The first Trump-Biden debate. A fiery hearing on corruption in Springfield. Chicago’s loosening COVID-19 restrictions. Our politics team tackles those stories and more in this week’s roundtable.

Organizers in Illinois are making a major, last-minute push for census participation. What you need to know before the count wraps up.

To help navigate the options, three local bar associations have screened and ranked each candidate. Here are their recommendations. 

President Donald Trump’s initial refusal to condemn a far right fascist group drew fierce blowback before he altered his message in a day-later effort to quell the firestorm. 

Interruption, disruption and insults. Tuesday’s presidential debate was arguably the most chaotic ever produced. We get reaction from the father of presidential debates, the former FCC chairman who first proposed the idea in 1955.

Two of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s closest allies say they are frustrated and disappointed that she has apparently dropped her support for long-stalled efforts to put an elected board of Chicago residents in charge of the Chicago Police Department.

An increase in the number of vote-by-mail applications ahead of the November election goes beyond Chicago: 2 million Illinois residents have applied to vote by mail — nearly a quarter of all registered voters in the state, officials said.

After more than a year of circling each other, Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden met on the debate stage Tuesday night in Ohio. 

Chicago’s looking at a lot of red ink due to coronavirus-related shutdowns. What kinds of cuts might the city soon see to keep its financials afloat? We speak with four people who will likely have a say in those decisions.

Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan declined to testify Tuesday at a special hearing convened for the sole purpose of vetting whether he engaged in conduct unbefitting of his elected position, and it remains unclear whether he’ll face a subpoena.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, a racial justice movement and a rush to confirm a new Supreme Court justice comes the first of three presidential debates. What to expect.

City officials would have the authority to strip multimillion-dollar tax incentives from companies that violate the city’s rules under a measure aldermen advanced Tuesday.

In April, 17 organizations signed a pledge that Mayor Lori Lightfoot said would help the city protect its most vulnerable residents during the pandemic. But officials now say there is no data to measure the impact of that pledge.

Visitors from Wisconsin to Chicago will continue to be required to quarantine for two weeks in an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus, as the northeast part of the state experiences a surge of cases and hospitalizations.

The staffer who was diagnosed with COVID-19 had close contact with Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Wednesday in Chicago, on Thursday in Marion and on Sunday in Marseilles, according to Pritzker's office.

In an election year like no other, the first debate between President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, could be a pivotal moment in a race that has remained stubbornly unchanged in the face of historic tumult.