After 2020 became a year of racial reckoning with the public killing of George Floyd and the protests of injustices against Black people, 2021 offered what can best be described as a follow-up year — a continuation of some familiar story threads with other new ones emerging.

A series of new laws could make it easier for consumers to comparison shop for prescriptions, make sure unused medicine doesn’t go to waste, and expand coverage of fertility treatment.

The General Assembly canceled its Jan. 4 and 6 session dates, and will likely call the session off the following week as well “amid the ongoing global pandemic.”

Because of the pandemic, in 2020 the legislature was thrown a bit off course, so there weren't a ton of laws that took effect at the start of 2021. Not so for 2022. Dozens of measures will kick in starting Saturday.

COVID-19 is surging across the country and here in Illinois as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention faces criticisms for changing its isolation guidelines. Our Spotlight Politics team has that and more.

In Chicago, neighborhoods with higher shares of residents of color retained far more ridership than predominantly white communities—and that trend was similar in other cities. 

State legislatures across the country will be responding to the possibility of seismic change to the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion across the U.S.

President Joe Biden said financial recovery from the pandemic will take longer than job recovery, especially for those with student loans.

The buoyant, blunt-spoken clergyman used his pulpit as the first Black bishop of Johannesburg and later the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town as well as frequent public demonstrations to galvanize public opinion against racial inequity, both at home and globally.

Former President Donald Trump turned to the Supreme Court on Thursday in a last-ditch effort to keep documents away from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol led by his supporters.

The Supreme Court says it will hold a special session in just over two weeks to weigh challenges to two Biden administration policies covering vaccine requirements for millions of workers, policies that affect large employers and health care workers.

A look at the political and economic ramifications of the COVID-19 surge. Our politics team and guest reporters weigh in on that and more.

In a sentencing memorandum filed Wednesday, federal prosecutors said former Ald. Ricardo Muñoz “abused his public position and betrayed the public trust” by embezzling nearly $38,000 in city money over the course of approximately three years.

The United States grew by only 0.1%, with an additional 392,665 added to the U.S. population from July 2020 to July 2021, according to population estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Manchin told “Fox News Sunday” that after five-and-half months of negotiations among Democrats in which he was his party’s chief obstacle to passage, “I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I just can’t. I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there.”

The Metropolitan Planning Council just hired its first Black president and CEO. The nonprofit, which began in 1934, is an independent planning and policy organization that seeks to build a more sustainable and equitable Chicago.