By Ben Szalinski and Jade Aubrey
Capitol New Illinois
The Illinois House took its first step Monday in passing legislation responding to proposed actions by the Donald Trump administration.
The House voted 67-39 to advance House Bill 3637, which would put new protections in State law to safeguard health care licenses for providers who offer abortion cares. It also guarantees continued access to abortion medication even if the medication’s approval is rescinded by the federal Food and Drug Administration.
“We know that Project 2025 has called for the revoking of the FDA approval for medication abortion drugs, and we cannot wait to react after the fact,” representative Dagmara Avelar, D-Romeoville, said.
Under the bill, if the FDA ends approval for a drug, health care providers in Illinois will be allowed to continue providing the medication so long as the World Health Organization recommends it. Democrats fear the Trump administration may take action that makes critical medications, including those for abortion, inaccessible.
The WHO has “experienced health care providers as well so I’m confident on what they put out with regards to safety of drugs,” Avelar said.
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled last year that a group suing to revoke FDA authorization for an abortion drug lacked standing.
Rep. Bill Hauter, R-Morton, argued the legislation sets a dangerous precedent for health care regulation.
“There has to be some safety mechanisms, whether they be in the abortion clinic or with abortion medications,” Hauter said. “Do not reject the authority of the U.S. federal Food and Drug Administration. This is an important safety mechanism. This is unprecedented in my mind.”
Pritzker’s direct college admission plan
The House voted 102-2 Monday to advance House Bill 3522, which would create a direct admission program that applies students for admission at most Illinois public colleges and universities at once, bypassing college application fees.
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and University of Illinois Chicago would not be included in the program.
The plan was proposed by governor JB Pritzker.
Students would have to “opt-in” to take part in the program and provide their contact information and GPAs to the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. The commission would then apply admission criteria from each university to find out at which universities the student qualifies for admission.
No coverage caps on general anesthesia
Hauter is the sponsor of HB1141, which unanimously passed the House floor Monday. The bill would require all private insurance companies to cover the costs of medically necessary general anesthesia for the entire duration of a patient’s medical procedure.
“Patients have no control over the length of their surgery,” he said. “Physiologists have no control, or little control, and surgeons oftentimes have no control when they run into complications, abnormal anatomy or even malfunctioning equipment.”
The bill would ensure insurance companies can’t deny lengthy coverage in Illinois and continue the state’s status quo, Hauter said.
Blue Cross Blue Shield recently threatened to set a cap on the duration of medically necessary anesthesia in Missouri, New York and Connecticut in late 2024. After receiving nationwide backlash on the decision, the company changed course and never set a cap.
Student teacher stipend bill approved
A bill passed through the House Monday on a 78-23 vote that would allow student teachers to receive a stipend.
Student teaching is part of the requirements for a teaching license in Illinois.
The proposal passed the House in 2024 but didn’t become law.
The bill states eligible student teachers can be given “up to $10,000 per semester for two semesters” in educator preparation programs. Licensed cooperating teachers at public schools or early childhood education centers could separately get $2,000 per semester.
“We are in a dire situation, and we need teachers,” Rep. Katie Stuart, D-Edwardsville, said Monday on the House floor. “This is a barrier for those seeking licensure. It’s an expensive barrier to have to do your student teaching completely unpaid. This goes back to the history of the sexist nature of the fact that teachers tend to be overwhelmingly female.”
The bill’s main sponsor, Rep. Barbara Hernandez, D-Aurora, said she’s aiming to get $10 million appropriated from the budget for this bill, but she’d prefer around $60 million.
In 2024, Hernandez pushed for a $68 million appropriation for the proposal but admitted at the time the bill was unlikely to receive that funding.
Rep. Fred Crespo, D-Hoffman Estates, warned that Pritzker said budget negotiations were going to be strict this year.
“You can ask for everything, you can’t have it all,” Crespo said. “We need to start prioritizing what we want; and at the end of the day, taxpayers are going to pay for this. And at this rate, we’re just going to run out of taxpayers’ dollars to spend.”
Statute of limitations for trafficking
A bill that would eliminate the statute of limitations for cases of involuntary servitude or trafficking passed the Illinois House on Tuesday.
Current Illinois law only allows a victim of involuntary servitude, involuntary sexual servitude of a minor, or trafficking to pursue prosecution of their offender for up to 25 years after the victim reaches the age of 18. House Bill 2602 would allow victims to pursue prosecution at any time.
Bill sponsor Rep. Anne Stava-Murray, D-Naperville, said the bill, “isn’t just about putting an end to sexual assault.”
“It’s about delivering justice to survivors and removing people who violate children and teens from the streets,” she said. “With this legislation, we’ll be one step closer to delivering justice to childhood survivors of sex trafficking.”
Stava-Murray called the 25-year cap a protection for human traffickers who “really don’t deserve peace of mind.”
The bill passed out of the House unanimously.
House Bill 2805, sponsored by House Minority Leader Tony McCombie, R-Savanna, was also unanimously passed by the House.
This bill would prohibit insurance companies from charging deductibles, copays, or any other costs for any examinations or testing of victims of sexual assault, like rape-kits. McCombie said the bill closes a loophole as current state law prohibits insurance companies from charging for examinations and tests but does not prohibit a company from charging a co-pay.
“This makes sure that victims are not victimized on any level,” she said.
Safe cosmetic products
The House approved legislation that would prohibit businesses in Illinois from manufacturing or selling cosmetic products containing certain chemical ingredients including formaldehyde and mercury.
“We just want to make sure that our body products are safe here in the state of Illinois because some of these contain dangerous chemicals and toxic metals that cause severe health issues,” said bill sponsor Rep. Sonya Harper, D-Chicago.
House Bill 3409 passed on a 69-38 vote.
Several states and the European Union have already banned many of the dozen chemicals included in Harper’s bill.
It’s not clear how such a ban would be enforced in Illinois. According to Rep. Steve Reick, R-Woodstock, that means the bill is “toothless” and shouldn’t move forward.
Dual language education
House Bill 3026, introduced by Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid, D-Bridgeview, would enable the Illinois State Board of Education to develop guidelines schools can use to implement or expand dual language educational programs.
Last year, Rashid passed a bill that mandated the Illinois Advisory Council for Bilingual Education to issue a report outlining potential strategies the state could implement to incentivize and expand dual language education in Illinois schools. The report, published last October, spans 72 pages.
“This report identified several low hanging fruit for us to improve dual language education in our state,” Rashid said. “What HB 3026 does is it implements some of those recommendations.”
The bill does not require schools to implement the guidelines, but instead it allows them to choose their participation status. It passed the House on a vote of 77-25.
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