The special meeting set for Friday is the second time this year that aldermen have called an emergency meeting of the Chicago City Council over Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s objections. Our Spotlight Politics team weighs in.

Chicago’s lakefront is often referred to as one of the city’s crown jewels, and as with many valuable things, it’s been the subject of frequent high-profile political and legal fights. A new history of the lakefront traces more than 150 years of nearly nonstop litigation.

 A new state law allows Illinois college athletes to play ball with – and make bank from – businesses, by entering into endorsement deals and doing commercials. 

Supporters are calling it a big win for Chicago’s trees, but say the real work begins now. How the new Urban Forestry Advisory Board will bring together public and private partners to care for and enhancing the city’s urban canopy.

The roadblocks preventing a new deal between the police union and city officials are unchanged since the contract expired on June 30, 2017 — and both sides are dug in and unwilling to compromise.

The nationwide Fight For $15 movement pushed the challenges facing Chicago’s lowest-paid workers — who are primarily Black and Latino — to the top of the agenda for city officials.

A federal judge will not force the city to permit Reserve Management Group, the parent company of General Iron, to operate a metal shredding and recycling operation on Chicago’s Southeast Side.

President Joe Biden declared there is an urgent need for a “generational investment” in the nation’s infrastructure, as he looked to sell voters Tuesday on the economic benefits of the $973 billion bipartisan package that still faces an uncertain future in Congress.

Chicago and other major cities are experiencing a “pandemic-spurred surge” in violence that officials are having success in fighting despite a rising number of shootings and homicides, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said during a one-on-one interview Tuesday on “Chicago Tonight.”

Illinois broke a 23-year streak on Tuesday, when credit ratings agency Moody’s upgraded the state’s bond rating for the first time since 1998 – the same year the Chicago Bulls won their last championship.

Congressional leaders and a media advocacy group are urging the Federal Communications Commission to examine how policy decisions and programs have disparately harmed Black Americans and other communities of color.

All 50 states, along with Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., are recording fewer than 15 new cases per day per 100,000 residents and are no longer covered by the travel order, officials said Tuesday.

For our June event, we celebrate Pride Month by highlighting past and current leaders in the LGBTQ movement and the Latino experience within the community. Watch the full discussion.

Major changes to Illinois’ criminal justice system that passed in the wake of George Floyd’s murder will begin to take effect Thursday, including a requirement that officers track and report to the state incidents in which they use a gun on someone. Here’s what else is changing.

Hours after Mayor Lori Lightfoot blamed the shutdown of the Cook County court system by the COVID-19 pandemic for escalating violence across Chicago’s South and West sides, several aldermen told “Chicago Tonight” that rising inequality and distrust of the police is to blame. 

President Joe Biden is hoping to get the bipartisan infrastructure deal on track by highlighting its expected economic benefits, stressing its $973 billion would include the largest investment in transportation in nearly a century and millions of jobs would be created.