REDISTRICTING 

Illinois Democrats pass grotesquely gerrymandered congressional map. With the Illinois General Assembly meeting for the second week of Veto Session, the Democratic supermajority stuck to their familiar playbook of partisan advantage, backroom deal making, and waiting until the last possible minute to pass legislation that will impact Illinois families for the next decade.

One of the top issues facing the General Assembly this week was passage of the new congressional redistricting map for Illinois. Much as they did with the state legislative redistricting map, House Democrats voted to pass the fourth and final version of their gerrymandered congressional map around midnight on the final day of Veto Session. The House held no committee hearing on the final map, took no testimony from advocates, and gave legislators and the general public no time to review or digest the details of the new map.

Finishing dinner with his son and daughter at his home on October 28, 1893, Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison must have been in a good mood. Just hours earlier he had delivered remarks to hundreds of his fellow mayors attending American Cities Day during the final weekend of the World’s Columbian Exposition, better known as the Chicago’s World’s Fair. Author and historian Erik Larson wrote that, “Friends said he had never looked so handsome, so full of life.”

GENERAL ASSEMBLY
Illinois House, Senate hold veto session. The General Assembly convened on Tuesday, October 18, in Springfield. Holding a truncated first week of veto session, the Illinois House and Senate adjourned on Wednesday. When they return on Tuesday, October 25, both chambers of the General Assembly will face the challenges of U.S. congressional remapping, the Illinois budget situation, Illinois’ Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund debts, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Marines at Great Lakes. 

As the afternoon of December 7, 1941, wore on, the news coming over radios across America caused a divided nation to come together like never before. When the sun came up that morning Illinois, like the rest of the country, was split over the question of whether to become involved in the war that was consuming much of the globe, from small islands in the South Pacific to the streets of London. By sundown, the reports from Pearl Harbor had made it clear what the answer would be.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY
Veto session begins next week. The Illinois General Assembly will convene in Tuesday, October 18, with a congressional redistricting map as the chief focus of attention. In addition to redistricting, issues of violent crime, COVID-19 mandates, and the State’s increasing debt load will continue to be issues of concern for House Republican members. In addition to Illinois’ “general obligation” debt, Illinois taxpayers owe hundreds of billions of dollars in pension debt and a new, nearly $5 billion debt owed by Illinois’ Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund.

As the Great Depression deepened in the early 1930s, and Americans’ anger toward bankers and the wealthy rose, a new kind of anti-hero emerged: the prairie bank robber. Through the early 1930s newspapers were filled with increasingly thrilling accounts of brazen heists and getaways by characters like Pretty Boy Floyd, Bonnie and Clyde, Machine Gun Kelly, Alvin Karpis and perhaps the most famous of the 1930s bandits, John Dillinger.

REDISTRICTING

Congressional redistricting hearings begin. The General Assembly has not yet enacted a map to govern the election, starting in 2022, of the Illinois members of the U.S. House of Representatives. As with maps for the Illinois General Assembly, the new maps are supposed to reflect the population numbers generated by the 2020 U.S. Census. Close observers of Illinois politics believe that the Democrats will introduce a map that will have boundary lines drawn to help members of their party and hurt Republicans. 

One hundred and fifty years ago today the city of Chicago dodged a major bullet.

By Saturday October 7, 1871, Chicago was a flourishing prairie metropolis, one of the fastest growing cities in the nation. The expanding railroad network of the western United States – which had just recently reached the west coast – had its hub in the city by the shores of Lake Michigan, and eastern investors were pouring more funds into the city’s growth every day.

REDISTRICTING

Pritzker again breaks pledge to voters, signs second partisan legislative map. In May 2021 and again in August 2021, the Democrats who make up the majorities of both houses of the General Assembly passed bills to remap the Illinois House and Senate. The maps, enthusiastically supported by Democrats, contained map lines intended to give districts to many of them where they could look forward to almost automatic re-elections.