Southwest border crossings are on track to reach the highest level in the last 20 years, according to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. We discuss what’s happening at the border and how the Biden administration is addressing it.

Americans will be getting extra time to prepare their taxes. The Internal Revenue Service says it’s delaying the traditional tax filing deadline from April 15 until May 17.

Officials will open new appointments at the county’s five mass vaccination sites for the residents who are newly eligible at noon Friday. More than 68% of individuals 65 and older in suburban Cook County have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, officials said.

The murder of eight people Tuesday at three spas in the Atlanta area constitute a hate crime, and former President Donald Trump’s “hateful rhetoric” is partly to blame for the violence, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Wednesday.

The next phase of Chicago’s vaccination effort will allow all essential workers and those with underlying health conditions to get doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced Wednesday.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Wednesday condemned a mass shooting a day earlier in Georgia that left eight people dead, most of them women of Asian descent.

Echoing statements made by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, the state’s comptroller says stimulus funds will first go toward paying back the billions Illinois borrowed from the Federal Reserve early in the pandemic last year.

Comments this week by Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., underscored that immigration remains a complex problem for the two parties to tackle successfully, even with Donald Trump no longer in the White House. Local members of Congress weigh in on this and more. 

It’s been a full year since Gov. J.B. Pritzker took the extraordinary step of issuing an executive order to halt dine-in service at bars and restaurants across the state. Five days later, the stay-at-home order was announced. The governor joins us to reflect on the past year and discuss what’s ahead.

Low-income residents who are in debt to the state or city won’t have their state tax return used to settle those bills under a plan announced Monday by Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Comptroller Susana Mendoza, who said she was spurred to act because “families on the edge” need their tax returns to cover overdue bills.

The revised measure is designed to tighten regulations on recycling centers and industrial operations in an effort to reduce air pollution on the South and West sides. A final vote is scheduled for the full City Council meeting on March 24.

Illinois officials plan on how to spend roughly $13 billion from the stimulus bill. Mayor Lightfoot hints at a near normal summer for Chicago. State lawmakers head back to Springfield. And Loyola and the University of Illinois brace for the NCAA tournament.

Legislation awaiting the governor’s signature could shut down the payday lending industry in Illinois, but payday proponents say that could lead to a host of bigger problems.

One year after the nation was brought to a near-standstill by the coronavirus, President Joe Biden used his first prime-time address to outline his plan Thursday night to make all adults vaccine-eligible by May 1 and get the country “closer to normal” by the Fourth of July.

Several aldermen on Thursday called on Mayor Lori Lightfoot to use approximately $50 million from the city’s share of the latest COVID-19 relief package to fund cash assistance payments to Chicagoans struggling to stay afloat. Lightfoot declined to support cash assistance payments to Chicagoans in a statement to WTTW News.

Aldermen on Thursday said they would do more than just talk about whether the city should pay reparations to Chicagoans who are the descendants of enslaved African Americans, but acknowledged that it had taken too long to even begin the discussion.