Tag: illinois

HORROR: Illegal Alien Who Entered US on Biden’s Open Border Invitation Snatches Special Needs Child From Her Bicycle, Sexually Assaults Her

Sanctuary policies in Democrat-run states are dangerous and deadly.

An illegal alien who entered the US on Joe Biden’s open border invitation grabbed a 9-year-old girl from her bicycle and sexually assaulted her.

The violent assault occurred last week in Pingree Grove, Illinois.

According to Border Hawk News, the suspect, Janio Gionel Velasquez-Muro, illegally entered the US from Venezuela in 2022.

Janio Gionel Velasquez-Muro grabbed the little girl as she was riding her bicycle, shoved her into a car, and sexually assaulted her.

Records reviewed by Border Hawk News reveal the victim has severe and profound intellectual disabilities.

Velasquez-Muro fled the scene but he was later arrested by law enforcement.

Keep reading

Corrupt Illinois Democrat State Rep and County Clerk Husband INDICTED In Mass NGO Kickback and Fraud Scheme — Just Weeks After Daughter Busted For COVID Fraud

Another corrupt Illinois Democrat family caught with their hands in the till.

Urbana Democrat State Representative Carol Ammons and her husband, Champaign County Clerk Aaron Ammons, were indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury on multiple felony counts including wire fraud, false statements, and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

The indictment lays out a brazen scheme where Ammons allegedly used her campaign committee, Friends of Carol Ammons, to issue overpayments and then took cash kickbacks disguised as “gifts.”

At the same time, she used her position as a state lawmaker to steer massive state grants to friendly nonprofits that then put her daughter Titianna Ammons on the payroll, WCIA reported.

According to the federal indictment:

  • Carol Ammons allegedly caused campaign funds to be paid to herself and family members through excess checks and then received cash kickbacks to hide the scheme. She also falsely reported expenditures to the Illinois State Board of Elections.
  • She helped secure over $1.6 million in state grants for nonprofits including:
    • Bridgewater Sullivan Community Life Center ($612,000 grant) — where daughter Titianna was paid more than $60,000 as Program Director (Ammons even helped draft her employment contract).
    • Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center (over $1 million in grants) — where Titianna was paid nearly $10,000 as a digital marketing coordinator.
    • Another grant to Hood Vote that also funneled money to the daughter.

Prosecutors say Ammons and her daughter received financial benefits in excess of $100,000 through this web of campaign misuse and grant steering between 2017 and roughly 2023.

Keep reading

Venezuelan Illegal Alien Former Illinois School Teacher Arrested by ICE After Driving Tren de Aragua Gangsters to Chicago House Party Massacre That Killed Three and Wounded Five

A 32-year-old Venezuelan illegal immigrant who was teaching in an Illinois classroom has been arrested by ICE for allegedly acting as the driver and getaway accomplice for two Tren de Aragua (TDA) gang members during a brutal December 2024 mass shooting in Chicago that left three people dead and five others wounded.

Giovanna Mercedes Moreno Occhipinti, a Venezuelan national with dual Italian citizenship, entered the United States in October 2021 under the Visa Waiver Program but overstayed her visa.

She was taken into ICE custody on May 13, 2026, and is currently being held at the Grayson County Detention Center in Leitchfield, Kentucky, pending removal from the country, Fox News reported.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, Occhipinti drove two alleged TDA gang members, Ricardo Granadillo Padilla and Edward Martinez Cermeno, to a house party in Chicago’s Gage Park neighborhood on December 2, 2024.

The gunmen opened fire on the crowd. Three people were killed and five were wounded. Federal authorities say she then helped the shooters flee the scene of the slaughter.

Chicago Police arrested Occhipinti just three days later, on December 5, 2024, after finding multiple weapons in her vehicle. But because Chicago and Illinois are militant sanctuary jurisdictions, she was released without ICE ever being notified, despite the obvious public safety threat tied to a triple homicide.

The two actual shooters were eventually deported. One had even been released from ICE custody earlier by a federal judge due to prosecutorial issues. Occhipinti remained free in the community and was reportedly working as a teacher at a school in the Chicago suburb of Elgin until HSI agents finally tracked her down months later.

Illinois officials have refused to disclose to DHS which school employed her.

Keep reading

Illinois DEI Training Equates Whites With Mosquitoes — Which Can Be Killed With Fire

If you want to know why there will be more Karmelo Anthonys — angry black youth all too willing to kill whites — look no further than diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training offered by the Illinois government. It portrays white people and police as mosquitoes inflicting “microaggression” bites that maddeningly accumulate over time. Don’t worry, though, there is a remedy.

The training also shows a black woman using a flamethrower to incinerate the whites and cops mosquitoes.

(Such propaganda may help explain why so many believe Anthony was justified in killing white teen Austin Metcalf.)

You can, however, avoid this fiery fate by refraining from making certain comments. “When I look at you, I don’t see color” and “My best friend is Black” are forbidden. “Your English is so good” is, too. For these are all microaggressions — and who knows what else could be fancied so? So you just have to walk on eggshells with ballerina-like skill.

The Washington Free Beacon recently reported on the story:

Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker’s (D.) administration offers a taxpayer-funded training on “microaggressions” and other “exclusionary behaviors” that depicts white people and police officers as mosquitoes who suck blood from people of color.

The training — which Pritzker’s Department of Human Rights offers to “private-sector, government, and public participants” and which the Washington Free Beacon attended [on May 15] — is meant to “increase knowledge, awareness and prevention of discrimination and harassment issues and offer solutions to employers and employees on how to appropriately respond to situations as they arise.” It defines “microaggressions” as “the everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons solely based upon their marginalized group membership.”

The Content Tells the Tale

The irony here is that the Illinois “microaggression” training is itself a macroaggression, as its content evidences. As Red Right Daily (RRD) informs:

One training slide reportedly classified the phrase “When I look at you, I don’t see color” as a racial microaggression because it allegedly “denies a person of color’s racial/ethnic experience.” Another example listed “My best friend is Black” as evidence of “denial of individual racism.”

Then came the now-infamous mosquito analogy.

The training video asks participants to imagine microaggressions not as “stupid comments” but as mosquito bites that accumulate over time. In one example, a white woman tells a Black woman she is “so well spoken” before transforming into a mosquito and biting her. Other examples include comments like “Where are you really from?” and “Your English is so good.”

Now, I’ve been told many times over the years that I’m well spoken. Would it be less true were I black? And were I, should I have taken offense at the innocuous comment? But it gets worse. RRD continues:

But the video escalates far beyond awkward social interactions.

“Beyond just being annoying, some mosquitoes carry truly threatening diseases that can mess up your life for years,” the narrator says before transitioning into references to policing.

“And other mosquitoes carry strains that can even kill you. He looked like he was up to trouble. Okay, I felt threatened.”

The implication is not subtle. Police officers and racially insensitive individuals are folded into the same metaphorical category as dangerous, disease-carrying insects capable of killing people.

Besides being obviously ridiculous, it’s hard identifying an aspect of this “training” that isn’t based on a falsehood or fallacy. The idea that police unfairly target blacks, for example, has been repeatedly refuted.

Just consider 2016 research by black Ivy League professor Roland Fryer. Much to his own surprise, he learned cops were less likely to shoot black and Hispanic suspects than white ones. Other studies have drawn the same conclusion. But, hey, can’t let the facts get in the way of a good narrative.

The DEI training video also shows a white person mosquito asking a black woman, “Can I touch your hair?” Now, I’ve heard this lament from “sensitivity training” sources before, as if it’s some pervasive phenomenon. I’ve never actually witnessed it occurring, though. So I’ll ask my fellow whites: Do any of you have a burning desire to feel a black person’s hair? Is this something I’ve missed?

Keep reading

Illinois Just Adopted a Half-Baked Scheme to Tax Social Media

Government officials may not fully understand what social media is, but they damned well plan to do something about the ills it may or may not inflict on our society. They’ll happily start with extracting some money from the companies behind social media, though it may take a few tries, given politicians’ complete lack of understanding of the thing they want to tax. Illinois is a good example, where legislators just passed an attempt at a social media levy that runs afoul of its authors’ ignorance.

“A nearly $56 billion state spending plan is headed to Gov. JB Pritzker’s desk after the Democratic-controlled Illinois legislature approved it in the early-morning hours of another overtime spring session,” the Chicago Tribune‘s Dan Petrella noted last week. “The biggest source of new revenue is a new per-user tax on large social media companies.”

The governor’s signature is essentially guaranteed, since the budget proposal and social media tax originated in his office. Pritzker hopes to raise $200 million per year from the scheme. But the plan faces challenges, not least of which is that a similar tax passed by Chicago is tied up in court. Another and potentially more serious problem, as pointed out by Dan Levin of Straight Arrow News, is that “one of the elements that remains the most unclear is what exactly is being taxed? The language in the bill does not answer that question directly and is, frankly, confusing.”

As passed, the budget plan imposes a tax on social media companies based on “the average number of monthly users of the platform located in the State of Illinois.” Platforms with 100,000 to 500,000 “Illinois users” will have to pay $0.10 per user each month; platforms with 500,000 to 1 million “shall pay $40,000, plus $0.25 per month” per user; and platforms with over 1 million users will pay $165,000, plus $0.50 per user, each month on the number of users over 1 million. A provision adjusts the tax for inflation starting in 2028. Companies that fail or refuse to pay will be punished with a fee of “an amount equal to 100% of the unpaid fee and any penalties each month until the fee is paid.”

That’s an awful lot of numbers backed by dire threats. But it still doesn’t clarify how to tally up the bill.

Keep reading

These Are The Six States Celebrating America 250 By Raising Your Gas Tax

The final countdown for America’s 250th birthday is on. Families will be planning road trips, parades, vacations, reunions, and cookouts to celebrate the greatest nation in history. But in six states, politicians have a different idea for the party: raise taxes.

Beginning July 1, drivers in California, Washington, Illinois, Maryland, Virginia, and Mississippi are scheduled to see higher state gas taxes. In other words, as the country prepares to celebrate casting aside a tax-heavy king in favor of freedom, these states will use the occasion to fatten government coffers one gallon at a time.

The worst offenders will be no surprise. California, Washington and Illinois  — we’ll call them the Axis of Glut.

Their governors are often the first to fake outrage when gas prices rise. They blame oil companies. They blame “price gouging.” They blame world events. They blame everyone except the politicians who keep piling taxes, mandates, and regulations onto every gallon drivers buy.

Yet these same states already have some of the worst gas prices in the nation, some of the highest gas taxes in America, and now they are getting ready to raise those taxes again.

California’s gas tax is already the highest in the country and is scheduled to climb again on July 1, from 61.2 cents to 63.4 cents per gallon, under the state’s annual inflation adjustment. The same report noted California’s average price for regular gasoline was nearly $6 per gallon in early June.

Illinois is no better. The state says its motor fuel tax will rise on July 1 because the law requires an annual inflation adjustment. Washington joined the club with a gas tax increase last year and then baked in automatic increases going forward. Starting July 1, 2026, the state’s fuel tax rises by 2% every year unless lawmakers change the law.

This is the dirty hustle behind inflation-indexed taxes. Politicians get to raise taxes without holding a press conference to admitting it. They pass the law once, then every year drivers get mugged by a formula.

As of June 8, the national average for regular gas was $4.164, down 38.2 cents in a single month. That is welcome relief for families, workers, small businesses and anyone trying to get through summer. But the national average would look even better if it were not being anchored down by tax-heavy states that treat drivers like a rolling ATM.

The problem is not limited to the six July 1 tax-hike states. Seven of the ten most expensive states for gas are run by Democratic governors. That is not a coincidence.

Taxes play a major role in the high-price reputation of many of these states. So do their regulatory regimes, special fuel rules, anti-energy policies and climate mandates that make fuel harder to produce, refine, transport and sell.

The result is predictable.

Families, small businesses, truckers, and farmers all pay more. Then the same politicians who helped drive up the cost pretend they are shocked by the bill.

That is not compassion. That is government gluttony.

Supporters claim the money goes to roads and infrastructure. But that excuse only goes so far. Every tax increase is sold as necessary. Yet somehow the burden always lands in the same place: on the people who drive to work, school, church, the grocery store or a summer vacation.

That is what makes the timing so perfect, and so insulting.

America’s 250th birthday should be a celebration of freedom, independence and the rejection of government overreach. The American Revolution was born from the idea that people should not be treated as endless revenue sources for rulers who never seem to have enough.

Nearly 250 years later, millions of drivers will pull into gas stations in California, Washington, Illinois, Maryland, Virginia, and Mississippi and get a reminder that some politicians still have not learned the lesson.

The country is moving toward a better energy future: lower prices, more production, more reliability and less punishment for the people who keep America moving. But these six states are choosing a different path.

America 250 should remind us why this country was born: because free people eventually get tired of being treated like revenue.

Keep reading

Media Lies! No, Pritzker Did Not Just Balance the Illinois Budget

According to a press release from the office of the governor, the Illinois General Assembly passed Governor JB Pritzker’s eighth consecutive balanced budget, totaling $55.9 billion for Fiscal Year 2027. The plan focuses on making Illinois more affordable for working families, fully funding the state’s pension obligations, and investing in education, all while keeping discretionary spending increases below 1%.

Senate President Don Harmon (D-Oak Park) praised the budget, calling it a choice for “stability, responsibility and compassion” amid economic uncertainty and federal spending cuts. He said the plan supports working families, protects access to hospitals and health care, provides more than $300 million in new funding for public education, and includes a sales tax-free shopping holiday for parents, while avoiding increases in the state income tax or sales tax.

Similar to many Democratic spending claims, it includes terms such as “protects access to hospitals and health care.” Of course, no one was denying anyone access to hospitals. Hospitals are open, they remain open, and no one was being denied entry. Ostensibly, this is code for taxpayer-funded welfare programs continuing.

It is also telling that Democrats often refer to federal spending cuts as irresponsible. Just as Democrats become angry about the termination of temporary programs, such as the temporary free lunch program or temporary protections under DACA, once money has been spent or a particular policy has been put in place, they argue that it must continue indefinitely.

Pritzker claims that although he is reducing government revenue through tax cuts and increasing government spending through expanded social-benefit programs, he has produced a balanced budget. His office frames this as “fiscal discipline,” but a quick review of the state’s books shows that while he cut taxes in some areas, he increased them in others. The state continues to carry both massive debt and a deficit. Additionally, state pension contributions are structured under a ramp formula that underfunds what actuaries actually require.

A “balanced budget” in state government parlance means only that projected revenues equal projected expenditures for that fiscal year,  an annual operating measure, not a gauge of overall fiscal health. Illinois is constitutionally required to pass a balanced budget each year, so the claim is partly definitional. It says nothing about accumulated obligations.

Keep reading

Law Students Threatened for Not Attending Mandated DEI Training: Report

Students at Southern Illinois University’s Simmons Law School were reportedly threatened with a “letter of reprimand” that would be placed in their permanent file if they did not attend a mandatory diversity, equity, and inclusion training session.

The reprimand letter could also be shared with the state bar, according to a report from the Daily Signal published earlier this week.

“Those who cannot attend in person typically fulfill the make-up expectations without issue,” an associate dean wrote to one of the students who didn’t wish to participate.

“If a student misses a required session and does not complete a make-up within a reasonable period of time, we typically issue a letter of reprimand,” the dean added.

The email was obtained by a parental rights group called Defending Education.

After multiple Freedom of Information Act requests, Defending Education obtained the message, which also said that the “letter is placed in the student’s permanent file and would be shared with the bar if the file is requested as part of the character and fitness process.”

In addition, other emails revealed that the university is teaching students that the law, and legal field, can be “racially discriminatory.”

The Daily Signal highlighted a specific part of the training that mentioned bullying.

One of the presentation slides read, “Bullying disproportionately affects traditionally underrepresented groups,” while another slide claimed “lawyers of color were bullied more often than white lawyers.”

Erika Sanzi, senior director of communications at Defending Education, told the outlet that the school’s tactics are “indefensible and embarrassing.”

“Threatening law school students with a letter of reprimand if they refuse to attend a DEI session they were deceived about is indefensible and embarrassing,” a statement from Defending Education noted.

This news comes just days after the council of the American Bar Association, which oversees law school accreditation in the United States, moved to change a rule that forces schools to support DEI.

Keep reading

Illinois Plans Tax Break for Billionaires and the Chicago Bears. Everyone Else Could End Up Paying More.

The Illinois Legislature is busy advancing a bill that’s one of the most egregious examples yet of the grift between professional sports teams and state and local governments. 

Under House Bill 910, projects designated as “megaprojects” would have their assessed value frozen at a base-year level, effectively shielding all new construction from property taxation for up to 45 years. Just two developments would qualify for the maximum duration under the current language: the proposed Chicago Bears stadium in Arlington Heights and the One Central mixed-use development near Soldier Field in Chicago.

Rank-and-file property owners in Illinois pay the highest property taxes in the nation, but middle-class taxpayers get no relief under the bill. Instead, it’s likely their taxes will go up even more. The language says “megaproject” developers (for projects that cost at least $100 million) would be able to negotiate a payment in lieu of taxes with local taxing bodies, with the duration of the tax break varying by the total cost of the development. For example, if a property tax analysis of the Arlington Heights stadium estimates it to be a $5 billion development on land currently valued at $100 million, this bill would reduce the developer’s annual tax liability from roughly $350 million to approximately $7 million.

What happens to the difference of $343 million in this example? Local governments can still count the full value of the megaproject when calculating how much they’re allowed to tax and borrow—they just can’t actually collect taxes on most of the megaproject. Given the record of local governments in Illinois, it’s a pretty good bet they’ll find that revenue elsewhere by raising taxes. The legislation, as it stands, does basically nothing to address this.

The bill passed the Illinois House in April. The bill passed 78–32, with 10 Republicans crossing party lines to support it. Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker is busy pressuring the state Senate to get it across the finish line before the end of May. Pritzker (and the rest of the Legislature) are feeling pressure to pass the bill due to the looming threat of the Bears moving to northwest Indiana. Hoosier lawmakers, especially Republicans, have a standing offer for the Bears to relocate just across the state line for over $1 billion in public subsidies. (At least Indiana is in better fiscal health than Illinois.)

Keep reading

Plainfield adopts ban on sale of controversial drug kratom

The village of Plainfield has joined other communities in banning the sale of kratom, which the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has called “a drug of concern.”

Village trustees on Tuesday unanimously approved an ordinance that not only bans the sale or transfer of kratom, but also bans the sale or transfer of any novel synthetic or psychoactive drugs.

Those violating the ordinance could face a $250 fine. There is a statewide ban on the sale of kratom to anyone under the age of 18.

Kratom is an herbal extract from leaves of an evergreen tree called Mitragyna Speciosa, which grows in Southeast Asia. Kratom can be chewed, swallowed, brewed or added to a liquid.

In a memo to Plainfield Mayor John Argoudelis and village trustees, Plainfield Police Chief Robert Miller and Plainfield Village Administrator Joshua Blakemore recommended the board approve the ordinance.

“People who use kratom report that in low doses, kratom acts as a stimulant and in higher doses, it is reported it reduces pain and acts as a sedative,” they say in the memo. “Some people take kratom to ease the symptoms of quitting opioids, but it has its own risk of addiction. Kratom has not been shown to be safe or treat any medical conditions. The FDA has warned people not to use Kratom because of the possible harm it can cause.”

Keep reading