When Chicago police took Terrill Swift to a police station on the city’s South Side in March of 1995, he was just 17 years old.

“They cuffed me to the chair and they started asking me questions about this rape and murder. And I’m like ‘Whoa, what? Excuse me?’ ” Swift remembers.

Swift and three other black teenagers, a group that would later be dubbed the Englewood Four, were questioned for hours. Swift remembers the police telling him over and over: “You’re gonna die in jail. You’re never going home.”

“I’m sitting there like, I’m ‘how am I gonna die in jail? I don’t even know what’s going on,’ ” Swift said. “I’ve never been in jail, I don’t know how jail works. You’re telling me I’m never going to see my family again. I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know!”

The Biden administration has proposed a $6 trillion budget aimed at improving infrastructure, education, and health care. If passed, it would push federal spending to its highest level since World War II. It could also usher in the reversal of a long term-trend of declining government employment.

Over the last decade, the number of Americans employed by governments at the local, state, and federal levels has fallen from 22.5 million in 2010 to 21.9 million in 2020, a 2.6% drop. Nationwide, the public sector accounts for 15.4% of all employment. Government employment is not evenly distributed across the country, however. Depending on the state, the share of all jobs in the public sector ranges from less than 13% to over 25%.

In Illinois, 13.8% of the workforce are employed by the government — either at the state, local, or federal level — the ninth lowest share of all states. In keeping with the national trend, the number of government workers in Illinois has decreased in recent years. There are currently 785,800 public sector workers in the state, down 7.8% from 2010.

The state of Illinois is issuing guidelines for reopening next week, more than 14 months after Gov. J.B. Pritzker first issues pandemic restriction for the state.

Phase 5 of the Restore Illinois plan goes into effect on June 11, marking a full reopening of all businesses and activities.

The Illinois Department of Public Health said the move comes as Illinois recently reached a test positivity rate of less than 2%, more than half of the population has been fully vaccinated and key hospitalization metrics have been declining since early May.

Governor JB Pritzker hinted Thursday that he may not run for a second term, breaking the news even as Illinois is poised to come out of the pandemic and make his job a bit easier starting next week.

So, the question is: Is the governor serious, or just being coy about his plans?

If Pritzker decides not to run again, it would send shockwaves across the political landscape in Illinois and open the floodgates for candidates on both sides of the aisle.

Sunil and Sangita Kumar had been figuring on downsizing out of their longtime home in Hoffman Estates sometime around 2023.

Instead, they’re now looking into replacing their kitchen’s dated countertops with quartz and doing some other cosmetic fixes so they can put the four-bedroom house on Chippendale Road up for sale soon.

“The market is so good, we’re thinking very seriously that we should take advantage of it,” Sunil Kumar says.