When households lose their benefits, they spend less at the grocery store, and the already-thin profit margins of independent grocers become even slimmer.

Republicans returning to Washington on Monday are facing questions about a $1 billion Senate security proposal that could help pay for President Donald Trump’s ballroom as Democrats say they will try to defeat it.

The stalled diplomacy and recent exchanges of fire could tip the Middle East back into open warfare and prolong the worldwide energy crisis sparked by the conflict, with Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz and America’s blockade of Iranian ports still in place.

The bill filed by Sen. Steve McClure, R-Springfield, was in response to an incident in Taylorville where a girl was sexually assaulted by an older, male student on the bus.

Plans to extend the CTA Red Line to the Far South Side of Chicago are finally on track. The Red Line extension project broke ground last month, after decades of planning and months of federal funding uncertainty.

The Trump administration has put renewal applications for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, recipients on “processing holds.” Some of the program’s more than 500,000 beneficiaries have waited months for an answer only to see their deadline pass without a decision.

The City Council’s Police and Fire Committee voted 14-2 to send Anjanette Young’s nomination to serve a four-year term on the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability to the full City Council for a final vote on May 20.

Some Americans are using taxes to protest the Trump administration — more specifically, the refusal to pay taxes.

For the decades we’ve been using social media, there’s been a debate over how youth should be able to access it.

“There is a mismatch here in terms of what the people of Chicago and Illinois are most concerned about and how government is responding and reacting,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said.

The Chicago City Council’s License and Consumer Protection Committee voted to ban the thousands of unpermitted sweepstakes machines that operate in all kinds of businesses across the city, including in bars, restaurants, gas stations, laundromats and convenience stores.

The legislation says the money would support enhancements to the ballroom project, “including above-ground and below-ground security features,” but also specifies that the money may not be used for non-security elements.

President Donald Trump ignited the conflict over redistricting last year by urging Republicans to redraw congressional maps to reduce the likelihood that his party loses the U.S. House in the November midterm elections.

Republican governors in Alabama and Tennessee have called lawmakers into special sessions this week to draw new congressional districts after the U.S. Supreme Court weakened a key provision of the Voting Rights Act.

There are usually 80,000 to 100,000 troops on the continent, with more than 36,000 in Germany. The Pentagon announced that it would remove 5,000 troops, and Trump said the next day that he would go “a lot further” than that.

Labor unions, community groups and Chicago Public Schools students are among those gathering Friday afternoon in recognition of May Day.