Get the latest news from around Illinois.
Chicago Sun-Times: Chicago bars, restaurants officially cleared to reopen for indoor service: ‘It feels good to be back’
Restaurateurs across Chicago and Cook County breathed a sigh of relief Saturday as Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s health team officially allowed them to invite customers back inside for indoor service for the first time in over two months.
It was welcome news for many customers too, including Marcus Brezina, who, with his family, was among the first back through the doors at Corcoran’s Grill and Pub in Old Town.
Chicago Tribune: Chicago Teachers Union authorizes collective action to remain remote, but some students may return to school Feb. 1 as negotiations continue
After days of voting on whether to launch a collective action to remain remote, the Chicago Teachers Union announced Sunday its members “overwhelmingly” chose to conduct only remote work beginning Monday.
That’s when teachers and school staff who are in the second wave of the Chicago Public Schools reopening plan were to begin reporting to school to prepare for Feb. 1, when some of the district’s 70,000 elementary school students are to return for their first in-person classes since schools closed in March.
NPR Illinois: Frustration Mounting Over Local COVID Vaccine Rollout
Asima Rahman has a new routine since she’s been back teaching in her third grade classroom at Ridgely Elementary in Springfield.
She checks the Sangamon County Department of Public Health and Walgreens websites before work in the morning, at lunchtime and after school, searching for an open COVID-19 vaccine appointment.
Chicago Sun-Times: House warming: Welch’s challenge is to be a kinder, gentler but still powerful speaker — ‘a breath of fresh air’
Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch inherited a whole host of problems when Mike Madigan handed over the gavel he had wielded for nearly four decades.
But beyond the challenges facing all Illinois leaders — including a gaping budget hole and an unrelenting pandemic — Welch faces the problem of Madigan himself.
Chicago Sun-Times: Some worry process to pick senator replacement on North Side ‘leaves behind the voters’
Committeepeople in a North Side state senator’s district say they’re committed to an open and “transparent process” for picking a replacement, but some in that district say the plan for picking a successor leaves out voters.
Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth, a co-coordinator of the Indivisible chapter, Indivisble IL-9, that encompasses Andersonville and Edgewater — part of Indivisible Illinois, which was founded in 2016 to push back on former President Donald Trump’s agenda — said the process of picking who will serve out the remaining two years in Sen. Heather Steans’ term shuts independent voices out.