Tag: illinois

Illinois Governor ‘Tremendously Disappointed’ By Failure Of Hemp Product Restriction Bill Amid Democratic Infighting

A bill that would have imposed regulations on new types of intoxicating substances derived from hemp stalled in the Illinois House Tuesday, dealing a political setback to Gov. JB Pritzker (D) after he strongly supported the legislation.

“I was tremendously disappointed,” Pritzker said at an unrelated news conference Tuesday, after it became clear the bill would not be called for a vote in the House. “This is a demonstration, from my perspective, of the power of special interests and the money that they spread around to thwart health and safety of the public.”

But the bill also created rifts within the House Democratic caucus. According to several sources, the hemp regulation bill was the focus of a three-hour, closed-door caucus meeting Monday that some House members described afterwards as “spirited” but others described as “raucous.”

Pritzker also called Democratic House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch’s decision not to call the bill “irresponsible,” saying he believed it would have passed with a bipartisan majority had he done so. And he criticized House Democrats for the treatment of members of his staff who appeared at Monday’s caucus meeting.

But Welch’s spokesperson noted that he is a cosponsor of the bill and would continue working to pass it in the new legislative session that begins Wednesday.

“A lengthy caucus discussion found that the bill in its current form did not have enough support within the House Democratic Caucus,” the spokesperson said. “He is committed to continuing discussions so that when the bill ultimately passes, it is the best possible piece of legislation for the state of Illinois.”

Keep reading

Mass Shootings Including Police Officer Shot in Cicero, Illinois After Venezuelan Transnational Gang Member Had Been Arrested by I.C.E.

Over the weekend in Cicero, Illinois—a southwest suburb of Chicago—there were five total people shot, including one police officer and one person killed.

This comes just a week after eight people were shot, with three killed just south of Cicero in the Gage Park neighborhood.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported on the Gage Park incident, which has now been confirmed to be Venezuelan and likely illegals.

Recent reporting from WBBM Chicago indicates the shooter of the police officer has been identified as a known “street gang member.” Police have arrested 19-year-old Giovanni Saldivar.

At this time, it is undetermined whether or not the man is directly connected to Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan Transnational gang. However, Tren de Aragua-connected gang members have been known to be in the area.

This marks a considerable uptick in Cicero’s murder rate. According to Crimegrade.org, Cicero has a murder rate of 0.0432 murders in 1,000. In the last year, they have seen a spike in violence.

It’s relevant to note there have been considerable changes as Illinois’ sanctuary state status has funneled an influx of illegal immigrants to the City of Chicago. This has had a spillover effect in the suburbs.

In February of this year, The Gateway Pundit reported that there were buses of illegals landing in train stations all over the suburbs. Terry Newsome of Behind Enemy Lines filmed illegals flashing gang signs and tattoos seemingly affiliated with the transnational criminal gang from Venezuela known as Tren de Aragua.

Tren de Aragua has embedded itself all over the country, famously taking over apartment complexes in Colorado. In March of this year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported removing a Venezuelan non-citizen with ties to Tren de Aragua from Cicero, Illinois.

In addition to the evidence of Tren de Aragua presence in the suburb of Cicero, there is the involvement of Catholic Charities in placing illegals all over the City and State. In June of this year, The Gateway Pundit reported on FOIA findings that Catholic Charities had been colluding with the City of Chicago to place 13,000 illegals between December 2022 and February 2024.

Another article pointed out that Catholic Charities, along with an Obama Foundation-affiliated NGO, placed over 8,900 illegals in fully furnished apartments. Interestingly enough, there is a Catholic Charities Food Distribution Center located in Cicero, Illinois.

Keep reading

Biden White House Worked Directly with the City of Chicago to Place Immigrants Across the State While Leaving Homeless Chicagoans to Freeze

A recent FOIA request made by Terry Newsome of Behind Enemy Lines revealed that the Biden White House worked directly with the City of Chicago placing immigrants.

Throughout an email chain of 207 pages, City of Chicago officials, FEMA representatives, and a Special Assistant to the President of the United States discuss different locations for placing immigrants across the State of Illinois.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported that FEMA had awarded approximately $20 million to the City of Chicago for food service contractors to feed illegal immigrants.

The award timeframe was from October 2022 to December 2024. This article also details the City of Chicago’s ‘Vendor Payments – New Arrivals Mission’ webpage detailing the $574.5 million that has been spent on the immigrant crisis thus far.

It’s relevant to note that the recent trove of FOIA emails between the White House, city officials, and FEMA reference an amount of $20 million being released from an embargo.

This could be the amount that was allocated to food services. However, the recent email chain only discusses placing immigrants in facilities, warming and transporting them in buses, and reports a detailed census on the new arrivals.

Given the context of the recent email chain, it’s plausible that the $20 million referenced could be in addition to the food services funds and reserved for these location and transportation services.

It has been established that the Federal Government has not only allowed the immigrant invasion at the border, but it has also funded it with tax dollars.

It is not surprising that distrust in government is at an all-time high. While Americans in Florida and North Carolina suffer from hurricane fallout, non-citizens are reaping the benefits of shelter, food, clothing, and cell phones.

Most egregious, the unit of government designated to deal with Emergency Response – FEMA – is funding the care for the illegal immigrants.

In other words, the government intentionally created an emergency of illegal immigration, diverted funds away from tax paying Americans who need emergency response, and applied them to non-citizens.

Things get more interesting as Special Assistant to the President of the United States, Molly Ritner, enters the scene.

City of Chicago officials had requested information from the White House on available Federal sites for housing illegals. Special Assistant Ritner provides the following:

“32 federal sites across the State of Illinois were identified as having vacant space — this included review of potential space across federal agencies including DOD.”

Keep reading

Jussie Smollett’s conviction for racist, homophobic attack hoax tossed in stunning reversal

Disgraced actor Jussie Smollett had his conviction for lying about a fake racist and homophobic attack in downtown Chicago thrown out by the Illinois Supreme Court on a technicality.

In a shocking twist, the court found that the former “Empire” actor had his Fifth Amendment rights violated by a special prosecutor’s decision to try him after initial charges against him were previously dropped.

It’s the latest turn a case that has captivated the country for nearly six years. Smollett’s lead attorney, Nenye Uche claimed that the devision to prosecute Smollett in the first place was a “travesty of justice.”

Smollett, 42, who is black and gay, claimed two men in Make America Great Again hats assaulted him in the dead of night in January 2019, approaching him out of nowhere in the darkness and declaring “this is MAGA country” before the attack.

According to Smollet, the men yelled homophobic and racial slurs, put a noose around his neck and doused him with bleach, leading to a massive search for suspects by Chicago police that cost the city more than $130,000. 

However, investigators quickly unraveled the elaborate self-victimization ruse, revealing the actor actually hired two brothers, Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, to stage the attack in a ploy to boost his profile and burnish his tough guy credentials.

Keep reading

Federal Judge Enjoins Enforcement of the Illinois ‘Assault Weapon’ Ban

A federal judge in Illinois recently issued a permanent injunction against that state’s “assault weapon” ban, deeming it inconsistent with the Second Amendment. The Protect Illinois Communities Act (PICA) “is an unconstitutional affront to the Second Amendment and must be enjoined,” U.S. District Judge Stephen P. McGlynn wrote in Barnett v. Raoul, which combines several challenges to the law, on Friday. “The Government may not deprive law-abiding citizens of their guaranteed right to self-defense as a means of offense.”

McGlynn imposed a 30-day stay on his injunction to allow an appeal that seems likely to succeed. Last year in Bevis v. City of Naperville, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction against PICA that McGlynn issued in April 2023. The 7th Circuit concluded that the state was likely to prevail in its defense of the law.

The 168-page opinion that McGlynn issued on Friday, which followed a bench trial, aims to reconcile the 7th Circuit’s reasoning, which was based on a distinction between “military” weapons and “Arms protected by the Second Amendment,” with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Second Amendment precedents. That’s a tall order. But the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), which represents the plaintiffs in one of the PICA lawsuits, argues that the evidence presented at trial showed that “PICA fails even under the Seventh Circuit’s misguided test,” which it says “conflicts with binding Supreme Court precedent.”

Illinois legislators enacted PICA in January 2023, six months after a gunman used a Smith & Wesson M&P15 rifle to kill seven people at an Independence Day parade in Highland Park. Among other things, the law bans a long list of specific rifle models, along with any semi-automatic rifle that accepts detachable magazines and has one or more of six listed features: a pistol grip or thumbhole stock, a protruding grip, a folding or adjustable stock, a flash suppressor, a grenade launcher, or a barrel shroud. PICA also bans “large capacity ammunition feeding devices,” defined to include rifle magazines that hold more than 10 rounds and pistol magazines that hold more than 15 rounds.

Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch (D–Westchester) said the law was aimed at “weapons of war.” That phrase suggested that Welch was talking about selective-fire rifles like those carried by U.S. soldiers, which can shoot automatically.

That was clearly not true. Such rifles are strictly regulated under federal law, which has forbidden sales of newly manufactured machine guns to civilians since 1986. PICA does not deal with machine guns; it deals with semi-automatic firearms, which fire one round per trigger pull.

Keep reading

Voter confidence rattled after voting machines malfunction across Illinois

Voter confidence has been shaken with voting machines malfunctioning in several Illinois jurisdictions.

In McLean County, 34 ballots were placed in what the County Clerk Kathy Michael called “an emergency bin,” which is located underneath the voting machine used to tabulate ballots. At the Eastland Mall, an early voting location, the machine “glitched” for 30 minutes.

Affected voter Wayne Henrichs called the clerk’s office after putting his ballot in the bin and was connected with an assistant county clerk.

“She indicated that they [the ballots in the emergency bin] are considered mail in ballots and they will be counted on election day rather than being counted early,” said Henrichs.

Mclean County Elections Director Mark Senger said any ballots placed in the “emergency” bin will be tabulated after the early voting sites close. Senger said the ballots were tabulated after they closed on Tuesday, Oct. 22.

“The thing that concerned me was one: Is that really secure? Two: we are voting early for a reason and that’s to bank those votes,” said Henrichs.

Such ballots are to be tabulated and witnessed by Democratic and Republican election judges, according to state law.

In viral social media posts, voters say they walked out of a Schaumburg early voting site after the ballot scanner stopped working. One Schaumburg voter posted a video saying he didn’t cast his ballot after election judges told him to put his ballot in a box to be scanned later.

“Well, so much for early voting. Their scanner’s broken, and they said, ’don’t worry, we’ll just put it in the box, and we’ll make sure we scan them all tonight,’ uh, when everybody leaves,” the voter said said.

Keep reading

Swing State Voters Receive Mail Ballots For Relatives Who Died, Moved Away

An 81-year-old Illinois man was shocked to receive a mail-in ballot for his wife, who died in October 2022. 

George, who lives in Kane County about 50 miles west of Chicago, showed The Daily Wire the ballot which he found in his mailbox on Saturday. He also received a ballot addressed to his late wife ahead of the Illinois primary in March. This was especially confusing, George said, because he had shown his wife’s death certificate to Kane County election officials — who also told The Daily Wire that George’s wife was no longer on the voter rolls.

The saga has George concerned about the integrity of the presidential election — and he’s not alone. Voters in several swing states have reached out to The Daily Wire to share stories like George’s, and raise concerns about what’s going on with mail-in ballots.

“There are states that do better than others in terms of identifying and removing all forms of inaccurate voter registration,” says Honest Elections Project executive director Jason Snead, adding that there are “widespread” issues with voter rolls throughout the country. 

Keep reading

Illinois Supreme Court Says Police Can’t Use Smell Of Burnt Marijuana To Justify Vehicle Searches

The Illinois Supreme Court has ruled that the odor of burnt marijuana alone cannot be lawfully used by police as probable cause to conduct a warrantless vehicle search.

On Thursday, justices published an opinion in two consolidtated cases—People vs. Redmond and People vs. Molina—concerning law enforcement searching the cars of people after claiming they could smell burnt cannabis. Officers discovered small amounts of marijuana and charged the defendants for improper storage, as state law requires that cannabis being transported is kept in odor-proof containers.

After reviewing the cases, justices upheld lower court decisions to grant defendants’ motions to suppress the cannabis as evidence in the trial, affirming that “the odor of burnt cannabis, alone, is insufficient to provide probable cause for police officers to perform a warrantless search of a vehicle.”

The Supreme Court opinion was delivered by Justice P. Scott Neville, with five other justices concurring. The opinion pointed out that Illinois State Police Officer Hayden Combs “did not observe any signs of impairment or signs indicative of recent cannabis use” when he pulled over Ryan Redmond in 2020, and the officer later tried substantiating the search after learning that he was traveling from Des Moines to Chicago, which he claimed to be “hubs of criminal activity.”

Neville noted that “cannabis law has changed drastically over the last decade,” with Illinois enacting adult-use legalization in 2019. While the “appellate court has reached conflicting results in cases concerning the effect of legalization on probable cause for automobile searches,” the Supreme Court has now rendered a final verdict on the issue.

Keep reading

Despised mayor of Illinois town throws $85k party despite plunging her budget into debt

A despised Illinois mayor threw an $85,000 party for her town, despite plunging her budget into debt and being cut off from the state for out-of-control spending. 

Dolton Mayor Tiffany Henyard, 41, threw the event for the suburban Chicago town, spending $50,000 in taxpayers’ money to cover 60 minutes of performances and more than $35,000 on activities, equipment and staff. 

‘I was flabbergasted. I was pissed off. That’s my money. That’s the people’s money,’ resident Jennifer Robertz told WGN 9. 

Henyard – who was recently cut off by the Illinois State Comptroller after refusing to hand over finance records – spent $30,000 on R&B artist Keke Wyatt and $20,000 on rapper J. Holiday to each perform for 30 minutes at the The Taste of Thornton Township event.

The self-proclaimed ‘super mayor’ was seen enjoying the performances with a bright smile on her face, though images from the event show it was sparsely attended. 

Henyard spent an additional nearly $36,000 on a sound system, staff, equipment, comedians, and bounce houses – which cost $6,600 alone, according to WGN 9. 

Keep reading

A Federal Judge Says Carry-Permit Holders Have a Right to Armed Self-Defense on Public Transit

Two years ago in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutional right to carry guns in public for self-defense. But in Illinois, people with concealed-carry permits are committing a misdemeanor if they bring their handguns with them when they use public transportation. Among other locations, that ban covers all Metra commuter trains in the Chicago area, all of the buses and trains operated by the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), and all facilities, including parking lots, associated with them. Last Friday, a federal judge deemed those restrictions unconstitutional as applied to four permit holders.

Under Bruen, the government has the burden of showing that a law is “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” when it restricts conduct covered by the “plain text” of the Second Amendment. “The Court finds that Defendants have failed to meet their burden,” U.S. District Judge Iain D. Johnston writes in Schoenthal v. Raoul. “That failure is dispositive.”

Maintaining that the challenged provision of the 2013 Illinois Firearm Concealed Carry Act passes the Bruen test, Cook County State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx cited several historical precedents, none of which Johnston considered adequate. She argued, for example, that the 14th century Statute of Northampton, which forbade “force in affray of the peace” and going or riding “armed” in “fairs” or “markets,” established a tradition of regulating arms in public that was continued in early American gun laws.

In Bruen, Johnston notes, the Supreme Court “found that the Statute of Northampton wasn’t a general ban on bearing weapons; instead, the offense was arming oneself to terrify others.” That motivation, he says, “is also reflected in the corresponding state statutes.” A 1786 Virginia law, for example, made it a crime to “ride armed by night nor by day, in fairs or markets, or in other places, in terror of the county.”

The Illinois plaintiffs, by contrast, “wish to carry concealed arms in self-defense, so the Firearm Concealed Carry Act’s ban burdens Plaintiffs’ Second Amendment right for a wholly different reason than the Statute of Northampton and similar state statutes did,” Johnston writes. “A concealed arm doesn’t terrorize; it’s concealed. Consequently, these historical laws do not serve as an appropriate historical analogue.”

Foxx also cited an 1821 Tennessee law, an 1837 Arkansas law, and an 1871 Texas law, all of which restricted public possession of weapons. The Texas law required that someone who carries a pistol have “reasonable grounds for fearing an unlawful attack on his person.” In Bruen, Johnston notes, the Supreme Court viewed that law and two state court decisions upholding it as “outliers” that “provide little insight into how postbellum courts viewed the right to carry protected arms in public.” Foxx, Johnston says, offers “nothing to the contrary.”

Keep reading