Chicago Transit Authority Acting President Nora Leerhsen said the agency has entered a “new phase” after the Illinois General Assembly failed last month to pass a measure tackling a $770 million budget gap for Chicago-area transit.

From Seattle and Austin to Chicago and Washington, D.C., marchers have chanted slogans, carried signs against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and snarled traffic through downtown avenues and outside federal offices.

Lawmakers and labor unions have both expressed concern that benefits for Tier 2 employees are inadequate and that some workers in that category are in line to receive benefits out of compliance with federal law.

Gun rights advocates once again are asking a federal appeals court in Chicago to overturn Illinois’ ban on assault-style firearms and large-capacity magazines in a case that may be destined for the U.S. Supreme Court.

President Donald Trump called protesters in Los Angeles “animals” and “a foreign enemy” in a speech at Fort Bragg on Tuesday as he defended deploying the military on demonstrators opposed to his immigration enforcement raids.

Chicago native Natasha Olguin has been named deputy commissioner of the Chicago Film Office.

“The people of Los Angeles and surrounding areas have taken a courageous stand against Trump’s reign of terror targeting immigrant families,” according to organizers in a social media post about the planned protest.

The Army birthday celebration had already been planned for months. But earlier this spring, President Donald Trump announced his intention to transform the event — which coincides with his 79th birthday — into a massive military parade.

Businesses and manufacturing are starting to feel the impact of steel and aluminum tariffs that took effect Wednesday. The Trump administration is putting a 50% tax on these metals when they’re imported from other countries.

This appears to be the first time in decades that a state’s National Guard was activated without a request from its governor.

The “Clean Slate” Act, which could have sealed thousands and potentially millions of nonviolent criminal records in Illinois, had bipartisan support but failed to pass in the final flurry of legislative action this spring, the sponsor says.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday dismissed an expert panel of vaccine advisers that has historically guided the federal government’s vaccine recommendations, saying the group is “plagued with conflicts of interest.”

A bill passed in this year’s legislative session would rewrite the definition of a “forcible felony” to allow Illinois State Police to use images obtained from automatic license plate readers in cases involving human trafficking and involuntary servitude.

On Monday, scores of scientists at the agency sent their Trump-appointed leader a letter titled the Bethesda Declaration, challenging “policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe.”

The DOGE victories come amid a messy breakup that started shortly after Elon Musk’s departure from the White House and has included threats to cut government contracts and a call for the president to be impeached.

State lawmakers sent Gov. JB Pritzker a $55.2 billion budget on May 31 that raises $1 billion in new revenue and increases spending by more than $2 billion in fiscal year 2026 compared to the current year.