Two days after President-elect Donald Trump’s “border czar” said the threatened mass deportations of undocumented immigrants would begin in Chicago, Gov. JB Pritzker again gave assurances that Illinois would protect all immigrants while also repeatedly saying he shared a desire to deport undocumented people convicted of violent crimes.

“Let me be clear up front: Violent criminals who are undocumented and convicted of violent crime should be deported. I do not want them in my state. I do not think they should be in the United States,” Pritzker said Wednesday at an unrelated event in Chicago.

Two projects that could change the economic face of Chicago — the CTA’s $5.3 billion Red Line extension and a multibillion-dollar quantum computing campus on the Far South Side — got final zoning approval Wednesday as the City Council teed up Mayor Brandon Johnson’s 2025 budget for a nail-biting final vote on Friday.

One day after the mayor’s $17.3 billion budget and the $256 million in fines and fees to support it squeaked through the Budget and Finance committees, the full Council deferred and published both ordinances, setting the stage for Friday.

Wheeling Township will ask voters in April how they feel about unfunded mandates from the state.

The township board Tuesday authorized the Cook County clerk to place a nonbinding, advisory referendum on the ballot. It will ask: “Should the state of Illinois be allowed to force unfunded mandates on local governments who may raise property taxes to cover the costs of those mandates?”

Last month the Pekin City Council narrowly approved keeping the 1% grocery tax. It will go into effect on Jan 1, 2026 as the state’s version of the tax sunsets.

But this week’s question before the Pekin City Council was whether taxpayers should weigh-in on the idea in an advisory referendum on the ballot of the April 1 election.