One of the things that I most certainly did not have on my 2021 legislative Bingo card last January was that an Oak Park liberal Democratic Senate President and the state’s first Black House Speaker would be fighting multiple legal claims that their new state legislative district maps deprive protected minorities of their constitutional rights.

Governor JB Pritzker told reporters not long ago that he was worried about the plateauing COVID-19 hospitalization rate and said he wouldn’t yet lift his statewide mask-mandate. But the governor told me something around the same time during an interview that he hasn’t yet said publicly: He’s most concerned about what may happen in January and February and upbeat about the spring and summer.

The current topsy-turvy political landscape was on full display in the Illinois House and the Senate last week as the chamber debated and passed a bill to slightly narrow the scope of the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act.

Catholic priest and Chicago community activist Michael Pfleger has now twice called on Governor JB Pritzker to declare a “state of emergency” over his city’s notorious gun-violence problems.