Deep Roots with Jen McMillin

Some weeks the news just wins. This week, Jen goes looking for a fight she can actually win instead — and finds it at a forgotten cemetery gate in DeWitt County.A shredded flag over a 100-year-abandoned graveyard in Turnbridge Township. A War of 1812 veteran named John Greenman, buried and mostly forgotten since 1831. A Rotary favor, a new flag, and a lesson about what it means to fix what's actually in front of you when the rest of the world feels unfixable.Featuring a detour through early McLean County history (horse races, lead mines, and a store on the square in Leroy), a second flag rescue out at Sangchris Lake State Park in Christian County, and a case for why the small, unglamorous work of caring for a place is exactly the muscle we need for the bigger fights too.Covering DeWitt, McLean, and Christian counties this episode — part of Deep Roots' weekly-ish look at news and civic life across Central Illinois.Read or find sources at JenMcMillin.Substack.com

This week on Deep Roots: Jen remembers Dolly Parton — and makes the case that Dolly's biggest joke was ever telling us she wasn't political. Then it's the full news sweep: a Supreme Court ruling on the White House ballroom, a whistleblower's warning about mail-in voting, and Governor Pritzker's bid for a third term, running straight into a packed, contentious CVAC forum on data centers right here in Decatur. Plus updates from Bloomington-Normal, Jacksonville, Lincoln, and the Route 29 and downtown projects reshaping Pana — seventeen counties, one state, and the national stories tying it all together.Read or find sources on JenMcMillin.Substack.com

I left a breakfast in Springfield this week without staying for the toasts. Not because I wasn't grateful to be there — but because somewhere between the tributes and an old campaign poster in the window, I realized I was looking at the exact moment Illinois politics stopped growing from the ground up and started getting planted from somewhere else entirely.This week I trace that moment back to 1982: a downstate Decatur billboard, a congressional district redrawn out from under longtime Congressman Paul Findley, and the 1,400 votes that put a young Dick Durbin in his seat instead. Along the way — a federal judicial panel that redrew Illinois's maps, a fledgling AIPAC testing a strategy it would use again on Charles Percy a few years later, and a question I couldn't shake on the drive home: what did we gain when politics went from homegrown to well-funded, and what did we lose?Then it's the news — the stuff happening in the towns that don't always make the front page, across all seventeen counties Deep Roots covers:Statewide: Pritzker signs Illinois's eighth straight balanced budget ($55.9B); the POWER Act data center fight heads toward November's veto session, and now is the window to weigh in.Macon County: Decatur's three-year neighborhood revitalization plan — housing grants close out this month.McLean County: Rivian's property tax fight could cost Unit 5 schools $6.8M; storm flooding and a disaster proclamation; wind farm development and an ISU satellite campus.Champaign County: A Champaign County Board walkout cuts off public comment on home rule; Urbana schools start the year with a new contract and a superintendent's final year.Vermilion County: Flood watches, and Danville's 76th annual Pancake and Sausage Day.Deep Roots is Jen McMillin's weekly-ish look at news and civic life across Adams, Pike, Calhoun, Scott, Greene, Cass, Morgan, Menard, Sangamon, Logan, Christian, Macon, DeWitt, Piatt, McLean, Champaign, and Vermilion counties. Got something happening in your corner of central Illinois? Reach out: [email protected].

Deep Roots with Jen McMillin (formerly Sunshine Strategies Radio) is a weekly look at the people, places, and decisions shaping six counties in central Illinois — Macon, Piatt, DeWitt, Logan, McLean, and Christian. Local government, community development, small business, and the stories that don't always make the front page — told with a little dirt under the fingernails. New episodes weekly. The blooms are worth it.To read this episode or see our sources, visit JenMcMillin.Substack.com

"When You Know Better" — This Week on Sunshine Strategies RadioThere's a Maya Angelou line everybody quotes and almost nobody actually lives by: "When you know better, you do better."This week I go looking for why that's so much harder than it sounds — starting with Abe Lincoln, ending with a Chicago attorney, a tailor, and a room most people have never heard of (Room 711, if you're curious — it changed more than you'd think).Then we take our usual lap around Macon, Piatt, DeWitt, Logan, McLean, and Christian counties — a prison rebuild decision that could hit Lincoln's economy hard, a Rotary club quietly fixing what a city council kept meaning to get to, a health department pushback on a Monticello community's concerns, and a few reasons to actually smile this week too.Macon CountyDecatur shooting investigation (16-year-old victim) — Herald & Review: https://herald-review.com/news/local/Unclaimed property / I-CASH event details — Decatur Tribune: https://www.decaturtribune.com/2026/0...Piatt CountyIDPH glioblastoma review / Monticello residents' concerns — The News-Gazette: https://www.news-gazette.com/despite-...DeWitt CountyRotary "Welcome to Clinton" signs / broadband survey — DeWitt Daily News: https://dewittdailynews.com/news/localClinton Junior High SkillsUSA championship — The Clinton Journal: https://theclintonjournal.com/Logan CountyLogan Correctional Center / Crest Hill rebuild decision — Capitol News Illinois: https://capitolnewsillinois.com/news/...Also carried by WTTW: https://news.wttw.com/2026/06/08/illi...McLean CountyICE enforcement action / Immigration Project statement — Central Illinois Proud (WMBD): https://www.centralillinoisproud.com/...First-ever drone show / America 250 kickoff — Central Illinois Proud: https://www.centralillinoisproud.com/...Christian CountyChristian County Ag Fair schedule — Christian County Fair: https://christiancountyfair.com/full-...Lincoln Prairie Trail improvements — Taylorville Daily News: https://taylorvilledailynews.com/