The hearing comes as President Joe Biden has ordered the release of 1 million barrels of oil per day from the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve for six months, a bid to control energy prices that have spiked after the United States and allies imposed steep sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. 

Raymond Lopez, first elected to represent the 15th Ward on the Chicago City Council in 2015, has been one of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s most frequent critics.

The ex-wife of Aurora Mayor and GOP gubernatorial candidate Richard Irvin works with a development team that stands to receive up to $15 million in Aurora city incentives, with the potential for millions more to redevelop the former Copley Hospital site.

Zelenskyy, appearing via video from Ukraine, told council members that civilians had been shot in the back of the head after being tortured, blown up with grenades in their apartments and crushed to death by tanks while in cars.

On Monday, Democrats unveiled a series of bills they described as “pro law enforcement,” even as a top Republican rebuffed the effort as “trying to rewrite history.” Legislators are set to adjourn their spring session nearly two months earlier than normal, in order to spend spring and summer on the campaign trail. 

Last week, the U.S. National Archives released U.S. census records from 1950, granting public access to files that documented more than 150 million people and the areas they lived, the jobs they had, and much more.

The senators from Alaska and Utah announced their decisions ahead of a procedural vote to advance the nomination and as Democrats pressed to confirm Jackson by the end of the week. 

The officer is a member of the department’s SWAT Team, who are not equipped with body-worn cameras, according to a statement from the agency known as COPA, which is charged with investigating police misconduct.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a series of new initiatives to improve public safety, including a new Home and Business Protection Rebate Program through which residents can get rebates to defray the cost of security cameras and video storage.

President Joe Biden’s comments to reporters came after Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Bucha, one of the towns surrounding Kyiv where Ukrainian officials say the bodies of civilians have been found. Zelenskyy called the Russian actions “genocide” and called for the West to apply tougher sanctions against Russia.

In March 2021, the city was sent reeling when Chicago police officers shot and killed Adam Toledo and Anthony Alvarez just a few days apart. We look at where the relationship between law enforcement and Latino communities stands.

Chicago has a new Inspector General. Lightfoot floats gas tax relief. WTTW investigates a high-profile gubernatorial candidate’s big donations from contractors. And the new 11th Ward alderperson on the Week in Review. 

Leaders of the groups that successfully pushed Chicago elected leaders to support a map that redraws the 11th Ward to include a majority of Asian American voters warned members of the City Council that asking voters to decide the boundaries of the city’s 50 wards “fans the flames of racial division.”

President Joe Biden’s proposed $5.8 trillion budget aims to provide more money for police, education, public health and housing — while at the same time slimming the federal deficit.

A WTTW News review of public records has also found that Aurora taxpayers are on the hook for tens of millions in tax incentives to two other development companies that have donated thousands to Richard Irvin and political funds connected to him.

The state’s reparations task force tackled the divisive issue of which Black residents should be eligible — it narrowly decided in favor of limiting compensation to the descendants of free and enslaved Black people who were in the U.S. in the 19th century.