Stories by WTTW News

Are military troops bound for Illinois? And how a court ruling on racial profiling could impact local policing.

Chicago taxpayers paid $295 million between 2019 and 2024 to resolve lawsuits naming officers whose alleged misconduct led more than once to payouts, according to an analysis of city data by WTTW News. In all, the city spent $491.7 million to resolve lawsuits alleging 1,643 Chicago police officers committed a wide range of misconduct.

“CPD has failed to rein in its culture of brutality and abuse,” according to the coalition of police reform groups that forced the city to agree to federal court oversight. “The department is moving in the wrong direction.”

The invasive spotted lanternfly appears to be making inroads in Chicago. So far, there have been more reports of the bug in September 2025 alone than there were in all of 2024.

If government funding legislation isn’t passed by Congress and signed by Trump on Tuesday night, many government offices across the nation will be temporarily shuttered and nonexempt federal employees will be furloughed, adding to the strain on workers and the nation’s economy.

Pritzker on Monday said the Department of Homeland Security has ordered the Illinois National Guard deployment after ICE agents used chemical munitions and less lethal ammo on protesters outside the agency’s suburban Broadview facility.

Beginning immediately, non-privileged mail will be opened and inspected for contraband, scanned in color, then be uploaded to an individual’s tablet, the department announced Monday. Nearly all incarcerated people now have tablets, according to the department.

A $15 million homeowner relief fund program aims to assist Cook County homeowners who have experienced a substantial increase in property taxes in recent years, officials announced during a Monday news conference.

Dozens of armed federal agents, in full tactical gear, walked the streets of some of the city’s most prominent tourist and shopping areas. That comes amid a surge of immigration enforcement that began early this month.

ICE agents again fire tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters outside an immigration facility. And Illinois bucks the feds, recommending COVID-19 boosters for all adults.

Federal immigration agents targeted the well-liked leader of Iowa’s largest school district in a traffic stop Friday and arrested him after he fled into the woods, leaving educators and community members stunned.

The department recently sent letters to local governments in at least six states — Alabama, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts and New Mexico — informing them it was withdrawing money awarded under the $1.1 trillion infrastructure law former President Joe Biden signed in 2021.

Mayor Katrina Thompson in a letter to the ICE Field Office Director Russell Hott on Friday claimed ICE’s response to protesters exercising their First Amendment rights outside the Broadview facility is “endangering nearby village residents” and harming Broadview’s police and firefighters.

A recent medical paper investigated the genome of Maria Branyas Morera, a U.S.-born Spanish woman who died in August 2024 at age 117 years and 168 days, shortly after becoming the world’s oldest living person.

President Donald Trump’s unprecedented retribution campaign against his perceived political enemies reached new heights as his Justice Department brought criminal charges against a longtime foe and he expanded his efforts to classify certain liberal groups as “domestic terrorist organizations.”

City Council is set to vote on Chicago police settlements. And President Donald Trump tells pregnant people not to take Tylenol — but not everyone’s on board.

Centro Sanar began five years ago as a grassroots initiative launched by local mental health providers. It focuses on helping people break through their complex traumas using different techniques.

President Donald Trump linked Tylenol use during pregnancy to rising autism rates in children. The president urged pregnant women to avoid the longtime household medicine and warned against giving it to infants.

The Trump administration has targeted the Chicago area for its latest immigration enforcement surge touting hundreds of arrests in the past three weeks.

The measure reverses the city’s 68-year ban on tiny homes but creates a patchwork of regulations that could significantly differ from ward to ward in order to uphold the decades-old tradition known as aldermanic prerogative.

Chicago taxpayers will pay $90 million in the first-ever global settlement of lawsuits tied to a single Chicago police officer, under the agreement approved Thursday, to 180 people who spent nearly 200 years in prison.

Bailey began the campaign in downstate Carterville before taking a helicopter owned and piloted by his son to Bloomington, then departing for his opening rally in suburban Oak Brook later in the evening.

James Comey was charged Thursday with making a false statement and obstruction in a criminal case filed days after President Donald Trump appeared to urge his attorney general to prosecute the former FBI director and other perceived political enemies.

The directive did not offer a reason for the gathering Tuesday of senior commanders of the one-star rank or higher and their top advisers at the Marine Corps base in Quantico.

While Planned Parenthood of Illinois is also affected by Medicaid reimbursement cuts, President and CEO Adrienne White-Faines said the organization is not planning to make any changes to services in Illinois.

After back-to-back years of enrollment growth for the first time in more than a decade, Chicago Public Schools on Thursday announced it has seen a drop in its number of students for the new academic year.