Illinois deer population control bill passes Senate
Senate Bill 710 loosens regulations under the Illinois Wildlife Code to make it easier for landowners and tenants to obtain deer hunting permits. The bill also allows for the automatic issuance of additional antlerless-only permits for those who show 'effective reduction efforts' and enables owners and resident tenants of at least 40 acres of commercial farmland to receive permits for use on that land.
Senator Chapin Rose says this address a matter of not just an economic hit on farmers and the price of goods at the grocery store, but a matter of public safety.
'Vehicular collisions with deer are extremely dangerous and, even if you are lucky enough to escape unscathed, chances are your car won't be as lucky,' said Senator Rose. 'Virtually everyone I know has had a near miss with a deer at some point, and many have had an actual impact. You can't put a price tag on human life or injury, but all of us in Illinois are paying higher health insurance, particularly car insurance, because of the out-of-control deer herd in our state.'
Senate Bill 710 now heads to the House of Representatives for further consideration.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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The Hill
5 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump wields funding card in fight with DC
Republicans are embracing President Trump's bare-knuckled fight with Washington, D.C., as a winning issue for the embattled president and say that Trump will use federal funding for the city as leverage to get Mayor Muriel Bowser and the City Council to crack down on local crime. Conservatives on Capitol Hill are calling for Congress to end the District of Columbia's era of home rule and federalize the city, something that has little chance of happening since legislation to do so would need 60 votes and the support of at least seven Democrats to pass the Senate. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress, however, could extract significant concessions from the mayor and City Council in return for critical funding, as a proposal to restore more than $1 billion in funding for Washington remains stalled in the GOP-controlled House. Republican aides say that one of Trump's top priorities would be to press D.C. to eliminate no-cash bail, a policy whereby individuals arrested on criminal charges do not need to post cash bonds to avoid pretrial detention. Other priorities would be to prosecute teenagers accused of serious crimes as adults and to implement stricter policies mandating pretrial detention of adults and teenagers accused of such crimes. Some Republicans on Capitol Hill, including Sen. Mike Lee (Utah) and Rep. Andy Ogles (Tenn.), are pushing for more drastic action. They are backing legislation to repeal the 1973 District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which gives the city the right to elect its own government and manage local affairs. Lee in an op-ed for The Spectator cited several high-profile attacks, including the fatal shooting of congressional intern Eric Tarpinian-Jachym in July and the 2023 knife attack that left a staffer for Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) with a punctured lung and penetrated skull. 'This isn't just a local issue — it's a national embarrassment, and the Constitution itself makes it a national issue. Federal oversight will restore order and make DC a model city again,' Lee posted on the social platform X. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) in an interview on Fox Business applauded Trump's takeover of D.C.'s police and predicted: 'If there's a significant law enforcement presence, these crimes are going to go down.' He said a car belonging to one of his staffers got shot up in a gang fight while it was parked six blocks from the Capitol. 'We spent one of our Steering Committee meetings talking about what we should get our employees to protect themselves when they're walking home. This is our nation's capital, for crying out loud. This is where you bring your family, and you become a patriot, and it's not safe to be here,' he said. 'I'm saluting President Trump. More power to him to do whatever it takes to secure our nation's capital.' Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), the chair of the Senate Steering Committee, told reporters Tuesday he hoped Democratic mayors from major cities would follow Trump's lead and increase law-enforcement activities. 'I'm optimistic this will show D.C. you can have safety,' he said. 'The first thing I say to everybody when they're coming to D.C. is, 'You better think about where you're staying, you've got to think about every street you're on, you've got to think about you can't be out at night.' Hopefully that will change.' Early polling is mixed on Trump's takeover of the capital's police department and plan to deploy 800 National Guard troops, along with dozens of FBI agents, to step up law enforcement activity around the city. An Aug. 11 YouGov survey of 3,180 U.S. adults found that 47 percent of respondents strongly or somewhat disapproved of Trump's actions, while 34 percent strongly or somewhat approved. But the poll also found that 67 of respondents said that crime in large American cities is a 'major problem' while 23 percent described it as a 'minor problem.' Focusing on crime in Democratic-run cities has been a successful political tactic for the president going back to his first term and comes at a time when his approval rating has sunk to 37 percent, according to a recent Gallup poll. Democratic lawmakers slammed Trump's action. Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) asserted 'there are currently no 'special conditions of an emergency nature' in D.C., which the president has to claim in order to take federal control of MPD under the Home Rule Act.' 'This is unprecedented,' he said. Jim McLaughlin, a Republican pollster who has done work for Trump, said that Trump's takeover of the police force and deployment of National Guard is a popular move but argued it's not motivated by politics. 'He's doing it because he thinks it's really important to keep people safe,' he said, noting that crime and law enforcement in major cities was an issue that Trump identified as a top priority when he was thinking about running years before the 2016 presidential election. 'I know there are a lot of people looking at the political angle here, but it's not politics, it's about doing what he thinks is right,' McLaughlin said. 'D.C. is a special place. We have people not just from all over the country but all over the world come to visit D.C., and they should be safe there. 'We've got members of Congress and their staff getting attacked there,' he said, referring to the assault on Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) in 2023. Trump will have an opportunity to press his demands ahead of next month's government funding deadline, Sept. 30, when Democrats in Congress and advocates for the District will call for the restoration of the funding held back in the March funding deal. 'I can see that being an anomaly in a [continuing resolution],' said a Republican strategist, who suggested that Trump could also request more federal oversight of Washington's Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) in exchange for funding to hire more police. 'You're working within the confines with what will probably be a' continuing resolution, the strategist said of the expectation that Congress will need to pass a stopgap funding measure to avoid a government shutdown. 'You could do it via a handshake agreement,' the strategist added, referring to concessions Bowser would make in exchange for more federal funding. Bowser 'already opened the door' to a potential deal with the White House, the strategist noted, by acknowledging in a recent statement that beefing up policing in some parts of the city could be a good idea. Bowser at a press conference Monday acknowledged that 'we experienced a crime spike post-COVID' but argued 'we worked quickly to put laws in place and tactics that got violent offenders off our streets and gave our police officers more tools, which is why we've seen a huge decrease in crime.' The mayor pointed out that crime is down compared with 2023 but pledged: 'We're not satisfied, we haven't taken our foot off the gas, and we continue to look for ways to make our city safer.' Bowser met with Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday, a meeting that Bondi called 'productive.' 'I just concluded a productive meeting with DC Mayor Bowser at the Department of Justice. We agreed that there is nothing more important than keeping residents and tourists in Washington, DC, safe from deadly crime,' Bondi posted on social media. Trump on Monday vented his frustrations over no-cash bail and what he views as the lenient treatment of teenagers accused of felony crimes. 'Every place in the country where you have no-cash bail is a disaster,' Trump declared at a White House press conference where he announced a federal takeover of D.C.'s police department and the deployment of 800 National Guard troops to the city's streets. The president called for the District to change its laws to allow for teenagers 14 and older to be prosecuted as adults, complaining of juvenile offenders: 'They are not afraid of Law Enforcement because they know nothing ever happens to them, but it's going to happen now!'


USA Today
5 minutes ago
- USA Today
The IRS has had six leaders in 2025. What that means for taxpayers.
Turnover at the top of IRS means fewer IRS agents, fewer audits and questions about implementing the new tax law The IRS is on its seventh commissioner of the year, has lost one-quarter of its staff and is faced with implementing a raft of new regulations. Whether and how this turmoil could affect Americans remains to be seen. But the first impacts are likely to be lower tax collections and a harder time getting answers to tax-related questions, according to a former commissioner and a policy analyst. 'You can be fairly confident of the direction of the impact, that having this level of instability is not good for IRS' core functions and for taxpayer service," said Alex Muresianu, Senior Policy Analyst at the Tax Foundation, a tax policy think tank. 'This level of instability coinciding with the implementation of a new set of tax laws ‒ that is a dangerous mix." The IRS got its seventh leader of the year Aug. 8 when President Donald Trump tapped Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as its temporary head, after removing Commissioner Billy Long. Trump ousted Long after 53 days on the job, giving him the shortest tenure of any Senate-approved IRS Commissioner. The IRS media office referred USA TODAY to the Treasury Department, which did not return a request for comment Aug. 12. Long, who said he will be nominated as ambassador to Iceland, was the fifth person picked by Trump to lead the agency since regaining the Oval office in 2025, but the only one approved by the Senate. Biden's IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel resigned his five-year position three years early in January, rather than be fired by Trump. New priorities with each new leader Each IRS commissioner sets priorities, moves resources and staff around and problem solves differently, Werfel told USA TODAY. Constant flux over the last 8 months has likely made it difficult for staff to function, he said. The IRS Commissioner's job is to make sure the agency runs well. Werfel compared it to keeping trains on time. "Every time you have a new leader these rules and processes can change," he said. "It just sows confusion." CNN and The Washington Post reported that Long was fired after the IRS clashed with the White House over using tax data to help locate suspected undocumented immigrants. Long, a former Republican Congressman and auctioneer, previously had to walk back plans to start tax season later and eliminate the IRS' free tax filing program. Fewer agents to process returns and answer taxpayer questions The Biden administration added nearly $80 billion in new IRS funding, largely to collect unpaid taxes from the wealthy. That money brought the agency to one of its highest staffing levels just before Trump took office. The new administration almost immediately began mass layoffs and offered early retirements for federal employees, in an effort to downsize the government. A quarter of the IRS staff had left the agency as of mid- July, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. Among the hardest hit positions are people responsible for reviewing and processing federal tax returns, and agents, who conduct individual and business audits. Other fired workers were involved in modernizing IRS technology or helping taxpayers by telephone. Werfel said the staffing cuts will impact customer service unless those people's jobs have been replaced by technology, and he said there is no indication they have been. Contact with the IRS is stressful for most taxpayers, Werfel said. Fewer employees means fewer people answering phones and responding to requests for help, fewer available inperson appointments and longer waits for audit results, he said. "The higher functioning IRS you have, the less stressful this is," he said. "If you're going to engage that bureacracy, you want it to at least work." Fewer audits means less revenue Conducting fewer audits means the country is collecting less revenue, which Werfel said should bother Americans worried about the national debt. "We should want our country to be fiscally responsible," he said. "The more money that we leave on the table that is actually owed to the country, the more that we have to put on the credit card at a high interest rate." For every dollar spent auditing America's highest earners, for example, the IRS reaps more than $4 in recovered tax dollars, research shows. Werfel said there is an estimated $700 billion in taxes that are owed each year but not paid, an amount he said could climb if the risk of an audit drops and there is less pressure to pay. "It creates an incentive for more people to break the rules and that means less revenue," he said. Implementing the GOP tax law The IRS and Treasury Department are rushing to stand up Republicans' new tax law. Lawmakers left it up to the agencies to fill in the details of the policy changes, many of which take effect this tax year, including sorting out specifics of how new breaks for overtime pay, tips and other provisions will work. Muresianu, the tax analyst, said taxpayers often need more clarification from the IRS when new tax laws take effect, and the call volume will likely be higher next year. 'If you have instability at the IRS, management problems at the IRS, and their ability to provide service declines, that is particularly bad if it's coming at a time where there a lot of people looking for clarity,' he said.


Forbes
6 minutes ago
- Forbes
The Two Big Questions President Trump's Nominee For The Federal Reserve Must Be Asked
Finance balance. Small golden piggy bank overweighting big white piggy bank on the abstract scales getty There are two big questions that President Trump's nominee to fill a vacancy on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Stephen Miran, must be asked at his Senate confirmation hearing. If the answers are wrong, we could soon be headed for a round of bad economic news. The board sets policy for our central bank, most notably the level of interest rates. Miran currently heads the president's Council of Economic Advisers. He may well succeed Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell when Powell's term expires next year. The two fundamental questions: How important does Miran think it is to have a dollar stable in value? And does Miran believe that prosperity causes inflation? The definition of inflation is reducing the value of a currency, usually, but not always, by creating too much of it. This the Federal Reserve can directly affect by making a stable dollar the chief goal of monetary policy. The Fed can't control prices going up because of disturbances in production from natural disasters, wars and such government actions as costly regulations, pandemic lockdowns or higher taxes, like tariffs. Unfortunately, our central bank can't seem to distinguish between non-monetary inflation that emanates from events like floods or the imposition of sales taxes, and monetary inflation that comes from devaluing the dollar. Hence, we get the spectacle of current Fed boss Jerome Powell huffing and puffing about tariffs. Incredibly, central bankers don't grasp the basic importance of currency stability; they hardly ever mention the subject. Of course, they do understand—as does everyone else—the necessity of fixed weights and measures for efficient markets. The number of ounces in a pound doesn't fluctuate, nor does the number of inches in a foot. Yet money performs the same function of measurement: It measures value. It's a tool that facilitates commerce, the everyday buying and selling of countless items and services. The idea of a fixed value for the dollar should be no more radical than having fixed measurements for weighing items or measuring distances. The best way to keep the dollar stable is to fix it to gold. For a variety of reasons the yellow metal keeps its intrinsic value better than anything else. It's not perfect, but it's been the best yardstick for thousands of years. Since instituting a formal gold standard is taboo these days, the Fed could use an informal range and also refer to a basket of commodities, since commodities often quickly reflect changes in the value of the dollar. This brings us to the second giant—and highly related—question: Does Miran think prosperity causes inflation? Real world experience shows the notion is preposterous, but it's holy writ at the Fed and, indeed, at virtually every other central bank. The Fed is prejudiced against vibrant growth. In fact, the very idea that in the name of fighting inflation the Federal Reserve should attempt to stimulate or depress economic activity needs to be attacked and, ultimately, abandoned. Where does Miran stand on this? Miran may still hold his own strange notions about the dollar's value. We must find out. Any policy other than a stable dollar is a recipe for trouble.