With cases of coronavirus still climbing across Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker defended his mask mandate on Friday.

In the past week, the Illinois Department of Public Health says 22,600 new cases were confirmed, a 29% jump over the prior week.

The upper echelon of the state agency charged with overseeing Medicaid is peppered with representatives of the for-profit insurance industry state officials are supposed to be policing, a Better Government Association investigation has found.

An examination of state contracts, salary data, pension statements, court records and internal correspondence identified more than a dozen top-level Medicaid officials in Illinois who have current or recent financial ties to the giant insurance companies now managing the $16 billion per year taxpayers spend to provide medical care to people who cannot afford health coverage.

An Illinois Supreme Court-run ethics hearing board recommended a 60-day suspension for an attorney who it said lied during an inquiry into her role in creating and running a Facebook page and website criticizing a state judge.

In the Wednesday filing, the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois said Margaret Jean Lowery played a part in making a “Fire the Liar” website and Facebook page that slammed Andrew Gleeson, chief judge of the 20th Judicial Circuit, as he was seeking to be retained as a circuit judge.

As COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations are back on the rise in Illinois, WGN’s Ben Bradley takes a deeper look into the rise and offers perspective and comparison to past periods of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The state Department of Transportation is preparing for the season ahead as snowflakes start to fall in Central Illinois.

IDOT starts the search for a thousand licensed snow removal operators every August, and that search has continued into November.