Last week’s claims dropped by 67,000, from 914,000 the week before, the Labor Department said Thursday. Before the virus hit the United States hard last March, weekly applications for jobless aid had never topped 700,000.

A possible teachers strike over safety issues looms as city and state COVID-19 mitigations are being rolled back. Our politics team of Amanda Vinicky and Heather Cherone weighs in on that story and more in this week’s roundtable.

Is it time to return to in-person learning? Two parents of Chicago Public Schools students share their views as negotiations over a school reopening plan continue between the district and the Chicago Teachers Union.

Artists are calling on the Biden administration to provide economic relief to the arts sector through a proposal called the DAWN Act — that stands for Defend Arts Workers Now — that was co-organized by Chicago playwright Matthew Lee-Erlbach.

For the second day in a row, Chicago Public Schools is telling the parents of pre-kindergarten and special education cluster program students to keep their kids at home Thursday as the district and Chicago Teachers Union have not yet reached agreement on a safe school reopening plan.

It’s been one year since recreational marijuana became legal in Illinois. Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s senior adviser for cannabis control talks about how Illinois aims to expand access to marijuana dispensary licenses after intense criticism from equity advocates. 

In killing a proposal from one of her City Council allies to allow cannabis to be sold legally downtown and in the Loop, Mayor Lori Lightfoot told reporters “we’re not turning Michigan Avenue into the pot paradise.”

The Chicago City Council’s Latino Caucus on Wednesday rejected a call to charge an independent commission with redrawing the boundaries of Chicago’s 50 wards, saying aldermen are best equipped to ensure that the new map is equitable. 

The Chicago City Council on Wednesday wasted no time in symbolically turning the page on the Trump administration by voting to expand protections for undocumented immigrants that had been stalled by the former president’s crackdown.

In the most ambitious U.S. effort to stave off the worst of climate change, President Joe Biden signed executive orders Wednesday to transform the nation’s heavily fossil-fuel powered economy into a clean-burning one, pausing oil and gas leasing on federal land and targeting subsidies for those industries.

The red brick two-flat in Woodlawn is now protected from demolition and any significant changes to its exterior. The vision is to transform the home into an international heritage pilgrimage site.

Watch the Jan. 27, 2021 full episode of “Chicago Tonight.”

A Chicago man has been indicted in connection with the carjacking of an Uber Eats driver in Chicago, another carjacking in Cicero and an attempted carjacking in Oak Park, federal prosecutors announced Wednesday.

Board President Miguel del Valle on Wednesday said Chicago Public Schools “sincerely wants to come to an agreement” with the Chicago Teachers Union on a safe school reopening plan as a potential teachers strike looms.

Located at the Lake County Fairgrounds, the drive-thru facility will initially be open three days a week and administer about 600 vaccinations per day, according to Gov. J.B. Pritzker. “The goal is to build that into a seven-day per week operation with expanded hours as supplies grow,” he said.