Mayor Lori Lightfoot fired back Friday at critics who blasted her for using $281.5 million in COVID-19 federal relief funds to cover the cost of salaries and benefits for Chicago Police Department officers. “Criticism comes with the job of mayor but this one’s just dumb,” Lightfoot said.

Since the COVID-19 vaccination effort began on Dec. 15 in Chicago, 18% of Chicagoans who got at least the first shot are Latino, while 19% are Black, according to data released Friday by the Chicago Department of Public Health.

Jolted by a sweeping hack that may have revealed government and corporate secrets to Russia, U.S. officials are scrambling to reinforce the nation’s cyber defenses.

Progressive aldermen and community groups slammed Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Thursday for using $281.5 million in COVID-19 federal relief funds to cover the cost of salaries and benefits for Chicago Police Department officers.

Michael Madigan, who has represented the 22nd District on Chicago’s South Side since 1971 and steadily amassed political capital, is exiting the Illinois House at the end of February. The announcement comes a month after Madigan lost the reigns as speaker.

The Chicago Police Department was “under-prepared and ill-equipped, and thus critically disserved both its own front-line members and members of the public,” according to the inspector general’s report, the first in-depth examination of the police department’s response to the unrest. 

The pandemic-era budget proposed Wednesday by Gov. J.B. Pritzker relies heavily on businesses to bring an additional $932 million into state coffers through what the Democrat describes as closing corporate tax loopholes. We get reaction from state lawmakers.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker takes aim at Republicans during his budget address. Our politics team breaks that down and more.

As of last month, the transgender military ban was repealed. We talk with retired Col. Jennifer Pritzker about the importance of this move.

President Joe Biden is promising a majority of elementary schools will be open five days a week by the end of his first 100 days in office.

Rush Limbaugh, the talk radio host who ripped into liberals and laid waste to political correctness with a merry brand of malice that made him one of the most powerful voices on the American right, influencing the rightward push of conservatism and the rise of Donald Trump, died Wednesday. He was 70.

The coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc on people’s lives, and also on government budgets. On Wednesday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker will propose his ideas for getting Illinois through it. Here’s a preview of that address.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday that Congress will establish an independent, Sept. 11-style commission to look into the deadly insurrection that took place at the U.S. Capitol.

President Joe Biden’s coronavirus relief package could include canceling some student loan debt. What that could mean for borrowers — and the economy.

A Democratic-led effort to pass a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package has passed its latest challenge with House committees advancing measures that will soon be combined into a single bill expected to clear the full House by the end of February.

Chicago officials announced Tuesday they will allow indoor dining and drinking at bars and restaurants to operate at 40% of their normal capacity, or no more than 50 people.