The Latest Breaking News from Don Harmon

Today’s update is a 5-minute read that will brief you on the day’s biggest stories.

The Oak Park Democrat continues to accept campaign money from Johnson & Johnson, 1 of 4 companies paying $26 billion to settle suits accusing them of fueling the crisis. He’s not the only Illinois official doing so.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Republican state lawmakers, outnumbered and looking to boost their relevance, had one goal for the election-year legislative session — to paint majority Democrats as soft-on-crime and anti-police.

In their 16-minute news conference, Pritzker and the Democratic leaders never mentioned the amount of overall spending called for in the budget plan, which had not yet been filed. Late Thursday, the governor’s office said they expected it to fall between $46 billion and $47 billion.

The tax relief in the plan announced by Illinois House Majority Leader Greg Harris falls squarely in the middle of the $1 billion in cuts Gov. J.B. Pritzker highlighted in his February budget proposal and the $1.8 billion that state Senate Democrats pitched last week.