A proposed Chicago Ward Map from the Chicago City Council's Latino Caucus. [Provided]

The Chicago City Council’s Latino Caucus on Friday unveiled a map that would reduce the number of wards with a majority of Black voters by two to 16 wards and add two wards where a majority of voters are Latino.

A new Chicago ward map will take effect in time for the 2023 municipal elections — assuming it is not blocked by a judge. (WTTW News via Google Maps)

The final map crafted by the Chicago Ward Advisory Redistricting Commission would increase the number of wards where Latinos make up a majority of residents by one to 14, while reducing the number of wards with a majority of Black voters by three to 15 wards. 

(WTTW News)

Extolling redrawn state legislative districts as reflective of Illinois’ diversity, Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Friday signed into law a new set of maps that will come into play in next year’s election and elections over the next decade. 

A new Chicago ward map will take effect in time for the 2023 municipal elections — assuming it is not blocked by a judge. (WTTW News via Google Maps)

With efforts well underway to craft new ward boundaries that could shape Chicago politics for the next decade, Chicagoans on Wednesday got a brief glimpse of the heated debate taking shape behind closed doors at City Hall.

In this April 23, 2020, file photo, President Donald Trump’s name is seen on a stimulus check issued by the IRS to help combat the adverse economic effects of the COVID-19 outbreak, in San Antonio. (AP Photo / Eric Gay, File)

Massive government relief passed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic moved millions of Americans out of poverty last year, even as the official poverty rate increased slightly, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday.

(WTTW News)

Democrats have a stranglehold on the Illinois General Assembly, and Tuesday they muscled through legislation that will help the party maintain power for the coming decade despite objections from community organizations and Republicans.

(WTTW News)

Illinois Democrats on Tuesday are expected to approve new legislative boundaries over objections from Republicans and some community groups that the process was unnecessarily rushed and maps were drawn behind closed doors.

A mural on a fence is displayed at United Fort Worth, a grassroots community organization in Fort Worth, Texas, Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2021. (AP Photo / LM Otero)

Redistricting season officially kicked off Thursday with the release of detailed population data from the U.S. Census Bureau that will be used to redraw voting districts nationwide — potentially helping determine control of the U.S. House in the 2022 elections.

FILE - In this July 29, 2021 file photo, Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., speaks at a news conference held by members of the House Freedom Caucus on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo / Andrew Harnik File)

While suburban congressional districts are swelling with new residents, lawmakers in large swaths of rural America and some Rust Belt cities are in need of more people to represent.

FILE - In this Wednesday, April 1, 2020 file photo, People walk past posters encouraging participation in the 2020 Census in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. (AP Photo / Ted S. Warren, File)

Across the U.S., the growth in the number of people who identified as multiracial on 2020 census responses soared over the last decade, rising from under 3% to more than 10% of the U.S. population from 2010 and 2020.

Rows of homes are shown in suburban Salt Lake City on April 13, 2019 (AP Photo / Rick Bowmer, File)

The Census Bureau on Thursday issued its most detailed portrait yet of how the U.S. has changed over the past decade, releasing a trove of demographic data that will be used to redraw political maps across an increasingly diverse country.

This April 5, 2020, photo shows a 2020 census letter mailed to a U.S. resident in Detroit. (AP Photo / Paul Sancya)

Census Bureau statisticians and outside experts are trying to unravel a mystery: Why were so many questions about households in the 2020 census left unanswered?

Census Bureau Director nominee Robert Santos is sworn in to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee, Thursday, July 15, 2021. If confirmed, Robert Santos, a third-generation Mexican American, would be the first person of color to be a permanent head of the nation’s largest statistical agency. (AP Photo / Jacquelyn Martin)

President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the U.S. Census Bureau told a Senate committee on Thursday that he would bring transparency and independence to the nation’s largest statistical agency, which was challenged by the pandemic, natural disasters and attempts at political interference while carrying out the 2020 census.

(WTTW News)

It won’t be smoke-filled, but members of the Chicago City Council will head to a backroom at City Hall later this month to start crafting new ward boundaries that could shape Chicago politics for the next decade.

(WTTW News)

Illinois Democrats used inadequate data and an opaque process to draw new legislative districts, a Latino civil rights organization argued in the latest lawsuit seeking to block the maps from being used for statehouse elections over the next decade.

(Meagan Davis / Wikimedia Commons)

Plus: Our Spotlight Politics team on that and more

The state’s top Republicans asked a federal judge Wednesday to appoint an eight-member commission made up of four Democrats and four Republicans to craft the maps with census data.