(The Center Square) – A new report on educational freedoms gives Illinois a failing grade. The American Legislative Exchange Council 2023 Index of State Education Freedom measured all 50 states and the District of Columbia based on several categories: funding and financing for school choice programs, support for charter schools, homeschooling, virtual schooling and open enrollment policies. The report ranked Illinois 39th in the country for school choice policies...
(The Center Square) – U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., is pushing a bipartisan measure that would continue funding and prevent a government shutdown this weekend. The government’s current fiscal year ends Saturday. The next fiscal year won’t start unless new appropriation bills or a stopgap plan are approved by Congress and President Joe Biden. During an online news conference Friday, Murray said her proposed continuing resolution would keep the federal government...
(The Center Square) – The Port of Seattle’s upcoming airport expansion project has been approved with a budget of $399 million. Funding for the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport expansion project stems from a combination of federal airport development funds and future revenue bonds. The port stated that no taxpayer dollars will be used to fund the project. Plans call for the project to increase the existing 81,000-square-foot building into a 226,530-square-foot...
(The Center Square) – Six Chicago-area local governments are set to receive more than $41 million in taxpayer-funded grants from the state of Illinois to serve some of the 15,000 non-citizen migrant arrivals. Gov. J.B. Pritzker said at first, the state was helping pay for hotel stays for new migrants in Chicago. “And that worked for a little while,” Pritzker said. “It doesn't work well for providing all the services that are necessary. So we’ve moved off of that...
More migrant buses expected The Committee of Immigrant and Refugee Rights recently held a meeting to discuss the ongoing migrant crisis. City officials said 36 buses carrying migrants arrived in the past week and 15 more are expected over the weekend. The committee heard from mutual-aid groups who report seeing children who have been cut by barbed wire, poorly stitched up in Texas and bused to Chicago with infected wounds. The mayor’s first deputy chief of staff...
(The Center Square) — The Georgia Department of Labor is upgrading the state’s unemployment system, but officials won’t confirm the cost. Officials said introducing a modern, web-based platform will empower the agency to streamline claim processing, decrease errors and improve fraud detection capabilities. It also makes it easier for residents to apply for unemployment insurance benefits and check the status of their claims, officials say. "Modernizing Georgia’s...
(The Center Square) — After a legislative session where Florida lawmakers passed universal school choice, the state was recognized as the nation's best in a recent report for its policies on education The nonprofit American Legislative Exchange Council, which previously published the Report Card on American Education over the past 25 years, has a new publication, The Index of State Education Freedom: A 50-State Guide to Parental Empowerment. In the overall...
(The Center Square) – Help for military veterans struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries is on the way courtesy of a $500,000 appropriation in the state budget. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy, known as HBOT, has significantly reduced suicidal ideations and an array of other symptoms in about 60 North Carolina military veterans suffering from PTSD and TBI over the last two years through a program called HBOT for Vets. The program...
(The Center Square) – U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., has condemned the federal government’s consideration of re-introducing grizzly bears into the North Cascades region of Washington state. The controversial proposal – supported by some environmental interests but opposed by many area residents – has been raised at times over the past decade by the National Parks Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. There was initial impetus under the Obama Administration, then...
(The Center Square) – House lawmakers are expected to return to Capitol Hill Saturday with no spending measure yet agreed upon just hours before a partial government shutdown. Holdout House Republicans killed Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s attempt Friday to pass a short-term spending measure to keep the government from a partial shut down at midnight Saturday. McCarthy proposed a 30-day extension that cut spending and bolstered conservative border policies, but 21 Republicans voted...
(The Center Square) – North Carolina is ranked 35th nationally with a grade of D in the ALEC Index of State Education Freedom released this week. The report from the American Legislative Exchange Council, which bills itself as America’s “largest nonpartisan, voluntary membership organization of state legislators dedicated to the principles of limited government, free markets and federalism," used this new analysis to replace the nearly quarter-century old Report Card on American...
(The Center Square) – Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell is issuing a new executive order that reiterates a treatment-first approach when it comes to the city's law against the public use and possession of drugs. Last week, the Seattle City Council passed a drug possession bill that makes the use or possession of controlled substances in a public place a gross misdemeanor. The legislation emphasizes jail diversion as the preferred approach when enforcing laws against the public use and...