President Joe Biden signed a bill Thursday that was passed by Congress to set aside Juneteenth, or June 19th, as a federal holiday. Here’s a look at the holiday and its history.

“The Affordable Care Act remains the law of the land,” President Joe Biden, said, celebrating the ruling. The justices, by a 7-2 vote, left the entire Affordable Care Act intact in ruling that Texas, other GOP-led states and two individuals had no right to bring their lawsuit in federal court. 

The measure, which would ban the sale of alcohol at stores after midnight, is part of a part of a massive package of initiatives Mayor Lori Lightfoot said was designed to help Chicago businesses recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Black Chicagoans die more than nine years sooner than other Chicagoans, a gap caused by systemic racism that is only growing, according to a report released this week by the Chicago Department of Public Health.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the law Wednesday at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, where a rare copy of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by the country’s 16th president is currently on display.

The Illinois House on Wednesday approved legislation that will turn the current seven-member appointed board — the lone appointed school board in the state — into a 21-member body with elections beginning in 2024. Mayor Lori Lightfoot has strongly opposed the bill, calling it “very ill-constructed.”

“We don’t want to provide a road map” for others who seek to obtain the city’s data, Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th Ward) said.

In the six months since Anjanette Young and Mayor Lori Lightfoot sat down for a face-to-face meeting, little has been done to correct the issues that led to the botched raid at Young’s home in 2019 or address her ongoing lawsuit against the city, her attorney said Wednesday.

Celia Meza has served as the city’s top attorney since December, replacing former Corporation Counsel Mark Flessner, who resigned amid a furor over the mayor’s handling of the revelation that Chicago police officers handcuffed a naked woman during a mistaken raid in February 2019.

Lawmakers couldn’t clinch a deal on a comprehensive energy package before their regular session ended in May, but were called back to Springfield on Tuesday to try again. Instead, the Senate adjourned once again without taking action.

Last year’s electric scooter program, which ran from August to December, saw an increase in the number of available scooters but a decline in overall ridership, according to a Chicago Department of Transportation report.

Wage theft costs Chicago workers $400 million a year, according to the mayor’s office.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot will introduce a measure Thursday that would ban the sale of alcohol at stores after midnight, dropping her effort to set an earlier cutoff. The mayor called the revised proposal “a reasonable compromise.”

The city’s travel order has been suspended since June 1, when seven states moved from the orange tier to the less-restrictive yellow tier.

Illinois legislators left Springfield a couple of weeks ago, but they’re already heading back. Here are some of the items on the docket.

The move by Florida’s state Board of Education was widely expected as a national debate intensifies about how race should be used as a lens in classrooms to examine the country’s tumultuous history.