(WTTW News)

It is nearly unprecedented for City Council committee chairs to urge the defeat of the mayor that hand-picked them for their high-profile positions, which comes with power at City Hall and an annual budget of nearly $200,000.

Chicago City Hall. (Michael Izquierdo / WTTW News)

Tensions rose at this week's Chicago mayoral forum. Our politics team weighs in on that story and more.

Advocates rally in Roscoe Village’s Fellger Park on Sept. 7, 2022, calling on the city to include more infrastructure upgrades for cyclists, bus passengers, and pedestrians during an upcoming resurfacing of Belmont Avenue. (Nick Blumberg / WTTW News)

The groups say they don’t just want things like protected bike lanes, signal priority for buses, and other improvements to be limited to this stretch of street, calling on the Chicago Department of Transportation to “perform critical safety and quality-of-life upgrades” in the course of every major street resurfacing citywide.

Ald. Tom Tunney, 44th Ward, speaks with “Chicago Tonight” on April 9, 2020. (WTTW News)

Lakeview Ald. Tom Tunney is the sixth member of the Chicago City Council to announce they will not run for re-election next year,

 The Belmont Rocks were a limestone stretch of the lakefront where Chicago’s LGBTQ community started gathering in the 1960s. (Courtesy Owen Keehnen)

The AIDS Garden Chicago, a project many years in the making, is now open to the public. Located just south of Belmont Harbor, the garden’s location has a meaningful place in the history of the city’s queer community.

Jim Gardiner appears on “Chicago Tonight” on Feb. 27, 2019, a day after ousting two-term incumbent Ald. John Arena (45th Ward) in the municipal election. (WTTW News)

Ald. Jim Gardiner (45th Ward) on Tuesday apologized on the floor of the Chicago City Council chambers for sending profane and misogynistic texts to a former aide about Ald. Tom Tunney (44th Ward) and two women who work at City Hall. 

Workers put the finishing touches on the Sunnyside dispensary in Lakeview on Dec. 30, 2019, just two days before recreational marijuana became legal in Illinois. (WTTW News)
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A push by Mayor Lori Lightfoot to allow cannabis to be sold legally downtown cleared a key city panel on Wednesday, even though it won’t allow Michigan Avenue to become a “pot paradise.”

(WTTW News)

Ald. Jim Gardiner, elected in 2019, has been surrounded by controversy since he took office after defeating former Ald. John Arena. In 2023, he was elected to serve as the 45th Ward’s Democratic committeeperson, making him one of the leaders of the Cook County Democratic Party.

A rendering of the Wrigley Field mini triangle building from the northeast corner of Addison Street and Sheffield Avenue. (Gensler / Courtesy office of Ald. Tom Tunney)

A proposed two-story triangular DraftKings Sportsbook addition to Wrigley Field still requires a heavy lift from City Council, but the Commission on Chicago Landmarks won’t stand in the way of Cubs ownership.

The vacant land near Higgins Road and Cumberland Avenue that GlenStar wants to transform into a 297-apartment complex. (Credit: Google Maps)

The third time did not prove to be the charm for a proposal to build hundreds of apartments near Higgins Road and Cumberland Avenue. Instead, the City Council’s Zoning Committee voted 11-2 Tuesday to table the plan from GlenStar.

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Mayor Lori Lightfoot will introduce a measure Thursday that would ban the sale of alcohol at stores after midnight, dropping her effort to set an earlier cutoff. The mayor called the revised proposal “a reasonable compromise.”

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Northalsted, formerly called “Boystown,” is known as the center of LGBTQ life in Chicago. As Pride celebrations begin, the community has just started to recover the vibrant character that made it famous following last year’s pandemic and civil unrest.

Ald. Tom Tunney, 44th Ward, speaks with “Chicago Tonight” on April 9, 2020. (WTTW News)
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The Lakeview alderman, who owns the restaurant Ann Sather, admitted he flouted the ban on indoor dining in December by allowing a “very limited number of our regular diners to eat inside the restaurant.” He faced a maximum fine of $10,500.

Ann Sather restaurant. (WTTW News)
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Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Wednesday she was “deeply disappointed” that Lakeview Ald. Tom Tunney allowed diners to eat inside his restaurant in defiance of a ban imposed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Ald. Tom Tunney, 44th Ward, speaks with “Chicago Tonight” on Thursday, April 9, 2020. (WTTW News)
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City officials hit Lakeview Ald. Tom Tunney with two citations on Tuesday for allowing diners to eat inside his restaurant in defiance of a ban imposed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker. 

Ald. Tom Tunney, 44th Ward, speaks with “Chicago Tonight” on Thursday, April 9, 2020. (WTTW News)
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Lakeview Ald. Tom Tunney acknowledged Monday that he allowed diners to eat inside his restaurant in defiance of a ban imposed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker in an effort to stop a sustained and grave surge of the coronavirus.