Tag: illinois

Illinois to Allow Noncitizens Access to Standard Driver’s License Regardless of Immigration Status

Under House Bill 3882, signed by Illinois Governor JB Pritzker on Friday , immigrants in the state will now have access to standard driver’s licenses that can be used for identification with or without permission from U.S. immigration authorities.

The current “Temporary Visitor Driver’s License” (TVDL) will be phased out. While TVDLs look similar to a standard driver’s licenses, they contain a purple strip across the top that reads “TVDL” and specifies that the it is not valid for identification.

Capital News Illinois reports:

“This legislation is a significant step in eliminating the barriers to opportunity that many undocumented immigrants face,” Pritzker said in a statement. “We’re ensuring every eligible individual can obtain a driver’s license, making our roads safer, decreasing stigma, and creating more equitable systems for all.”

TVDLs look similar to a standard driver’s licenses, except they have a purple strip across the top that reads “TVDL” above the words “NOT VALID FOR IDENTIFICATION.” Under the new law, those people will qualify for standard licenses that carry the words “Federal Limits Apply” at the top, but which do not qualify as REAL ID for travel purposes.

Immigrant rights advocates say the purple bar on the TVDL stigmatizes the people holding them, creates barriers to other kinds of services that require identification such as picking up medication from a pharmacy or signing an apartment lease, and exposes them to law enforcement action.

Although many in the state  are increasingly outraged by how the crisis brought on by Joe Biden’s broken border policy is being addressed, Illinois continues to provide bills to allow migrants perks regardless of immigration status.

Keep reading

Illinois Gives $300,000 to BLM Group That Appears to Be Inactive

Despite being crime ridden, over-taxed and hemorrhaging citizens (and their tax dollars) in favor of red states, Illinois apparently has enough money to provide $300,000 to a BLM group that appears to be mostly inactive.

A recent Wirepoints analysis of Internal Revenue Service migration data shows the exodus from the state.

This comes at a time that Chicago’s public pension system is in dire straits.

According to a report from Equable Institute, Chicago’s core public pensions, which include municipal, laborers, police, fire and the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund, hold more debt than 44 states with a combined pension debt of nearly $48 billion.

Yet lawmakers thought this was a good time to include a $300,000 grant to Black Lives Matter Lake County, a group that critics suggest appears to be mostly inactive,  and is headed by a leader that is alleged to have had  run-ins with police.

Keep reading

Proposed Illinois Bill Seeks To Criminalize Parental Discipline As ‘Parental Bullying’

As if things were not out of hand enough with California’s latest proposed bill implying that the suspension of disruptive students is somehow racist, Democrats in Illinois have introduced a bill that would criminalize parents who “knowingly, with intent to discipline or alter the behavior of a child, says or messages anything that would coerce the child.” In other words, the proposed legislation would classify the appropriate disciplining of children by parents as ‘parental bullying’ and would criminalize the act. And to think California’s legislation seemed outrageous.

The bill was introduced by State Representative La Shawn Ford (D-Chicago) and states the following:

Amends the Criminal Code of 2012. Creates the offense of parental bullying. Provides that a parent or legal guardian of a minor commits parental bullying when he or she knowingly and with the intent to discipline, embarrass, or alter the behavior of the minor, transmits any verbal or visual message that the parent or legal guardian reasonably believes would coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to the minor. Provides that parental bullying is a petty offense. Provides that if a person is convicted of parental bullying, the court shall order that person to pay for the costs of prosecution and that a portion of any fine imposed, as determined by the court, be placed in escrow for the purchase of a certificate of deposit for use by the victim when he or she attains 18 years of age.

The bill was introduced back in December but, not surprisingly, does not have any additional sponsors.

The measure would, in effect, make being a successful parent a crime. As written above, a parent would be subjected to a petty offense and required to pay court costs and a fine if found guilty of yelling at their child for fighting with a sibling, throwing food at the table, or not doing their homework. It would be the end of the angry mom glare across the room when she catches her child doing something inappropriate. The list is endless and blurs so many lines that parents would live in constant fear of being arrested for being, well, parents.

Keep reading

Illinois governor warns cops on gun ban law: ‘Will do their job or won’t be in their job’

With a new ban on certains guns now in place in Illinois, some have said they won’t comply. Gov. J.B. Pritzker has a message for law enforcement: Do your job or else. Gun-rights groups say the ban won’t last long.

With counties across the state saying they won’t enforce a gun ban, or are Second Amendment sanctuaries, and some publicly saying they won’t comply with a looming registry, Pritzker said Illinois State Police will be responsible for enforcement.

“As are all law enforcement all across our state and they will in fact do their job or they won’t be in their job,” Pritzker said.

While Pritzker said he’s confident the law will survive a legal challenge, Guns Save Life Executive Director John Boch said it’s unconstitutional and they’ll prove it in court.

Keep reading

Illinois Senate Approves Ban on Commonly-Owned Firearms, Bill Heads Back to House

Lawmakers in Illinois on Monday night approved a bill to ban the sale and manufacture of certain semi-automatic weapons, which critics say are commonly used for self-defense and recreation.

The Protecting Illinois Communities Act passed the Illinois Senate on Monday night by a vote margin of 34–20.

The legislation will now return to the state House of Representatives, which passed it on a vote of 64–43 on Jan. 6, for a final vote before it goes to Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, who has supported the legislation and is expected to sign it into law.

In the House, the bill was sponsored by state Rep. Bob Morgan, a Democrat. The version that passed the lower chamber was changed slightly before the vote. A provision to raise the age for receiving a Firearms Owner Identification Card from 18 to 21 was removed.

However, the governor criticized the proposed changes on Sunday, arguing the Senate’s version fell short of what was needed, Bloomberg reported. House Speaker Chris Welch described the measure that reached the upper chamber as a “watered-down version” of the bill.

Lawmakers ultimately reached a deal that would immediately ban the manufacturing, selling, importing, or buying of a range of semi-automatic weapons, and ban attachments that increase the rate of fire.

Illinois state Senate President Don Harmon said in a statement that lawmakers reached a deal on “one of the strongest assault weapons bans in the country.”

Keep reading

Internal Emails Reveal Democrat Governor Pritzker’s Post-Election Plans to Force All Illinois Children to Get COVID-19 Shots

Top staff to Governor J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) are planning secret post-election preparations to force every child in the state of Illinois to receive a COVID-19 vaccination, or else they will be barred from attending school.

According to the internal emails from the Illinois Department of Public Health obtained by Wood House Substack, Pritzker is allegedly considering including the COVID shot in the school vaccination program.

It can be recalled that the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted to recommend COVID-19 vaccines to be included in the 2023 childhood immunization schedule in 15 unanimous votes.

Following the CDC committee recommendation, Illinois state representative Dagmara Avelar’s office sent an email on October 25th after she received feedback from constituents.

Keep reading

Student government VP resigns because First Amendment doesn’t ban ‘hate speech’

The vice president of the University of Illinois Student Government, or ISG, has tendered her resignation because the school will not “take a stand and prohibit hate speech.”

Vindhya Kalipi, a junior studying political science and statistics, made that point in a student government Instagram post put up on October 10.

Kalipi was not pleased about the appearance of Matt Walsh on his “What is a Woman?” tour at which he said challenging transgender ideology is “the hill he is ‘willing to die on’” and that gender transitioning is “castrating” children.

In its statement, the ISG said Walsh’s remarks were “hateful,” “wrong” and “induce[d] pain for many people.”

It also noted that given her beliefs, Kalipi (pictured) “talked to administrators and looked through existing laws and regulations” to ultimately discover there is no First Amendment exception for “hate speech.”

Keep reading

Illinois Democrat calls for national Firearms Owner ID card

What was it I was just saying about Illinois politicians targeting legal gun owners while ignoring career criminals? I hadn’t run across Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s latest gun control demands when I wrote my that post, but her remarks are yet another example of the phenomenon of Democrats pretending that cracking down on law-abiding citizens exercising their constitutionally-protected rights is the best way to reduce violent crime.

Duckworth not only wants to slap a new federal ban on so-called assault weapons onto the books; she wants to establish a federal permit that would be required before you could even keep a gun in your home.

“A big portion of what’s happening is assault weapons, which are weapons of war, and the high capacity magazines that are used,” she said. “They just simply don’t belong on the streets of this of this country. And I’m gonna work to suspend, and to abandon them.”

Duckworth said she’s glad to see expanded mental health services, law enforcement information sharing, and school safety funding come from the bipartisan legislation. But she’s hopeful it’s the start of a broader legislative effort.

“I’d like to see a national FOID card. You know, in Illinois, we have a FOID card. It doesn’t stop people from being able to purchase weapons. But I think it’s important that everyone should have a background check,” she said. “You shouldn’t just be able to walk into a gun show and buy a gun without a background check. I think we need to significantly close that loophole.”

Duckworth is ignoring the fact that state courts have repeatedly found that the state’s FOID card requirement violates the constitutional rights of residents; decisions that have been overturned by a state Supreme Court that seems desperate to avoid issuing a ruling on the actual merits of the legal challenges.

Despite the Illinois Supreme Court’s reluctance to address the issues with the state’s FOID card system, the constitutional concerns are clear. The Supreme Court has recognized that we the people have a right to both keep and bear arms for self-defense; a right that can be lost through things like felony convictions or an adjudication of mental defectiveness, but one that each of us possess unless we do something to forfeit it.

Keep reading

This State Lost HALF Its Pandemic “Stimulus” Benefits to Fraud and Scammers

The federal government’s multi-trillion-dollar “stimulus” efforts during the pandemic may go down as the biggest legislative failure in modern American history. Congress spent an astounding $42,000 per federal taxpayer (do you know anyone who received anywhere near that much in benefits?) and only successfully “stimulated” inflation. What’s more, evidence continues to mount that the biggest beneficiaries of this binge were criminals and fraudsters.

A new analysis from the American Enterprise Institute’s Matt Weingarten reports that the state of Illinois lost half of the money it sent out in expanded pandemic unemployment benefits to scammers.

Illinois’s inspector general reports that the level of fraud it experienced was “unprecedented” and amounted to more than $1.8 billion lost.

Keep reading

Illinois Bill Would Make Drunk Sex Illegal

A proposed bill in Illinois would make it illegal to have sex while intoxicated, classifying such an act as a person being “unable to give knowing consent.”

The ill-conceived bill was introduced in the Illinois House of Representatives at the end of January by state Rep. Mark Walker, a Democrat, and has since gained nine co-sponsors, including Republican Rep. Chris Bos. The text of the bill would amend the Criminal Code of 2012 to update the Sex Offenses Article of the Code to include a new definition for “unable to give knowing consent” that “includes when the victim is intoxicated, but the accused did not provide or administer the intoxicating substance.”

This means that someone who willingly drinks alcohol but then has sex with someone, possibly due to lowered inhibitions, can automatically claim to be a rape victim.

Defense attorney Scott Greenfield lamented the bill on Twitter, calling it “a nightmare.”

“Intoxication, rather than incapacitation, would make sex a crime for lack of consent, even if both are drunk. Whoever goes to the police first wins,” Greenfield tweeted. “This will be a nightmare.”

Keep reading