Twelve suburban legislators are among the Democrats in the Illinois House who’ve pledged not to support Michael Madigan’s latest bid for speaker.

Madigan, who aside from a two-year gap in the 1990s has been House speaker since 1983, has been implicated in a bribery scheme involving ComEd. He’s also come under fire for his handling of sexual harassment allegations within his office.

The Chicago Teachers Union has tried twice to stop Chicago Public Schools from reopening in January — and has lost both times.

The latest failure came on Thursday, when the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board denied the union’s request for a preliminary injunction to halt the Jan. 4 return date for preschoolers and some special education students and staff. The union had accused CPS of violating labor law by refusing to negotiate in good faith over a safe reopening.

Keith Loukinen has had perhaps the best view of the Illinois Governor’s Mansion of any restaurateur since opening his fine dining establishment across the street in 2017.

But on Saturday, Loukinen, in his full chef uniform, made the short walk to the front of the mansion to join about 100 bar and restaurant owners, employees and patrons to protest the mitigations put in place by Gov. JB Pritzker and enforced by Sangamon County public health officials.

Some public school districts in the metro-east lost students this fall, and the coronavirus pandemic is likely to blame.

With 7,366 students this fall, Edwardsville Community Unit School District 7 is the largest district in the metro-east. After at least four years of very consistent enrollment levels, the district lost about 100 students this fall. For a district that size, Superintendent Jason Henderson said the decline was small, but that it could affect class sizes slightly.