CHICAGO, IL - Many Illinois towns are rushing to extend the 1% grocery tax. See below if your town is one of them. The statewide tax ends in 2026, but local governments can choose to retain it without asking their residents for permission.
The state may have backed off on taxing groceries, but 105 Illinois towns have already chosen to take up the 1% grocery tax once the statewide tax ends in 2026, according to data from the Illinois Department of Revenue.
The rest of the state can expect to see 1% savings at the grocery store.
The map below shows which towns will begin taxing groceries in 2026, but the list will only get longer unless residents show they are opposed to taxing their unavoidable need to eat.
Even if a town isn’t on the map, it could end up there – communities have until October 2025 to decide whether to keep or kill the 1% tax on everyday grocery items. Click here to read more.
CHICAGO, IL - Illegal immigrants who self-deport will receive a $1,000 stipend under a plan that the Trump administration says will protect law enforcement and save American tax dollars, the Department of Homeland Security announced on Monday.
Along with giving illegal immigrants a $1,000 stipend, Fox News reported that the Trump administration would also pay for the cost of airfare. The total cost for the stipend and airfare would be around $4,500 on average, a significant reduction from the estimated $17,000 it costs the federal government to detain and deport an illegal immigrant, according to DHS, which added that illegal immigrants would not receive the stipend until it was verified that they had left the United States.
“If you are here illegally, self-deportation is the best, safest and most cost effective way to leave the United States to avoid arrest,” Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem wrote on X. “DHS is now offering illegal aliens financial travel assistance and a stipend to return to their home country through the CBP Home App.” Click here to read more.
BOSTON, MASS - NAEP test scores for America’s most vulnerable students have collapsed — and the timeline tells the story mainstream media won’t: the “Great Awokening” is failing the very kids it claimed it was trying to help.
A recent New York Times article accidentally admits what conservative education reformers and frustrated parents have long warned: academic standards in America are collapsing — and it’s the poor, working-class, and disadvantaged kids who are being hurt the most.
In a piece titled “The Pandemic Is Not the Only Reason U.S. Students Are Losing Ground”, the Times finally acknowledges that the nation’s lowest-performing students began falling behind years before COVID — right around 2013. That timeline is key, because it coincides not only with the decline of the Bush-era No Child Left Behind legislation but also the rise of radical progressive dogma in public education — a cultural shift critics have called the “Great Awokening.”
NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, data show that from 2003 to 2013, even the bottom 10% of test takers — the kids most in need of educational support — were slowly gaining ground. But starting around 2013, that trend reversed. Since then, the lowest scorers on math and reading tests in both 4th and 8th grade have steadily declined, with the drop accelerating after 2020. Click here to read more.
LOS ANGELES, CALIF - Three illegal aliens are accused of beating 47-year-old Aleksandre Modebadze in his own home as they burglarized him and left him for dead in the sanctuary jurisdiction of Los Angeles County, California.
Illegal aliens Paata Kochyashvili, 38 years old; Zaza Otarashvili, 46 years old; and Besiki Khutsishvili, 52 years old, all from Georgia, have been arrested and charged by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) for the murder of Aleksandre Modebadze on April 26.
According to LAPD, the three illegal aliens broke into Modebadze’s home, tied him up, and beat him to death while burglarizing his residence.
The trio is also accused of shutting down Modebadze’s home surveillance cameras ahead of the gruesome murder.
One of the illegal aliens had overstayed his B-2 tourist visa and was wanted by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but never turned over to agents thanks to California’s sanctuary state policy. Click here to read more.
MADRID, SPAIN- Spain’s electricity supply went down last month due to cascading failures traced to faults in two solar plants in Spain’s southwest region, causing a blackout on the Iberian Peninsula. Americans should not be complacent because the North American Electric Reliability Corp., a nonprofit international regulatory authority, has warned that it might happen in the United States.
On April 28, the day of the Spanish meltdown, solar provided 59% of electricity, wind about 12%, and nuclear and gas approximately 22%. When the two solar plants went down, insufficient backup, or inertia, was available to keep the system going.
The sun shines and the wind blows for free, but providing electricity to people with intermittent renewables, such as wind and solar, is more difficult than with baseload power, such as coal, natural gas, and nuclear power. Click here to read more.
