Stories by amanda vinicky

Animal rights organizations have been advocating for stricter federal limits on exotic animals for years. Now lawmakers have two bills in the works to put interstate limits on the sale, breeding, possession of and public contact with primates and various species of big cats.

President Joe Biden is ready to sign a $1 trillion dollar infrastructure bill into law. Illinois is set to receive at least $17 billion from it, with more than $10 billion slated for federal highway projects and bridge replacements.

Approximately 15,150 pediatric COVID-19 doses have been administered as of midday Monday, according to the state public health department. 

Their final product, which still needs Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s signoff, is designed to send 14 Democrats and three Republicans to Congress from Illinois. If the strategy works, Democrats will gain a seat from Illinois while the GOP will lose two.

Spurred in part by Texas’ new restrictions on abortions, Illinois legislators on Tuesday took a step toward moving in the other direction, when the Illinois Senate voted to roll back a law that requires parents and guardians be notified before their minor child can have an abortion.

Illinois lawmakers have turned their attention toward their task of drawing new Congressional district boundaries, but critics aren’t ready to give up on the previous mapmaking task they say the General Assembly fumbled.

Who would have imagined that students and their parents would be upset about not enough testing in schools? But that’s the case in Chicago, where the district’s been slow to roll out COVID-19 testing.

Teachers, police officers are others who are refusing to get the coronavirus vaccine are taking a shot at using a longtime Illinois statute to skirt compliance with state and city mandates: Illinois’ right of conscience law.

Extolling redrawn state legislative districts as reflective of Illinois’ diversity, Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Friday signed into law a new set of maps that will come into play in next year’s election and elections over the next decade. 

State education officials say students who don’t have medical exemptions must be taught in school this year. But in Chicago, there’s still a standoff between the mayor’s office and the teachers union over what in-person learning should look like during a pandemic.

It was early August, just before most students returned to their classrooms for the new school year, that Gov. J.B. Pritzker issued an executive order requiring students, teachers and staff to wear masks in school, regardless of their vaccination status — or face the consequences.