Gov. JB Pritzker warned Monday of another looming economic crisis for the state and nation if Congress does not act soon to reauthorize extended unemployment benefits for people displaced from their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I can’t overstate the implications of this,” Pritzker said during his daily COVID-19 briefing. “Without assistance from Congress, five weeks from now there will be no way to replace these benefits for the hundreds of thousands of Illinoisans impacted by these programs, which have become an essential lifeline for people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic. This is incredibly dire.”

Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan said he has significant support from members of the House Democratic caucus, but a longtime political observer said the speaker’s power could be waning.

“The decision on the next speaker of the Illinois House will be made at a caucus, after a full discussion of the issues facing our state and the qualifications of the candidates,” Madigan, D-Chicago, said in a statement on Friday. “I plan to be a candidate for speaker, and today I confirmed that I continue to have support from a significant number of House Democratic caucus members.”

With support for Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan waning after another round of indictments in a corruption scandal this week, metro-east Democrats won’t say whether they still back him or not.

The metro-east’s ranking Democrat and party loyalist, Assistant House Majority Leader Jay Hoffman, D-Swansea, refused Friday to discuss Madigan’s implication in a federal investigation.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot was accused Monday of using strongarm tactics to round up City Council votes for her $12.8 billion pandemic budget.

On the eve of a final budget vote that is not in doubt, representatives from the DefundCPD Campaign, Black Lives Matter, the Grassroots Collaborative and United Working Families put the mayor on blast and aldermen who “cave” to mayoral pressure on notice.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot made her closing argument for her budget on Monday, urging aldermen to support the plan she crafted to close a $1.2 billion budget deficit in 2021, which she said would start to repair the economic devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The mayor, facing perhaps the biggest challenge of her first term in office, called on aldermen to join her and help the city “rise up and meet the challenge and build a pathway” through the pandemic’s wreckage.

As the COVID-19 pandemic and state-imposed restrictions continue to cripple the Illinois hotel industry, things in nearby states are improving.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has imposed gathering limits across the state, thus eliminating events and conferences which are essential to the hotel business.

Ending cash bail doesn’t lead to an increase in crime, according to a new report from resarchers at Loyola University Chicago.

The report examined a 2017 order from Cook County Chief Justice Timothy Evans that halted a requirement for cash bail for felonies.

Delivery services such as Postmates, Grubhub, DoorDash and UberEats can charge fees totaling no more than 15% under a measure approved unanimously Monday by the Chicago City Council in an effort to help struggling restaurants.

Third-party companies could charge no more than 10% of the order’s purchase price for delivery — with other fees for marketing and commission capped at no more than an additional 5%, according to the ordinance, backed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

A newly released five-year plan to invest in Chicago’s roads, bridges, bikeways and other infrastructure needs is a welcome shift away from short-term, less comprehensive projects, some analysts and city officials say.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office last week released a five-year capital plan that outlined 10 categories of infrastructure and equipment needs, which it says will be assessed citywide on a set of needs-based, data-driven and equity-focused criteria. The city says the plan will create thousands of jobs and address a decadeslong backlog of issues.

The McHenry County Board dissolved an unused commission, a move touted last week by the McHenry Board Chairman Jack Franks as a common-sense measure to make county government slimmer.

Board members voted last week to dissolve the Public Building Commission, which was created 56 years ago to help county and local governments build facilities to ensure that the needs of a growing population could be met, according to a news release. However, the county government has not used the commission since 2005, and no other unit of local government has ever done so.