Stories by Amanda Vinicky

Chicago Public Schools teachers and administrators aren’t shying away from Mayor Brandon Johnson’s claim the city’s schools are “owed” $1 billion from the state. But they dramatically scaled back their immediate demands during a rare joint CPS and Chicago Teachers Union lobbying trip to the state Capitol on Wednesday.

Takeaways from Mayor Brandon Johnson’s first year in office. Three Chicago journalists win Pulitzer Prizes. And after 25 years in prison, one man says he’s still fighting to prove his innocence.

“We are looking at issues that have been covered for a long time, but we’re looking at them at the root. We’re seeing people as complex people that control their own stories, and that’s really important,” City Bureau senior reporter Sarah Conway said.

In the last 20 years, Illinois has released a spate of inmates who were wrongfully convicted, some after it was determined they were tortured into giving confessions. In fact, the state was faced with so many claims of torture that it created the Torture Relief and Inquiry Commission in 2009.

U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer rejected nearly all of the demands made by the coalition of police reform groups behind the consent decree, the federal court order requiring CPD to change the way it trains, supervises and disciplines officers.

Nina Sanders alleges in the lawsuit that the Blackhawks were facing intense public pressure to change their name and logo in 2020. The team’s CEO, Dan Wirtz, hired her that year to serve as a tribal liaison.

LeBron James showed up wearing a black hoodie and sat in the second row for Bronny’s second and final scrimmage of the combine.

Green jackets belonging to golf legends Arnold Palmer and Ben Hogan were among the millions of dollars worth of memorabilia and items a former Augusta National Golf Club employee has admitted to stealing.

As Chicago Public Schools moves to fully remove police officers from its buildings, education officials are planning a phased-in approach to its new school safety plans.

A 2003 law pushed by the gun industry limits the information shared by federal agents and shields gun shops from public scrutiny, but ProPublica was able to identify the store that sold the gun used in the shooting of a Chicago police officer.

“Illinois cannot simply hope that its remaining fiscal challenges will disappear on their own,” the Civic Federation says in a new report. “They will not until they are addressed head on.”

Riders can book their space on the shuttles, which will hold between 14 and 55 seats, up to a week in advance and will receive a QR code ticket to board. Uber plans to partner with local shuttle companies with commercially licensed drivers to facilitate the offering, but users will be able to rate and tip drivers within the Uber app like with any other ride.

While Cortez Turner was in a hospital room being treated for a gunshot wound to his leg in 2016, police took his clothes. Now, the Illinois Supreme Court is weighing whether that action violated Turner’s expectation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment.

Experts reacted cautiously. One described the decline as relatively small, and said it should be thought more as part of a leveling off than a decrease. Another noted that the last time a decline occurred — in 2018 — drug deaths shot up in the years that followed.

The “Brown Revisited” recreation is being made available at brown.oyez.org. It will be part of a website, painstakingly put together by former Northwestern University professor Jerry Goldman, that allows people to hear oral arguments in decades worth of Supreme Court cases and follow along with written transcriptions.

The juxtaposition of a popular program with how to pay for it highlights the tensions Illinois lawmakers face with weeks left before the end-of-month deadline to pass a new state budget.

“People put me in charge to change course. And what is very clear, I say this with all due humility, people know we are changing course in this city. There should be no doubt in anyone’s minds that we are moving in another direction. I believe people are up for it. And I’m looking forward to the implementation of many of the things that we’ve already put forward.”

Employment levels in Chicago and beyond have rebounded since the COVID-19 pandemic, but a new report has found teens and young adults across the city, particularly those of color, are still struggling to find consistent work.

What’s behind the mass felling of trees at a suburban forest preserve. And eyes are on the Chicago Sky as the WNBA regular season tips off.

The Chicago Sky looks different this year with brand new leadership and players on the roster including Angel Reese and Kamilla Cardoso.

Nyla was delivered on Nov. 17 at just 22 weeks after her mother, NaKeya, was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia, a dangerous high-blood pressure condition. 

For Chicago area native Grant Reynolds, the performances mark his debut in a national tour for a Broadway show.

A 1,000-acre, $10 million restoration project is now underway at Red Gate Woods, part of the vast Palos Preserve system in southwestern Cook County.

During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress enacted changes to Medicaid requiring states to keep patients continuously enrolled through the public health crisis, even if they might have become ineligible due to changes in their income or family circumstances. That continuous enrollment program expired in March 2023.

The City Council’s Police and Fire Committee unanimously advanced the nominations of Anthony Driver Jr., Remel Terry, Aaron Gottlieb, Abierre Minor, Kelly Presley and Sandra Wortham to serve four-year terms on the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability.

The Museum of Science and Industry will officially be renamed the Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Science and Industry. The donation, previously announced in 2019, is the largest in the museum’s history.