A legislative committee and the Illinois Department of Agriculture agreed recently to delay finalizing new regulations governing hemp production amid an outcry of protests from small, independent producers.

The Justice Department believes President-elect Donald Trump can no longer be tried in accordance with longstanding policy that says sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted.

Mayor Brandon Johnson said he will ask the Chicago City Council to restore 162 now-vacant positions to the Chicago Police Department charged with implementing the court order known as the consent decree. Johnson reversed course after Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and the team monitoring the city’s compliance with the consent decree warned the cuts would make it impossible for the city to comply with the requirements. 

For the son of a president-elect, Trump has already had an outsized impact on the next White House. He lobbied hard for the former president to choose his good friend, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, to be his running mate.

With a rapid assembly of his second administration — faster than his effort eight years ago — the former and incoming president has combined television personalities, former Democrats, a wrestling executive and traditional elected Republicans into a mix that makes clear his intentions to impose tariffs on imported goods and crack down on illegal immigration but leaves open a range of possibilities on other policy pursuits.

Mayor Johnson says alderpeople should stop throwing tantrums and start negotiating the budget seriously. And disgraced former Ald. Danny Solis takes the stand in Michael Madigan’s historic corruption trial.

Following almost a year of legal battles and fierce public opposition, water utility Aqua Illinois is set to raise its rates in 2025. The privately owned water utility has not released an estimate of the exact impact the increase will have on customer bills in 14 northern Illinois counties.

That dictate from the president-elect’s announcement of Doug Burgum for Secretary of Interior sets the stage for a reignition of the court battles over public lands and waters that helped define Trump’s first term, with environmentalists worried about climate change already pledging their opposition.

President-elect Donald Trump said he’ll carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history — and has even promised to use the military to help that effort.

“It is time to treat people with developmental disabilities the same and have them be paid what they’re worth, which is what we pay everybody else,” state Sen. Cristina Castro told an Illinois Senate committee.

Seven years after the alleged assault, questions over what happened that night could jeopardize Hegseth’s nomination and seem likely to be central in his upcoming confirmation hearing.

The longtime 25th Ward alderperson, who is testifying under a deferred prosecution agreement, marks the most substantial witness in the government's case against the former House Speaker. He is expected to testify for several days.

Business owners, industry members and economists alike warn that large-scale deportations of undocumented immigrants, along with stricter border measures and the revoking of Biden-era protections, could have a seismic impact on the labor market and U.S. economy.

The abrupt withdrawal is a setback to President-elect Donald Trump’s push to install steadfast loyalists in his incoming administration, but also a recognition of the resistance the Republican is already encountering from members of his own party to picks with checkered backgrounds.

If the mayor’s spending plan is approved by the City Council, 79 vacant positions charged with implementing the court order known as the consent decree would be eliminated, records show. Those cuts will make it impossible for the city to comply with the requirements of the court order, reform advocates said.

Chicago police agreed to judicial oversight in 2019. Since then, a series of mayors and police chiefs let efforts languish and no one in a position of oversight has pushed forcefully to keep the process on track, WTTW News and ProPublica found.