Stories by Heather Cherone

More than 8,100 people, most of them from Central and South America, have arrived in Chicago since Aug. 31. Mayor Lori Lightfoot sent to the City Council Friday, acknowledging that once again the city’s shelter system is bursting at the seams.  

Criminal justice change as Kim Foxx prepares to step away. Who’s helping the mayor-elect transition to City Hall. Awaiting a verdict in the “ComEd Four” case.

A mystery vandal is once again undoing ecological restoration work at LaBagh Woods.

It's time for the annual City Nature Challenge, a friendly global competition among hundreds of cities, running from Friday through Monday. Here's how to submit nature observations and boost Chicago in the standings.

Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson’s transition team. A dangerous crossing for kids in Hammond to get to school. And we’re live in Woodlawn for our “In Your Neighborhood” series.

It's been three months since a group of migrants was moved into the shuttered Wadsworth Elementary School in the Woodlawn community following objections from some nearby residents. Now, some locals have joined forces to help integrate their new neighbors into the community.

The team, led by University of Illinois at Chicago Professor Barbara Ransby and Charles Smith, an insurance executive, will have to work fast — Johnson is set to take office in 18 days.

It’s the stuff of nightmares for parents: children crawling under and over idling trains in order to get to school on the other side. Two ProPublica journalists spent months reporting on railroad safety and the kids who are risking life and limb to go to school.

The white woman who accused Black teenager Emmett Till of making improper advances before he was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 has died in hospice care in Louisiana, a coroner's report shows.

Federal prosecutors allege eight of the nine defendants are members or associates of the Black P Stone Nation street gang. Charges include firearms trafficking, distribution of a controlled substance and possession of a weapon as a convicted felon.

A band of young women — most in their 20s, some in college, some married with children — banded together in Chicago to create an underground abortion network. The group was officially created in 1969 as the “Abortion Counseling Service of Women’s Liberation.”

At its peak, ”The Jerry Springer Show” was a ratings powerhouse and a U.S. cultural pariah, synonymous with lurid drama. Springer died peacefully at home in suburban Chicago after a brief illness. 

There’s a love triangle brewing at Montrose Beach, where Imani the piping plover has been joined by a mystery bachelor and … a female.

Our Spotlight Politics team on jury deliberations in the ComEd bribery trial and the opening at the state’s attorney office. Former presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke joins us. And a plover sighting!

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx is not seeking reelection. Closing arguments wrap up in the so-called “ComEd Four” trial. And some familiar Illinois faces are working on President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign.

For the last three months, Beto O’Rourke has been spending time in Chicago as a University of Chicago Institute of Politics fellow.

Chicago’s birders are celebrating the arrival of Imani at Montrose Beach. The piping plover is a 2021 chick of Monty and Rose.

A block party, poetry festival and spring art shows usher in the weekend. Here are five things to do in and around Chicago.

A small number of people had to leave their homes in Wisconsin as the river kept rising. Others stacked sandbags in the small community of Buffalo, Iowa, in anticipation of flooding this weekend and early next week.

The backlog stems from a change made two months after President Joe Biden took office, when Border Patrol agents began now-defunct practice of quickly releasing immigrants on parole. 

Anne Caprara, Pritzker’s chief of staff and former campaign manager, who hired Quentin Fulks as her 2018 deputy, described him as a “soft-spoken” but skilled operative who understands Democrats’ uneasy coalitions

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx says she’s not running for reelection. The search for the next police chief. Some Medicaid patients could be losing their coverage. And bringing the formerly incarcerated home.

Emergency measures designed to ensure people didn’t lose their health care during the COVID-19 pandemic are now being phased out. People must once again prove their eligibility for the government=-backed insurance program.

Backing from the rank and file. Removing racist officers. Protecting marginalized communities. Those are just some of the priorities Chicagoans said they have for the next police superintendent during a virtual forum held Tuesday.

“I had a mission and agenda that I knew I wanted to achieve, which was fairness, justice and equity. I feel that I have done that,” Foxx said.

A coalition of attorneys general said the Federal Trade Commission needs to strengthen the process for “ensuring consumers are protected from companies providing overinflated or even false claims about their products’ environmental benefits.”