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McPike Mansion, a three-story brick building situated on one of the highest point's of Alton, takes the title as the "creepiest place" of Illinois, per HGTV's new report via CNN.

CHICAGO - Attorney General Kwame Raoul led a coalition of 11 attorneys general urging the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to adopt effective enforcement that would protect workers’ rights to prevailing wages on renewable energy and green economy projects where employers claim expanded tax credits. The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Biden in August 2022, created a range of tax credits and deductions for renewable energy projects and other green economy investments. The act makes credits five times larger if employees working on such projects are paid prevailing wages. In their comment letter submitted to the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the IRS, Raoul and the attorneys general urge the agencies to ensure that wage requirements are enforced. “Bad actors can and do find ways to falsify records and avoid prevailing wage obligations,” Raoul said. “Using retrospective paper audits to determine

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – The application period for high school students to request a nomination to a U.S. Military Service Academy for the Class of 2028 from U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) will close in two days, on Wednesday, November 1 st . Duckworth’s office has been accepting applications from high school students seeking a Congressional nomination to one of the four Military Service Academies through her website since March . Each year Duckworth, with the assistance of a nomination committee, selects from the applicants a group of outstanding Illinois students to receive Congressional nominations to attend West Point, the Air Force Academy, the Naval Academy or the Merchant Marine Academy. “It takes a special kind of young person to succeed at a U.S. Military Service Academy,” said Duckworth. “The rigorous nomination process demands outstanding test scores, a high GPA and a commitment to community service. I encourage all interested Illinois students

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WASHINGTON – U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, took to the Senate floor to urge his colleagues to pass a package of three funding bills currently pending on the Senate floor, known as a “minibus,” which provides funding for military construction, as well as for the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development for fiscal year 2024 (FY24). Durbin said, “Bipartisan efforts are necessary to get many meaningful things done in Washington. We accept that in the Senate. And right now, the most pressing item requiring a bipartisan effort is passing appropriations bills that finally fund the government for the next fiscal year. Government shutdowns should not be common place in Washington and yet the other party’s leadership, they have been.” During his speech, Durbin also condemned House Republicans for their failure to elect a Speaker for

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WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-KS) requested information from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) about the actions they are taking to protect consumers against unfair and deceptive practices in airlines’ frequent flyer and loyalty programs. Millions of Americans participate in frequent flyer programs. While these programs may have originated to incentivize and reward true “frequent flyers,” they have evolved to include co-branded credit cards and now often exclusively focus on dollars spent using these co-branded credit cards. In the letter, the Senators requested that DOT and CFPB answer questions surrounding the deceitful marketing tactics of these frequent flyer programs. The Senators wrote, “At the same time, there are troubling reports that airlines are engaged in unfair,

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Norah Jones has released video of her and Dave Grohl's joint rendition of the Foo Fighters song "Razor." The performance, which is streaming now on YouTube, was recorded for an…

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by Anna Clark

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

In the end, it took 699 days to account for what went wrong before, during and after a deadly shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan.

Nearly two years after the shooting, which killed four students and injured seven others, an outside consulting firm that conducted an independent investigation issued a sweeping report that faulted top administrators and other school officials for “failure and responsibility by omission.”

The 572-page report from Guidepost Solutions, a New York-based firm that specializes in investigations, compliance and security, said that had threat assessment and suicide intervention been carried out appropriately, the November 2021 shooting could have been prevented.

Guidepost also found missed opportunities in the aftermath of the shooting. The report describes efforts by the lawyers for Oxford Community Schools and the teachers union to discourage people from cooperating in the investigation, showing why it can be so difficult for communities to find transparency and accountability following a mass shooting.

Some school leaders encouraged staff to participate in interviews with the consultant, the report said, but the school board made it voluntary, rather than a condition of employment. The board didn’t even say it “expected” district employees to participate.

This “hindered our ability to conduct the investigation effectively,” the report said.

Of the 161 people Guidepost investigators asked to interview, 70 refused or did not respond, including most of the shooter’s former teachers and several critical witnesses to the shooting. Both employees who met with the shooter hours before the incident did not cooperate. Of those who were interviewed, some would not speak about threat assessment practices preceding the violence.

For the report, investigators also turned to police reports, surveillance video, social media posts, deposition transcripts and other records, including files from the county prosecutor’s ongoing criminal investigations.

In May, a ProPublica story described how comprehensive third-party reviews of school shootings are very rare — typically happening only after the highest-profile tragedies. Even then, haphazard approaches can breed mistrust and waste the chance to learn lessons on prevention.

Oxford Community Schools declined multiple offers from Michigan’s attorney general to investigate, the story said. For six months, Oxford’s board followed guidance from a lawyer retained by the school’s insurance company, SET SEG, as it insisted that it couldn’t launch a review until criminal and civil cases were resolved. But there was no such prohibition from prosecutors.

ProPublica’s story described how the delay in approving an independent review contributed to an atmosphere of mistrust among parents and community members.

The morning after the report’s release, Renee Upham, an Oxford mom who used to teach at the district’s middle school, wrote an email to school officials that she shared with ProPublica, calling on them to apologize to students, staff members and families. It also asked when key figures will be put on leave or terminated.

“The report is damning,” Upham wrote. “At its core, it shows failures going back years that could have prevented the murder of four children and the injuries, both physical and emotional, of others.”

After allowing “two years to pass before the truth came out,” she wrote, the district now has a chance to own it. “Please do so, she wrote. “That is what authentic leadership is.”

The report released Monday was the second from Guidepost. In May, the firm released a 179-page report that assessed Oxford’s current security, suicide intervention and threat assessment strategy. But the accountability report released Monday is the one many community members wanted most.

On Thursday, Guidepost will host three town hall meetings to answer questions from the community about the report.

“I cannot believe it has taken almost two years to get to this point,” wrote Danielle Krozek, an Oxford mom, in an email to two Guidepost leaders this month that she shared with ProPublica. She thanked them for their time and effort, but also said she felt “on edge and skeptical.”

“This community and administration have missed the opportunity to acknowledge devastating failures and set the example for our state and nation,” she wrote.

In an interview with ProPublica earlier this year, Dan D’Alessandro, then-president of the school board, acknowledged the community’s anxiety and mistrust over the long wait. “Sometimes the messaging that comes out from the legal system and the legal teams isn’t necessarily reflective of that of what the school district is trying to do,” he said.

During the Nov. 30, 2021, rampage, an Oxford sophomore killed Tate Myre, 16; Hana St. Juliana, 14; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; and Justin Shilling, 17. The shooter pleaded guilty to charges including murder and terrorism and faces the possibility of a life sentence without parole.

In an unprecedented case, prosecutors also charged the shooter’s parents with involuntary manslaughter, alleging they failed to respond to multiple red flags about their son. Four days before the shooting, his father bought a gun for him. The parents have pleaded not guilty.

At school, there were also a number of warning signs, including a disturbing drawing that pictured a gun and a bleeding body made in math class the morning of the shooting. It prompted a meeting with a school counselor, the dean of students, the teenager and his parents. Nobody in the family mentioned the gun, according to court records, and school officials didn’t ask about access to weapons.

Officials also didn’t insist the student leave school, alert senior administrators or call outside authorities, and they didn’t check the student’s backpack before returning it to him and writing him a pass back to class. The gun was in the backpack, along with ammunition and a journal where every page described shooting the school. Less than two hours after the meeting, he began firing at teachers and classmates.

“Missteps at each level throughout the District — from the Board, to the Superintendent, to the OHS administration, to staff — snowballed to create a situation where a student’s communications and conduct should have triggered a threat assessment and suicide intervention on November 30, but did not,” the report said. “None of these mistakes were intentional. But costly mistakes they were.”

The Oxford school district failed to put its written threat assessment policy into practice with instructions and guidelines, according to the Guidepost report. No senior administrators acknowledged having responsibility for implementing the policy.

Moreover, the district’s suicide intervention guidelines were out of date. Even so, existing school protocols should have led educators to send the troubled boy home, rather than let him return to class, according to the report.

The report also described “extraordinary acts of bravery and kindness” by district personnel, including administrators who tried desperately to save student lives during the shooting.

In the aftermath of the shooting, parents filed civil suits, alleging gross negligence against several school employees and arguing the district was liable for what happened. But strong governmental immunity protections are difficult to surmount. In May, a state circuit court judge dismissed public employees and institutions from all suits.

Federal suits alleging a “state-created danger” and naming the district and the two officials at the meeting with the teenager on the morning of the shooting are still being litigated.

In an earlier motion to dismiss, a lawyer, on behalf of the district, wrote that no one “can claim with a scintilla of support that the employees were not attempting to help this student.” The motion also argued: “With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to suggest that more could have been done. However, that is not the legal standard.”

Shortly after the shooting, the Oxford school board voted for a third-party review to begin “immediately.” According to the board’s resolution, it should “look far beyond the criminal investigation and into all the systemic factors that were at play.”

When a review didn’t happen, community members challenged the explanation from the school board that such an investigation had to wait for legal reasons. Those parents eventually learned directly from the county prosecutor’s office that, in fact, an investigation would not interfere with criminal cases. The prosecutor’s office further indicated that it had made this clear to the school’s lawyers, and at least one parent forwarded the message directly to the school board.

Finally, in May 2022, Oxford hired Guidepost for the investigation. It was led by Bradley Dizik, an executive vice president who heads the company’s emerging issues and technology practice group, and Andrew O’Connell, president of investigations and private client protection.

But even then, Timothy Mullins, the lawyer retained for the school by the insurance company, and union officials cautioned against talking. The union has pointed out that some members did cooperate with the investigation.

Mullins, in an email to ProPublica earlier this year, said that “critical witnesses have all been interviewed by law enforcement officials. They have also been deposed — under oath — by victims’ attorneys. Their sworn testimony has been set forth in voluminous transcripts, which are available to all parties and were provided to Guidepost by my firm.”

Deposition transcripts were useful but insufficient for the investigation, according to the report. Investigators noted that lawyers had different goals than they did and asked different questions than they would. (The report said that anyone interviewed by Guidepost was welcome to have an attorney present.)

Former board members told ProPublica that they worried that if they didn’t heed the advice of the lawyer retained by SET SEG, the school’s insurer could rescind coverage. Given the concerns of the district and certain employees, the report suggested legislation that explicitly prevents insurers from denying coverage to public schools and their employees if they participate in independent investigations into school shootings.

Anticipating the report, Oxford’s superintendent and the current board president informed families this month that the district would increase mental health support on campuses following its release and noted that the publicly funded All for Oxford Resiliency Center, established for those affected by the shooting, would expand its hours. They also pointed families to Oxford’s recovery plan and support services from county partners.

CHICAGO - U.S. Representative Robin Kelly (D-IL-02) and U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) joined U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Administrator Carole Johnson this weekend for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ M.O.M.S (Maternal Outcomes Matter Showers) Tour, highlighting their work on this important issue and the need to do more to address our country’s ongoing maternal mortality crisis. This national tour aims to improve maternal health outcomes, particularly among Black women, in communities with high maternal morbidity rates, bringing together mental health professionals, birth workers, medical professionals and community members to engage in meaningful discussions on maternal health disparities and explore ways to provide resources and support for women at risk. “In the richest country in the world, it is unacceptable that the United States continues to fail moms and babies. Black and Native women, especially, are most

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SPRINGFIELD - Enrollment at Illinois community colleges continues to climb for the second straight year according to the annual fall enrollment report, released today by the Illinois Community College Board (ICCB).Overall, the Illinois Community College System’s opening Fall 2023 enrollments had an increase in both headcount (+5.7 percent) and Full-time Equivalent (FTE) (+5.2 percent) from the previous year. The Fall 2022 to Fall 2023 increase of 5.7 percent is the second largest Fall-to-Fall enrollment growth in the last 30 years. Only the Fall 2008 to Fall 2009 increase of 7.4 percent during the Great Recession was higher. “Illinois has the best community college system in the nation—and look no further than our fall enrollment numbers for proof,” said Governor JB Pritzker. “With a more than 5 percent increase in enrollment since last year, our community colleges are bouncing back better than ever—showing the rest of the nation what it looks lik

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We’ve spent plenty of time over the last year or so on Missouri and Louisiana’s lawsuit against the Biden administration for apparently suggesting how sites like Meta should moderate content on their platforms. That case has had its twists and turns and is now going before the Supreme Court. I’m sure we’ll have plenty more […]

First-term Democrat, whose district includes parts of St. Clair and Madison counties, keeping eye on green-farming plans and also gets $500K for air pollution program.

ALTON - Local small business owners recently gathered for a presentation on “Becoming a Destination” in downtown Alton. The organizations Main Street America , Illinois Main Street and Alton Main Street sponsored the event. They invited Jon Schallert, the president of The Schallert Group, Inc., to speak about how to make a business a regional “must-see.” “I like talking to communities because you get a whole interesting mix of business owners from all over the place,” Schallert said to the ten owners who attended the presentation. Schallert has developed a 14-step process for becoming a “destination business.” He explained that a destination business is unique and not dependent on location. In fact, a true destination business will bring in people from outside the business’s traditional market. This is partly why destination businesses are so beneficial to communities. They also garner media attention and word-of-mouth

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There is concern over potential impact on city finances if the workers get a refund on the tax, which is the No. 1 source of general revenue for the city.

When Hannah Dinkel started as director of literary arts at the Jewish Community Center last year, she imagined there would be some authors who would be way too prominent to land for the annual St. Louis Jewish Book Festival. Mitch Albom — author of Tuesdays with Morrie, The Five People You Meet in Heaven and so many other huge hits — definitely fell into that category.

The restaurants entering stadiums have had to pare down their menus to feed larger volumes of customers but not St. Louis.