Congress
The House narrowly voted Thursday to cut about $9.4 billion in spending already approved by Congress as President Donald Trump’s administration looks to follow through on work done by the Department of Government Efficiency when it was overseen by Elon Musk.
President Donald Trump’s big bill making its way through Congress will cut taxes by $3.75 trillion but also increase deficits by $2.4 trillion over the next decade, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration sent Congress a long-awaited request for lawmakers to cancel more than $1 billion in federal funds earmarked for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the entity that disburses taxpayer funds to local NPR and PBS stations across the country.
The billionaire entrepreneur, who supported Trump’s candidacy with at least $250 million and has worked for his administration as a senior adviser, said he was “disappointed” by what the president calls his “big beautiful bill.”
The General Assembly has through May 31 to pass a budget with a simple majority vote before the threshold increases to a three-fifths vote on June 1.
House committees labored for months on the bill, which underwent late changes to win over holdouts in the Republican conference. It exceeds 1,000 pages and is titled the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” a nod to Trump himself.
“I’ve decided the most powerful way for me to defend our values and hold Donald Trump accountable is to help Democrats win back the House,” U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood said in a statement.
The hard-right lawmakers are insisting on steeper spending cuts to Medicaid and the Biden-era green energy tax breaks, among other changes, before they will give their support to President Donald Trump’s “beautiful” bill. They warn the tax cuts alone would pile onto the nation’s $36 trillion debt.
Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss joins state Sen. Laura Fine, of Glenview, and progressive media star Kat Abughazaleh in the increasingly crowded race to replace U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who represented Illinois' 9th District for 14 terms.
The race to replace retiring Sen. Dick Durbin is heating up. U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly joined “Chicago Tonight” to discuss the changes coming to Illinois politics and her candidacy for the U.S. Senate.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is set to appear June 12 before Congress alongside Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. All three are Democrats.
The long anticipated announcement is sure to touch off a chain reaction as ambitious politicians prepare to run to represent Illinois’s 9th Congressional District, which stretches from Chicago’s North Side through northwest Cook County to southwest Lake County and southeast McHenry County.
Kat Abughazaleh’s campaign reported just $3,250 in contributions of more than $200 from people who live in the 9th Congressional District, less than 1% of the total amount raised by the campaign, federal records show.
President Donald Trump on Friday urged Congress to “push hard for more Daylight at the end of a day” in his latest dig at the semiannual changing of clocks.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker is “evaluating” a request from the Republican chairperson of the U.S. House Oversight Committee about the state’s laws designed to protect undocumented immigrants.
Top Republicans have argued the legislation, known as the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, is necessary to ensure only citizens vote in U.S. elections and “cements into law” Trump’s order.