Spotlighting his accomplishments and highlighting his pushback against President Donald Trump’s sweeping and controversial agenda, Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Thursday launched his campaign for a third term as Illinois governor.

«I’m ready for the fight ahead,» the governor said, announcing his 2026 re-election bid in the blue state. Pritzker is a billionaire and a member of the Pritzker family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain.

Pritzker said that «Illinois is standing at the center of the fight: the fight to make life more affordable, the fight to protect our freedoms, the fight for common sense.»

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Pritzker has become one of the Democratic Party’s most vocal Trump critics during the opening months of the president’s second tour in the White House.

Pointing to Trump and the Republicans who control Congress, Pritzker argued that «in Washington, all they’re offering is chaos and craziness. Their tariffs are hurting farmers and small businesses, stripping away health care from seniors and working families and proposing even bigger deficits than before, all to give big tax breaks to the wealthy.»

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«Donald Trump has made clear that he’ll stop at nothing to get his way,» the governor charged. «I’m not about to stand by and let him tear down all we’re building in Illinois.»

Pritzker, who started several of his own venture capital and investment startups before running for office, touted that «we don’t just talk about problems. In Illinois, we solve them.» In another jab at Trump, Pritzker said, «We know government ought to stand up for working families and be a force for good, not a weapon of revenge.»

In his video, the governor touted that during his two terms in office, «we’ve balanced seven straight budgets and got nine credit upgrades. We raised the minimum wage, capped the cost of insulin, banned assault weapons, protected abortion rights, and eliminated the state grocery tax, lowered prescription drug costs and added tens of thousands of jobs.»

However, the Republican Governors Association (RGA) does not see it that way.

«People are fleeing Illinois by the hundreds of thousands and Illinois families continue to suffer the consequences of JB Pritzker’s abject record of failure at home while he spends his time on a national vanity project trying to further his own political career,» RGA Rapid Response Director Kollin Crompton said in a statement to Fox News.

Crompton also charged that «opportunities for working Illinois families are in the garbage, criminal illegal immigrants are protected over law-abiding citizens, and Pritzker’s tax hikes are destroying family budgets.»

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Illinois, which is the nation’s sixth most populous state, does not have term limits for statewide officials. However, there has not been a three-term governor in the state in more than three decades, since GOP Gov. Jim Thompson won four terms as governor in the 1970s and 1980s.

Pritzker is seen as a potential contender for the Democrats’ 2028 presidential nomination – and the launch of his 2026 gubernatorial re-election campaign is not expected to derail him from potentially running for the White House.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker is interviewed by Fox News Digital during a New Hampshire delegation breakfast at the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 22, 2024 in Chicago. (Paul Steinhauser)

He was a high-profile campaign surrogate in the 2024 cycle on behalf of former President Joe Biden, as well as former Vice President Kamala Harris after she replaced Biden as the Democratic Party’s nominee last summer. 

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Those efforts brought Pritzker to Nevada, a general election battleground state and an early-voting Democratic presidential primary state, and New Hampshire, which for a century has held the first-in-the-nation presidential primary.

Additionally, Pritzker’s return to New Hampshire this spring to headline a major state Democratic Party fundraising dinner sparked more speculation about a possible 2028 presidential run.

A champion wingsuit flyer who featured in a BBC documentary called The Boy Who Can Fly has died after he was critically injured in a jump over the weekend. 

Liam Byrne, 24, was taking part in a high-risk jump at nearly 8,000 feet above sea level in the Swiss Alps on Saturday when tragedy struck, according to The Telegraph, citing local police. 

Byrne, of Scotland, was wearing a wingsuit, a specialized webbed-sleeved jumpsuit with membranes between the arms, body and legs which allows a diver to glide flight in the air.

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He was one of three wingsuit pilots who launched a jump from Gitschen, a mountain overlooking Lake Lucerne in Switzerland.

However, Byrne «deviated from his intended course shortly after take-off for reasons still unknown and crashed into a rocky outcrop,» police said. «He suffered fatal injuries.»

Byrne, a British champion in the adrenaline-fueled sport, was an experienced flyer with more than 4,000 jumps to his name, according to the outlet. His Instagram account also lists him as a skydiving instructor, wingsuit coach and BASE (Building, Antenna, Span and Earth) jumper.

In the BBC-produced documentary, filmmakers follow Byrne’s journey to champion flyer.

Byrne told the documentary: «I think I was about 13 when I said to my dad that I wanted to learn to fly like a bird.»

Byrne getting ready to jump, left, a man in a wingsuit on Tianmen mountain in Zhangjiajie, China’s Hunan province, showing his full suit. (Instagram @liambyrne0;  WANG ZHAO/AFP via Getty Images.)

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He said that an office job scared him far more than the fear of dying from a base or wingsuit jump. He insisted that good preparation was at the heart of all his jumps and kept him safe and acknowledged that the high-risk sport worried his family.

Byrne climbed Mount Kilimanjaro at age 12, became a licensed paraglider at 14, completed his first skydive at 16 and was flying in a wingsuit by 18, according to the BBC.

Byrne’s family released a statement praising him and saying that the sport was «more than just a thrill for Liam – it was freedom. It was where he felt most alive.»

«We would like to remember Liam not just for the way he left this world, but for how he lived in it,» the statement reads in part.

Liam Byrne in the last wingsuit jump he posted to Instagram. (Instagram @liambyrne0)

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«Liam was fearless, not necessarily because he wasn’t afraid but because he refused to let fear hold him back. He chased life in a way that most of us only dream of and he soared.»

The statement continued: «He inspired all of us and made life better with his bold spirit and kind heart. We will miss Liam’s wild energy and contagious laugh. Though he has now flown beyond our reach, he will always be with us.»

There have been a number of wingsuit-related deaths in the U.S., including a January 2024 incident in which Gregory Coates, 36, died in Colorado after both his primary and reserve parachutes failed to deploy.

In September, Jonathan Bizilia, 27, of Alabama died in a jump in Utah.

Un mural de Banksy se ha convertido en el epicentro de una disputa legal tras la denuncia del Bethnal Green Working Man’s Club, ubicado en el este de Londres, que sostiene que la obra fue retirada sin autorización y puesta a la venta en Estados Unidos.

La pieza, conocida como Yellow Lines Flower Painter (2007), muestra a un trabajador vestido con peto, sentado sobre un bote de pintura y sosteniendo un rodillo. A su lado, una flor de gran tamaño surge de las líneas dobles amarillas de la calle, fusionando el arte urbano con el entorno vial londinense. Actualmente, la pintura se encuentra en Colorado, lejos de su ubicación original en el club social londinense.

La controversia comenzó cuando los fideicomisarios del Bethnal Green Working Man’s Club presentaron una demanda contra uno de sus propios empleados, Warren Dent, junto a otros acusados, según informó el Financial Times. El caso ha puesto en el centro del debate la propiedad y el destino de una obra de arte callejero que, por su naturaleza efímera y su contexto, plantea desafíos legales y éticos singulares.

De acuerdo con el antiguo contable del club, quien trabaja para la firma Capital & Co, el secretario del club, Stephen Smorthit, habría acordado vender la obra a Dent en 2019 por £20,000 (USD 27.000). Este acuerdo, según la versión presentada, permitió a Dent encargar al restaurador de arte Chris Bull, propietario de la empresa Fine Art Restoration (también demandada en el proceso), la retirada del mural. Bull recibió además el encargo de restaurar la pieza, que había sufrido actos de vandalismo con grafitis.

Tras la extracción exitosa de la obra, Bull la prestó a la galería de su padre en Aspen, Colorado, para una exposición celebrada en marzo del año pasado. Según Bull, Dent y tres miembros del club aprobaron el préstamo. Antes de su traslado a Estados Unidos, Yellow Lines Flower Painter fue asegurada por una suma cercana a USD 750.000.

No obstante, la demanda presentada el mes pasado por tres fideicomisarios del club—Paul Le Masurier, Alan Milliner y Kerry Smorthit—sostiene que nunca autorizaron a Dent a adquirir la obra. Kerry Smorthit es hija del secretario del club, lo que añade un matiz familiar a la disputa. Los demandantes alegan que la pintura fue puesta a la venta en Estados Unidos de manera ilícita y exigen su devolución, argumentando que Dent carece de derechos de propiedad sobre la misma.

Por su parte, Bull y Fine Art Restoration han manifestado su intención de impugnar la demanda. “Solo estamos nombrados porque tenemos la obra en nuestro poder y estamos dispuestos a entregarla si nos lo solicitan”, declaró Bull al Financial Times. Esta declaración sugiere que la empresa de restauración no busca beneficiarse de la posesión del mural, sino que se encuentra en una posición intermedia a la espera de una resolución judicial.

El caso ha atraído la atención no solo por la notoriedad de Banksy, sino también por las complejidades legales que rodean la propiedad y comercialización de arte urbano. La oficina de Banksy, Pest Control, así como los tres fideicomisarios, Dent y Capital & Co, declinaron hacer comentarios al respecto, según el Financial Times.

El valor de las obras de Banksy en el mercado del arte ha experimentado un crecimiento notable en los últimos años. Su récord en subasta se sitúa en £18,6 millones ($25,5 millones), alcanzado por Love is in the Bin (originalmente titulada Girl with Balloon), que se autodestruyó parcialmente en una subasta de Sotheby’s en 2018, generando un fenómeno mediático internacional.

Sin embargo, las obras murales del artista británico presentan dificultades adicionales para su valoración, ya que Banksy no emite certificados de autenticidad para estas piezas, lo que complica su legitimación en el mercado secundario.

La problemática de la autenticidad y la procedencia ha quedado patente en otros casos recientes. El año pasado, la obra Happy Choppers (2002), que representa una flota de helicópteros adornados con lazos rosas, no logró encontrar comprador en una subasta en Newcastle. A pesar de contar con una estimación de £500,000 (USD 680.000), la ausencia de un certificado de autenticidad y el hecho de haber sido retirada de la pared de un edificio de oficinas en Shoreditch, también en el este de Londres, desincentivaron a los potenciales compradores.