarter had much of a chance, and, as expected, he ended up losing to Shimkus by more than 20 points. We’ve seen reapportionment-related GOP primaries between congressional incumbents - the most recent being U.S. Representative Rodney Davis’s 2022 crushing loss to fellow U.S. Representative Mary Miller (no relation) - but serious challenges of sitting Republican US Representatives are otherwise fairly rare here.