One in 31 children in the U.S. is diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum.
by Judith Ruiz-Branch Illinois News Connection
CHICAGO - Illinois is the first state to block the federal government from accessing state data on autism.
The order, signed by Gov. JB Pritzker last week, is in response to federal efforts to create a mass data collection on autism.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to use Medicare and Medicaid data to create an autism registry with the goal of finding the cause of what he called an "autism epidemic." Pritzker's order prohibits the collection in Illinois without consent from an individual or guardian.
Federal agencies said they would protect sensitive health information.
Jeff Chan, associate professor of special education at Northern Illinois University, said along with concerns about accidental disclosure of protected health information, right now there is no single cause or cure for autism and he is skeptical a database could change it
"I don't even know if we will ever find that one, single cause," Chan acknowledged. "There's a variety of factors in play on the genetic side and the environmental side that are all affecting parents and mothers and children, which eventually lead to the expression of those symptoms."
Federal agencies said they would protect sensitive health information. More than a dozen autism organizations and advocates are pushing back against the planned database and any rhetoric claiming autism is "curable" or is caused by vaccines.
One in 31 children in the U.S. is diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. Chan noted in Illinois the rate increased from one in 333 children in 2002 to one in 51 children in 2023. He added while cases are rising, the numbers are also influenced by earlier diagnosis and improved data collection.
Chan emphasized the importance of oversight of data and interpretation and cautioned about the potential for drawing conclusions from incomplete information or cherry-picking evidence.
"Anyone could collect data and they can interpret it differently, and they can spin it differently," Chan stressed. "That happens all the time. And that's happened in the past, especially about the causes of autism."
Chan advised caution regarding individuals with extreme theories. He acknowledged the difficulty parents and caregivers face in evaluating information and the importance of institutions to help navigate the evidence.
"There's people out there that, for whatever reason, are true believers about a particular narrative about autism," Chan explained. "You have to be a very careful consumer about what you take in and what evidence you choose to believe."
CHARLESTON - Urbana's Marley Yau runs 2:20.83 split while running the anchor leg of her squad's preliminary race at the 2024 IHSA Girls Track & Field State Finals. The Tigers' relay squad finished 4th in their heat and 12th overall to punch their ticket into Saturday's championship race. Yau, along with her sister Lorelie, Beatrice Ebel, and Sophia Sheyko-Frailey finished 11th overall in the title race with a time of 9:56.10. Yau, a sophomore, returns to the state meet on Friday to compete in the 800m run and the 4x400 relay.
Nine other members of the Urbana track program will also compete in Friday's prelims. Accompanying Yau to Charleston this week are Amber Sysouvanh (4x200), Asha Williams (4x200), Francette Musau (4x200, 4x400), Genisis Walker (4x400), Kaleigh Bell (Long Jump, 100m Dash, 4x200, 4x400), Laiyonna Harper (4x200, 4x400), Mya Sessi (4x200, 4x400), Savannah Finley (4x200, 4x400), and Syniyah Quenga (4x200, 4x400).
Tagged: IHSA track & field, state track, high school sports, central Illinois, Urbana Tigers, long jump, hurdles, 4x800, state qualifiers, Urbana relay team
Dive into a book that turns bedtime into a learning moment. The stories are soft and soothing, yet they carry subtle messages about nature, conservation, and family—all delivered in a kid-friendly way.
by Ester Aardsma
Did you know an albatross can fly five million miles in its lifetime? Did you know a mimic octopus can copy as many as fifteen different other marine creatures? Did you know that when sea otters flip and twirl in the water, they are not just doing it for fun, but also to trap water bubbles in their fur for insulation against the sea’s cold?
In Secrets of the Ocean: 15 Bedtime Stories Inspired by Nature (2024), Alicia Klepeis presents fifteen gentle stories from sea life, each portraying a different microcosm of life in the ocean. The book is aimed toward the younger crowd and is probably most applicable for children aged ten and under, although some older children might find it interesting as well. Each story, most of which follows a family through its journey, is followed by several pages explaining the factual basis behind the story. Kaja Kajfež’s cozy illustrations lend a warm, soothing tone to the book—and the heavy-duty cover, with its embossed gold accents, is simply gorgeous.
Secrets of the Ocean lightly touches on topics of global warming, climate change, and pollution (especially plastics). One story includes what could potentially be a traumatic account of a turtle eating a plastic bag—although the story does not specify what happens to the turtle afterward, a child would naturally be agitated over it. The section of scientific facts included after that story does spell out that when animals eat plastic it does indeed “make them very ill or even kill them.”
A story focusing on a pod of orcas includes an illustration of a pair of orcas biting into a skate (which looks like a manta ray). The illustration is bloodless, but the skate looks like something that could be featured as the main character in a different anecdote. Mentions of mating, egg-laying, pregnancy, calving, etc., are frequent, although present in low-key terms, images, and details. The most confusing statement along those lines is “Seahorses are some of the only animals on Earth in which the males become pregnant and have babies.”
For land-locked Midwestern children, the ocean can be a nebulous, mysterious idea—it’s a completely different world than the day-to-day corn and soybeans, deer and squirrels. Secrets of the Ocean lovingly promises a glimpse into just that—the hidden treasures of the sea.
Esther Aardsma, a Champaign County native, currently resides in Thomasboro with her busy family. When she can, she pursues her passion for creativity, especially with words--and shares that love through editing, coaching one-on-one, and teaching classes.
Uphill battle for legislation this session comes as Israel faces protests for its war in Gaza.
Photo: Mohammed Abubakr/PEXELS
Protestors demonstrate for Palestinian human rights. Lawmakers in Springfield supporting human rights for Palestinians have increasingly signed on to legislation opposing the decade-old anti-boycott law, penalizing companies that boycott Israel to protest its policies toward Palestinians.
by Simon Carr & Sonya Dymova Medill Illinois News Bureau
SPRINGFIELD - A growing number of state lawmakers are moving to repeal a 2015 Illinois law penalizing companies that boycott Israel to protest its policies toward Palestinians.
Amid concerns about Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, lawmakers in Springfield supporting human rights for Palestinians have increasingly signed on to legislation opposing the decade-old anti-boycott law. But so far, these bills have stalled.
Illinois’ 2015 law prohibits state pension funds from investing in companies engaging in the Boycott, Divest, Sanction, or BDS, movement against Israel, making Illinois the first U.S. state to enact such legislation, with dozens of other states following suit. The measure, signed into law by Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican, was modeled after similar post-9/11 measures restricting Illinois’ pension funds from investment in companies that engage in business with the governments of Iran and Sudan.
Medill Illinois News Bureau/Simon Carr
Students at DePaul University’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment face counterprotesters in May 2024. This encampment was one of at least 130 similar campus protests last year, which highlighted concerns that Israel was engaging in human rights violations.
When boycotting Israel became grounds for blacklisting, Illinois lawmakers established the Illinois Investment Policy Board, tasked with investigating companies' investment choices. Opponents of the laws have warned they curtail free speech. Israel is the only country for which boycotting is penalized in Illinois by the board.
To repeal this policy, Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid, D-Bridgeview, introduced House Bill 2723, and Sen. Mike Porfirio, D-Bridgeview, introduced Senate Bill 2462 earlier this year. Since then, some 22 co-sponsors were added in the House and Senate, while two of those later had their names removed.
“This is about the right for people to advocate for what they believe — in this particular case, for human rights advocacy — without the state telling you what you have to believe and how you have to act,” said Rashid, the first Palestinian-American to serve in the Illinois House of Representatives. “It is a matter of making sure that Illinois is on the right side of history — not participating in the oppression of the Palestinian people – but it is also about making sure the Illinoisans and companies that do business in Illinois are not being forced and bullied and retaliated against because they chose to stand for human rights.”
Thirty companies are currently on the Illinois Investment Policy Board’s prohibited entity list for boycotting Israel.
In 2021, Unilever, for example, was added to that list after its subsidiary — ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s — announced it would stop selling its products in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, as defined by the United Nations. While remaining a supporter of Israel, the company said it did not support “an internationally recognised illegal occupation.”
Thousands of bills, the vast majority of those proposed, get stuck in the Rules Committee every year for various reasons.
Chicago-based investment firm Morningstar narrowly avoided state divestment in 2022, when the Illinois Investment Policy Board accused the firm’s subsidiary, Sustainalytics, of having an anti-Israel bias. The company then commissioned an independent report that found evidence of anti-Israel bias in Morningstar’s standalone product, Human Rights Radar.
Morningstar agreed to accept a series of recommendations, including discontinuing the Human Rights Radar and no longer taking input from the United Nations Human Rights Council, in order to avoid state divestment.
Wavering support
While President Trump-supporting Republicans and right-wing activists rail against a bipartisan national bill that would toughen penalties for boycotting Israel’s government, Illinois’ Democratic supermajority legislature appears hesitant to put an end to its 2015 anti-boycott law, which passed unanimously in both houses.
Rashid’s and Porfirio’s bills have stalled in committee despite the initial support from about one-fifth of the Democratic caucus, including the leaders of the Latino, Black and Progressive caucuses.
Thousands of bills, the vast majority of those proposed, get stuck in the Rules Committee every year for various reasons. In HB 2723’s case, the holdup can be attributed in part to the political costs of supporting the bill, advocates said.
Deanna Othman ... said HB 2723 is urgent, citing both a humanitarian crisis and a crisis of free speech.
Sen. Napoleon Harris, D-Harvey, was listed as a cosponsor on March 20, and Sen. Adriane Johnson, D-Buffalo Grove, signed onto the bill on April 2, but both had their names removed on April 8. Neither senator responded to a request for comment on their reasoning.
Porfirio, the Senate bill’s chief sponsor, said “I will continue to discuss the measure with my colleagues, to ensure that our pension system is well-informed, equitable and responsible” in an email. Its chief cosponsors — Karina Villa, D-West Chicago; Graciela Guzmán, D-Chicago, and Rachel Ventura, D-Joliet — all declined or failed to respond to requests for comment.
“Even though it had quite an impressive list of sponsors and cosponsors, it's a controversial piece of legislation that is likely to engender a lot of debate that most legislators don't want to vote on, because they either have Jewish or Palestinian constituents, or both,” said Dick Simpson, a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago and former Chicago alderman. “Why should they vote on something that isn't going to pass and then cause some constituents to be mad at them?”
But Deanna Othman, member of the Chicago chapter of American Muslims for Palestine, said HB 2723 is urgent, citing both a humanitarian crisis and a crisis of free speech.
“Unfortunately, it's more relevant now than ever, because we've seen all of the crackdown on student protesters and people who engage in boycott and people who are just voicing their First Amendment rights,” Othman said. “If I cannot stand up for the rights of my fellow Palestinians, whose rights can I stand up for?”
‘It’s impossible to tell if this bill will ever pass’
Activists say they are hopeful a repeal of the anti-BDS law will pass in 2026 if it continues to stall this year. But it remains an uphill battle, even as they point to a steady decrease in American popular support for Israel.
About 53% of Americans express an unfavorable opinion of Israel, according to a Pew Research Center study conducted last month. This is an increase from March 2022, when that figure was 42%.
The survey found the share of Americans with little or no trust in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “do the right thing for global affairs” increased significantly from 2023 to 2024. Since Oct. 7, over 52,000 people in Gaza have been killed in Israeli attacks, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza. An estimated 1,200 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas’s attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, and around 250 Israelis were taken hostage.
The pro-Israel, pro-peace advocacy group J Street does not oppose boycott initiatives “that explicitly support a two-state solution and recognize Israel’s right to exist,” according to a statement of its policies. “It is critical to maintain the distinction between boycott efforts that work against the interests of Israel, and initiatives which are limited to opposing the occupation. We neither oppose nor call for these initiatives,” the group said in a statement.
But J Street does oppose the broader Global BDS Movement, which advocates for three tenets: That Israel should stop policing the border on and occupying legally Palestinian land, that Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel should have full equality with Jewish citizens and that Palestinians be allowed to return to their homes, as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.
Lesley Williams, an activist with Evanston Ceasefire who has been lobbying to repeal Illinois’ anti-BDS law, said the three tenets don’t mean “Israel needs to stop existing.”
“That doesn't mean that non-Palestinians should be forced to leave Israel,” she said. “It just says the Palestinians should have equal rights in that territory and that Israel should be following United Nations resolutions.”
Pritzker is going to try to run for president in 2028, and he doesn't want anything to happen in the GA that could be used as an albatross on his neck ...
The original sponsor of the 2015 anti-BDS law in the House, then Rep. (now Sen.) Sara Feigenholtz, D-Chicago, declined several requests for comment. However, when a 2022 Crain’s Chicago Business op-ed criticized Feigenholtz’s legislation, arguing it was “raising the specter of McCarthy-like scrutiny.” Feigenholtz issued a statement defending her law.
“Israel is the singular democracy in the Middle East that has historically been a consistent ally to the United States,” Feigenholtz said at the time. “Boycotts of Israel, like Ben & Jerry’s/Unilever, are intended to harm and weaken Israel.” She added, “No one’s free speech is curtailed.”
Ben and Jerry’s co-founders Bennett Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, who no longer run the company, denied the boycott was anti-Israel or antisemitic in a 2021 op-ed. They said it was merely a rejection of Israeli policy, and that Ben and Jerry’s was in fact advancing justice and human rights, both “core tenets of Judaism.”
Given the controversy surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian divide, many political obstacles to these current bills passing will probably remain next year. Politicians are less likely to discuss controversial issues like the BDS movement when there’s a supermajority of one party — in Illinois’ case, Democrats — for fear of factionalizing, said Ryan Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University.
Even if a repeal of the anti-BDS law makes it through the legislature, Gov. JB Pritzker may still be an obstacle, Burge added.
“Pritzker is going to try to run for president in 2028, and he doesn't want anything to happen in the GA that could be used as an albatross on his neck when he runs for the primary in a couple years,” Burge said. Should anti-BDS legislation reach Pritzker’s desk, “The Governor will carefully review this piece of legislation,” the governor’s press secretary, Alex Gough, said in an email.
“It’s impossible to tell if this bill will ever pass, and the reason for that is it's impossible to predict where the Israeli and Palestinian war will be next year,” Simpson said. “I don't know, if Israel does carry through on its threats to move all the Palestinians out of Gaza and to permanently take control, that might provide enough anger to cause it to pass. But it is just predicting.”
Simon Carr and Sonya Dymova are students in journalism with Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, and are fellows in its Medill Illinois News Bureau working in partnership with Capitol News Illinois.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
Editor's Note:
This story has been updated to include a comment from Sen. Mike Porfirio that was received before publish and inadvertently omitted from a previous version. Capitol News Illinois regrets the error.
Air traffic controllers have been using outdated equipment for decades. Modernization plans are finally underway. The current radar system is a 1960s design which was upgraded in the 1990s.
by Glenn Mollette, Guest Commentator
Air traffic controllers have been using outdated equipment for decades. Some Federal Aviation Administration, (FAA) facilities are over 50 years old. The Government accountability office reported 51 of 138 air traffic control systems are unsustainable due to age and outdated functionality.
Equipment upgrades have been delayed for at least a decade. Modernization plans are finally underway. The current radar system is a 1960s design which was upgraded in the 1990s. The communication systems date back to the 1970s and 1980s. The upgrades include ERAM, Enroute Automation Modernization, cloud-based radar tracking. Datacom, digital pilot controller communications and ADS-B, Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast, which is precise GPS tracking. The anticipated completion of these updates will not likely be until 2030 with an anticipated budget of 7.2 billion dollars and growing.
In the meantime, American travelers are suffering long layovers and abrupt flight cancellations. Worse, flying has become more dangerous. While it is still touted as the safest form of transportation by the airlines, it doesn’t feel quite as safe to some of us.
On top of aging, outdated equipment, we have a big shortage of air traffic controllers. The FAA is 3500 air traffic controllers short of targeted staffing. The shortage causes flight delays and forces many controllers to work mandatory overtime and six-day weeks. The reasons behind these shortages are several. The rapid return to air travel after Covid-19. Pre-pandemic hiring freezes and layoffs. Retirement of experienced controllers. Challenges in training new controllers.
To address this the US Transportation Department is offering incentives to recruit and retain controllers. Air traffic controllers can make $140,000 to over $200,000 a year.
Another problem. Our National Weather Service is understaffed especially ahead of hurricane season starting June 1st.
Specifically, 30 out of 122 weather forecast offices lack chief meteorologists. This shortage is concerning given the increasing frequency of billion-dollar disasters- 27 occurred just last year. Officials have warned this could compromise disaster response.
The shortages are due to massive retirement numbers. At least 25% have retired from the workforce in the last five years. The starting pay is in the low forty-thousand-dollar range. The hiring process takes about 300 days and ther is a high education requirement for the job. The burnout rate is also high. The job is very stressful with long hours especially during severe weather events.
Another problem across American is our water. Many American communities have outdated water systems. These aging systems pose serious health and environmental risks especially in rural areas where populations are declining and funds are scarce.
The American Society of Civil Engineers has given the US drinking water infrastructure a grade of D minus for over a decade due to its deteriorating condition.
In the last five years America has spent around $370 billion on foreign aid. A big chunk of this went to Ukraine.
America has worked hard. We deserve to have current, up to date aviation systems, accurate up to date weather reporting and a clean drink of water. Let’s please use some of this $370 billion to fix things at home.
About the author ~
Glen Mollett is the author of 13 books including Uncommom Sense, the Spiritual Chocolate series, Grandpa's Store, Minister's Guidebook insights from a fellow minister. His column is published weekly in over 600 publications in all 50 states.
The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily representative of any other group or organization. We welcome comments and views from our readers. Submit your letters to the editor or commentary on a current event 24/7 to editor@oursentinel.com.
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Photo Galleries
A couple of runners found themselves in the wrong race at this year's Illinois Marathon. Over 60 photos from the race that you should see.
by Judith Ruiz-Branch
