Stories by Matt Masterson

The board on Wednesday voted to approve Macquline King, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s senior director of education policy and a former CPS principal, as Chicago Public Schools’ interim CEO.

President Donald Trump’s plan to cut taxes by trillions of dollars could also trim billions in spending from social safety net programs, including food assistance for lower-income people.

The EPA also proposed weakening a regulation that requires power plants to reduce emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants that can harm brain development of young children and contribute to heart attacks and other health problems in adults.

“I am counting on all of Chicago to resist in this moment,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said. “Whatever particular vulnerable group is being targeted today, another group will be next.”

Chicago Transit Authority Acting President Nora Leerhsen said the agency has entered a “new phase” after the Illinois General Assembly failed last month to pass a measure tackling a $770 million budget gap for Chicago-area transit.

The Beach Boys rank among the most popular groups of the rock era, with more than 30 singles in the Top 40 and worldwide sales of more than 100 million.

From Seattle and Austin to Chicago and Washington, D.C., marchers have chanted slogans, carried signs against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and snarled traffic through downtown avenues and outside federal offices.

Each Wednesday, WTTW News producer Josh Terry presents must-see live music shows from indie rock to jazz, country, hip-hop and more.

Gov. JB Pritzker is preparing to testify before Congress on Illinois’ protections for undocumented immigrants. And Cook County reaches a new milestone with medical debt relief.

According to recent data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 41% of adults in the U.S. have medical debt. That equates to more than 100 million Americans who owe upwards of $220 billion in health care costs.

U.S. District Judge John Blakey rejected Michael Madigan’s motion for acquittal or a new trial, setting the stage for Madigan’s sentencing to go ahead Friday.

Emil Jones III, a Chicago Democrat, stands accused of agreeing to take bribes from red-light camera entrepreneur-turned-government cooperator Omar Maani in 2019, then lying to FBI agents about it.

Lawmakers and labor unions have both expressed concern that benefits for Tier 2 employees are inadequate and that some workers in that category are in line to receive benefits out of compliance with federal law.

Gun rights advocates once again are asking a federal appeals court in Chicago to overturn Illinois’ ban on assault-style firearms and large-capacity magazines in a case that may be destined for the U.S. Supreme Court.

President Donald Trump called protesters in Los Angeles “animals” and “a foreign enemy” in a speech at Fort Bragg on Tuesday as he defended deploying the military on demonstrators opposed to his immigration enforcement raids.

R. Kelly was convicted in two separate trials — one in New York, another in Chicago — of racketeering conspiracy and child pornography charges.

Chicago native Natasha Olguin has been named deputy commissioner of the Chicago Film Office.

“The people of Los Angeles and surrounding areas have taken a courageous stand against Trump’s reign of terror targeting immigrant families,” according to organizers in a social media post about the planned protest.

An immigrant man who was falsely accused of threatening to assassinate President Donald Trump can be released from a Wisconsin prison on bond, an immigration judge in Chicago determined Tuesday.

The Army birthday celebration had already been planned for months. But earlier this spring, President Donald Trump announced his intention to transform the event — which coincides with his 79th birthday — into a massive military parade.

Concerns over the president’s deployment of the National Guard to stop protests in California. And how the Trump administration’s tariffs on steel and aluminum are impacting businesses in Illinois.

Businesses and manufacturing are starting to feel the impact of steel and aluminum tariffs that took effect Wednesday. The Trump administration is putting a 50% tax on these metals when they’re imported from other countries.

This appears to be the first time in decades that a state’s National Guard was activated without a request from its governor.

The “Clean Slate” Act, which could have sealed thousands and potentially millions of nonviolent criminal records in Illinois, had bipartisan support but failed to pass in the final flurry of legislative action this spring, the sponsor says.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday dismissed an expert panel of vaccine advisers that has historically guided the federal government’s vaccine recommendations, saying the group is “plagued with conflicts of interest.”

Sly Stone, the revolutionary musician and dynamic showman whose Sly and the Family Stone transformed popular music in the 1960s and ‘70s and beyond with such hits as “Everyday People,” “Stand!” and “Family Affair,” has died. He was 82