All high school sports – including the higher-risk football, basketball and wresting – may now be played in three regions of Illinois as the state continues to loosen restrictions amid the pandemic.

A bill endorsed by Gov. JB Pritzker that would eliminate expanded federal tax deductions for businesses created under the CARES Act, failed to pass in the lame duck session.

Only one of the state’s 11 COVID-19 mitigation regions remains at the highest level of restricted activity Thursday as the statewide case positivity rate continues to decline.

The state’s COVID-19 seven-day average case positivity rate dropped to 5.7 percent Tuesday, the lowest it has been since Oct. 23.

Gov. JB Pritzker announced revisions to his COVID-19 mitigation tiers Friday that would allow earlier indoor dining, but no regions have thus far met the requirements.

DANVILLE, Ill. (AP) — Officials in an eastern Illinois city are still hopeful their community can land a casino, despite delays in the state's application process caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Gov. JB Pritzker has activated 250 members of the Illinois National Guard amid FBI warnings of potential armed protests at the 50 U.S. state capitols in the days leading up to President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.

Rep. Emanuel "Chris" Welch, D-Hillside, will be the next speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives after days of closed-door meetings with fellow Democrats.

Illinois House lawmakers were back in the capital city Friday for the first time since May, kicking off a five-day “lame duck” legislative session.

Illinois reported 9,277 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 on Friday, including 126 additional deaths.

The Illinois Legislative Black Caucus has introduced a sweeping criminal justice omnibus bill that aims to heavily alter the state of policing in Illinois.

Hours after rioters seeking to block the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s November election victory first began storming the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Gov. JB Pritzker called on Congress to impeach and remove sitting President Donald Trump.

Illinois lawmakers will return to the capital city on Friday for a “lame duck” session that is expected to focus on the state’s COVID-19 response, a nearly $4 billion budget deficit and a host of social issues being advanced by the Legislative Black Caucus.

Gov. JB Pritzker issued 9,219 pardons for low-level marijuana convictions on Thursday, New Year’s Eve, while announcing the Illinois State Police had expunged all eligible records at the state level for marijuana related arrests.

When a new year begins in Illinois, there typically are dozens if not hundreds of new laws going into effect.

Illinois reported its third consecutive day with more than 100 COVID-19 deaths Tuesday. Meanwhile, most statistics the state uses to measure progress in combatting the coronavirus ticked up slightly.

While the number of new COVID-19 cases and people hospitalized in Illinois continue to decline, the state’s coronavirus death toll has surpassed 16,000.

In early July, a judge in downstate Clay County voided Gov. JB Pritzker’s executive orders in a sweeping order that he applied to the entire state, at the request of a southern Illinois lawmaker who sued Pritzker over his response to the pandemic.

The U.S. Congress reached an agreement on a roughly $900 billion coronavirus relief package that extends unemployment benefits, provides stimulus checks to Americans within a certain income bracket and funding to small businesses, but it fell short of providing direct funding to state and local governments.

The top public health official in the United States said Tuesday that the COVID-19 trends in Illinois are improving and he urged the public to get vaccinated as soon as the doses become available to them.

Two lawmakers have introduced legislation that would allow the General Assembly to meet and vote remotely during a pandemic or other emergency that makes in-person meetings dangerous.

Four weeks after the Thanksgiving Day weekend, the so-called “surge upon a surge” in COVID-19 cases has not materialized and, in fact, infection rates and hospitalizations from the disease have continued to decline.

Gov. JB Pritzker announced more than $700 million in spending cuts on Tuesday, calling it a “first step” in closing a $3.9 billion revenue shortfall in the current fiscal year’s budget.

Five health care workers at a hospital in Peoria became the first people in Illinois to receive a COVID-19 vaccine Tuesday, marking what Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike called “the beginning of the end” of the pandemic.

The first COVID-19 vaccinations have arrived in Illinois as virus metrics continued to trend in a direction that indicates the spread of the virus is slowing.

Illinois’ presidential electors officially cast their 20 ballots Monday for the Democratic ticket of Joseph R. Biden and Kamala Harris, marking the all-but-final step in a bitterly contested presidential election that incumbent President Donald Trump has refused to concede.

Two Democratic lawmakers this week introduced legislation to reduce state payments to the insurance companies that manage Illinois’ Medicaid program, arguing that the COVID-19 pandemic is resulting in excess profits for the insurers.

More than 107,000 Illinois workers filed first-time unemployment claims last week, a 45-percent increase over the week before as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to wreak havoc on the state and national economies.