• 10:00 a.m. - Gov. Bruce Rauner joins the Brandt Group of Companies for the unveiling of plans to create new jobs in Bloomington-Normal area today. The event will take place at 19500 N. 1425 East Road, in Hudson. Rauner toured a Kane County manufacturing plant and a forge in DeKalb County yesterday, en route to providing the keynote speech at the DeKalb County Economic Development Corp.’s 30th anniversary dinner, according to a release from his office. “DeKalb is a microcosm of our state’s economy,” Rauner said. “It features strong manufacturing and distribution employers like The Suter Company and 3M that coexist in the same geography with some of the most bountiful harvest land in the world. Manufacturing and agriculture: These are the foundational businesses of Illinois.”


• Indivisible Chicago’s Jennifer O'Brien joined legislators yesterday to introduce legislation aiming to remove Illinois from the highly controversial Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, whose gaping security holes were recently exposed in a joint House and Senate hearing. The bill, SB2273, has not formally been filed in the legislature. A video of the press conference is available online.


• In case you missed it, the first brief of the Janus v. AFSCME case was filed this week, beginning proceedings in the free-rider case before the high court. In a release, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation President Mark Mix reiterated the company’s aim of overturning the controlling precedent of the 1977 Abood v. Detroit ruling. “Now that the Janus case is being briefed for argument at the High Court, we are hopeful that in the coming months the Supreme Court will correct this anomaly in First Amendment jurisprudence by striking down all mandatory union payments for public workers,” Mix wrote.


• On the radar: What’s going on with the unusually high number of bomb threats at schools in the capital city? The State Journal-Register counts ten such incidents so far this year.