At the beginning of January, the news began to buzz with the report of Chicago alderman Nicholas Sposato, who told journalists that the city's school system is looking into removing all police officers from high schools.

As of January 1, a new Illinois state law is in effect that removes grant funding from public libraries that ban books “because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.” House Bill 2789 was signed by Governor J.B. Pritzker last summer and is just the latest in a string of policies advanced by this administration and motivated by its apparent obsession with indoctrinating kids into sexual orientation and gender identity ideology.

Illinois, your attorney general is trying to defeat an Idaho law that would keep boys out of girls' bathrooms.

Recent months have seen a dramatic uptick in the number of migrants and asylum seekers crossing the southern border, and major U.S. cities are struggling to accommodate them when they arrive.

Did you know that, in 1982, leaders in the Illinois General Assembly began the process of establishing a Prayer Room in our Capitol building? It is no longer there. But a new initiative has been launched in an effort to put a chapel (prayer room) back in the Capitol.

The story of Sage Blair is a worst-case scenario of epic proportions. At fourteen years old, Sage, who is being raised by her grandparents, began questioning her gender identity. At school, she was encouraged to socially “transition” and began using a male name, male pronouns, and the boys’ restroom. It was only after she was sexually harassed and threatened by male students in the restroom that Sage’s grandparents found out she was embracing a transgender identity.

Does it feel like you've woken up to yet another day fighting the cultural dumpster fire? You're not alone. Many faithful brothers and sisters are fighting alongside you. But it's not enough to keep monotonously throwing water on the fire—it's sometimes important to step back and study just how the fire’s progressing. Only then can you know where best to attack.

Several essential characteristics separate humans from other mammals. The most significant among them is our complex reasoning ability. We can solve problems throughout the full range of our current awareness. We have a powerful capability to observe, collect, and analyze facts. We can formulate theories and design meticulous studies to test them out. And we can debate the meaning of the findings of those studies.

f you haven’t noticed, immigration has been a much hotter topic in Illinois news recently. As waves of migrants are bused up to Illinois from the southern border and as they try to find living space in shelters, airports and even police stations, Chicago and other cities are seriously struggling to find room for them all.

A growing body of evidence proves that marijuana deeply harms individuals and society. Yet 37 states, including Illinois, have legalized it, and more states are working towards decriminalizing its use. Not surprisingly, heavily-funded Big Tobacco, Big Alcohol, and Big Pharma lobbyists in Washington, D.C. continue to work towards legalizing marijuana at the national level. We need your help to fight this national effort!

Given the moral and fiscal bankruptcy of our state and so much of our nation, we might ask, “Are we as conservative Christians in Illinois good for nothing?” It may feel that no matter what we do, our witness and work bear no fruit. But it does not need to be that way.

Alexi Giannoulias, Illinois Secretary of State, recently testified before a U.S. Senate Committee on the issue of how to determine what books belong in libraries and who determines what stays and what goes. Under questioning by Senator John Kennedy (R-LA), Giannoulias found himself at a loss for words after Kennedy read obscene passages from two controversial books, Gender Queer and All Boys Aren’t Blue, often found in public and school libraries.

The British destroyed our original Library of Congress and the 3,000 books it housed, in 1814 during the War of 1812... Today, the Library of Congress is the largest library in the world and holds 173 million items, 39 million of them are books. Every day 15,000 items are added to the collection by the library's 3,000 employees.

The massive wave of illegal immigration coming across the U.S.-Mexico border is hitting Illinois and Chicago particularly hard, with authorities considering a plan to erect giant “refugee” tent cities to handle the influx. More than 1,500 migrants are currently staying in police stations across Chicago and ten times that many are spread across 16 shelters operated by the city.

As Christians, we have the amazing freedom of coming before the throne of the Almighty, Holy, Omnipresent, All-Powerful Creator of the universe to petition Him in prayer – without being destroyed – because of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. It’s an incredible privilege, and what’s more, we’re told in James 5:16b that “the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” Prayer is powerful because we are talking to a powerful God. As we wrestle against “the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12), prayer is one of the strongest weapons we have.