After days of increasing alarm among advocates for immigrant rights, the showdown over whether to amend Chicago’s Welcoming City ordinance, was anti-climactic.

Outgoing Chicago Transit Authority President Dorval Carter capped his nearly 10-year run leading the massive agency at a board meeting Wednesday, saying he’d be “forever grateful for this opportunity to serve our customers (and) the people of the city of Chicago.”

Allie, one of Brookfield Zoo’s bottlenose dolphins, is expecting a calf in late spring/early summer.

The Transportation Department said its investigation found that Southwest operated two chronically delayed flights — one between Chicago Midway International Airport and Oakland, California, and another between Baltimore, Maryland, and Cleveland, Ohio.

The City Council voted 49-1 to create a working group to come up with ways Chicago can change its traffic ticketing system so Black, Latino and low-income residents are no longer disproportionately hit with fines.

The move comes nearly 35 years after the dye known as Red 3 was barred from cosmetics because of potential cancer risk.

As a new General Assembly begins, it remains unclear how lawmakers and the governor plan to plug the projected deficit. Republicans’ main concern is Democrats will resort to tax increases to boost revenue and avoid spending cuts.

In all, the settlements approved Wednesday account for nearly half of the city’s annual $82 million budget to cover the cost of police misconduct lawsuits.

Many longer-term questions about postwar Gaza remain, including who will rule the territory or oversee the daunting task of reconstruction after a brutal conflict that has destabilized the broader Middle East and sparked worldwide protests.

Inspector General Deborah Witzburg's probe found the department members offered the deputy chief inappropriate “professional courtesy.”

“This moment is no doubt historic," elected member Ellen Rosenfeld said, "not just for me but for all of us, because this body reflects the voices and values of the majority of the people of our district.”

The immediate challenges facing the new school board members are enormous: They must ink a new deal with the teachers union, pick a new leader and confront the threat posed by President-elect Donald Trump’s promises to deport thousands of undocumented Chicagoans.

The proposal comes as the Chicago region’s transit agencies are facing down an estimated $750 million fiscal cliff next year when COVID-19 relief money runs out — and amid conversations in Springfield about tying increased transit funding to major changes to the existing public transit structure.

Chicago Public Schools chief Pedro Martinez joins us in his first sit-down interview since being fired. And former House Speaker Michael Madigan wraps up his testimony.

Just days before Christmas, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez was terminated in a unanimous vote by Mayor Brandon Johnson’s handpicked Board of Education.