Stories by

Brandon Johnson, 46, has yet to formally announce that he will run for mayor of Chicago — but the backing of the Chicago Teachers Union will ensure that he will have ample resources if he does take on Lightfoot, who has long been at odds with the city’s most politically powerful labor union.

Despite concerns from the public and elected officials, the board at its monthly meeting voted 4-3 in favor of a trio of motions to help Chicago Public Schools acquire land and take additional steps toward building the new school.

The lawsuits filed by people wounded while attending the Highland Park parade and the estates of several victims are the latest bid by victims of mass shootings to hold gun manufacturers accountable, despite broad protections for the industry in federal law.

One day before Ukraine was invaded by Russia earlier this year, the company unknowingly boarded one of the last flights out of Kyiv to Paris, the first stop on a planned tour. The company has not returned home since then.

About 2.5 million people were ordered to evacuate southwest Florida before the storm hit the coast with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph. It was heading inland, where it was expected to weaken, at about 9 mph, but residents in central Florida could still experience hurricane-force winds.

President Joe Biden spoke to an auditorium full of public health officials, private companies and Americans who have experienced hunger. They were gathered for the first White House conference on hunger, nutrition and health since 1969.

Illinois was supposed to be the national model when government leaders pledged they’d use the 2020 legalization of marijuana to right the wrongs of the war on drugs that disproportionately harmed Black and Latino communities. Nearly three years later, those poised to benefit say they’re still stymied.

The beloved duo live on in limestone, their instantly recognizable images carved into a block of the rock wall that separates the dunes from an adjacent paved path. They now join the thousands of modern-day “petroglyphs” that date back to at least the 1930s.

The Chicago Police Department has begun the process of encrypting its dispatch channels to avoid disruptions from outside the police system. But some are calling into question the need for the change, and cite potential issues of transparency.

Why CPD wants to encrypt radio communications and what it says about transparency. Equity in the state’s cannabis industry. The mother of slain teen Hadiya Pendleton on new efforts to end gun violence. And paintings from Puerto Rico.

One in 20 tap water samples taken from thousands of Chicagoans found lead levels at or above federal limits, according to a recent analysis by the Guardian. It also found that nine of the top 10 ZIP codes with the largest percentages of high test results were in neighborhoods with majority Black and Latino residents.

Nine years after Hadiya Pendleton’s death, her mother, Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton, is still fighting to end gun violence. She founded Hadiya’s Promise – a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending gun violence through education.

The artwork is on loan from a museum in the town of Ponce on the southern coast. Now, Chicago’s National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture in Humboldt Park is the temporary home to a small but significant exhibit.

The unanimous Supreme Court decision, released Sept. 22, resolves a 7-year-old lawsuit brought by Charles Green, who was sentenced to life in prison at age 16 after being convicted in a 1985 quadruple murder. Green was released in 2009, and wants to prove his innocence.

The volatile trading comes a day after a broad sell-off sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average into a bear market, joining other major U.S. indexes.

The legislation would clarify and expand parts of the 1887 Electoral Count Act, which, along with the Constitution, governs how states and Congress certify electors and declare presidential winners. 

Zack Park, 34, has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder stemming from the Saturday afternoon killing of 18-year-old John Park inside their family’s North Park neighborhood home.

A federal jury in Chicago convicted Ji Chaoqun, 31, of conspiracy to act as an agent of China’s Ministry of State Security without notifying the U.S. attorney general, acting as a spy in the U.S., and lying on a government form about his contacts with foreign agencies.

Understanding the workers’ rights amendment on the November ballot in Illinois. The impact of a 100-year-old power plant on the shores of Lake Michigan. And local reaction to the unrest in Iran.

Among the choices voters will have to make on Nov. 8 is whether to add a new amendment to the Illinois constitution that would give workers the “fundamental right to organize and to bargain collectively” while at the same time forbidding any law that interferes with that ability.

Northern Indiana Public Service Company is retiring the 130-acre Michigan City Generating Station, which has been burning coal for electricity for nearly a century. The company is also cleaning up decades of coal ash byproduct. But advocates say plans to leave some coal ash on the site puts groundwater and Lake Michigan in danger of contamination. 

A NASA spacecraft rammed an asteroid at blistering speed Monday in an unprecedented dress rehearsal for the day a killer rock menaces Earth.

There’s good news for those apartment hunting in downtown Chicago as record-high prices begin to cool off. And airline passengers will have more power and goodwill under a new federal proposal that would force fees to be disclosed.

Kolmar Park was originally named for the street it is on, Kolmar Avenue. After learning of Gertrud Kolmar’s life and work, a local campaign was spearheaded to have the park rededicated in honor of the poet who died during the Holocaust.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of health care experts, is recommending that adults under 65 get screened for anxiety.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she was determined to chart a “bright and lasting” future for LaSalle Street between Washington Street and Jackson Boulevard, an area of the city she said had been permanently altered by the shifts triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.