Daywatch: The cost to fix Chicago's water mains
Good morning, Chicago.
Scores of water mains throughout Chicago are too close to sewer lines, according to a new report that cautions the potential risks to public health could cost taxpayers millions of dollars to fix.
In a six-page letter released yesterday, Inspector General Deborah Witzburg slammed the Department of Water Management for failing to ensure contractors complied with state and city regulations intended to prevent human and industrial waste from tainting drinking water.
Witzburg said experts told her investigators that the level of pressure maintained in underground water mains likely thwarted any contamination. But she urged the city to improve its communication with Chicagoans, in particular when sections of the system malfunction and boil orders are issued.
Read the full story from the Tribune's Michael Hawthorne.
Here are the top stories you need to know to start your day.
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While Gov. JB Pritzker delivered a no-new-taxes, belt-tightening spending proposal for Illinois, the prospective presidential contender spoke to a larger, national audience by likening the actions of President Donald Trump and his followers to the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany.
Painting a brighter picture of the state's finances than his administration had last year, when a $3.2 billion budget hole was said to loom, Pritzker's $55.2 billion plan for the year beginning July 1 includes required funding increases for schools and pension contributions. But the proposal keeps spending flat in most other areas, including programs favored by the second-term Democrat and his allies in the General Assembly.
American Airlines is planning to boost flying capacity out of O'Hare International Airport this year, marking a departure from the airline's pullback at its Chicago hub in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The carrier will fly to nine new domestic and international cities from Chicago in 2025 and use larger planes, American announced Thursday.
Indiana House legislators gave initial approval to a bill aimed at redrawing the Indiana-Illinois border Wednesday, but the bill continues to open up a Pandora's box of amendments — from marijuana legalization to allowing Indiana counties to secede.
Bill that places restrictions on Medicaid advances to Indiana House
Indiana House passes ban on transgender women participating in women's college sports
After years of litigation, Endeavor Health has settled the last batch of pending lawsuits filed by patients who allege they were sexually abused by former obstetrician/gynecologist Dr. Fabio Ortega – bringing the total number of lawsuits the health system has settled over the matter to more than 75.
Read the investigation on sexual abuse by providers
The AIDS Foundation Chicago and two other nonprofits filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump and his administration, challenging executive orders related to diversity, equity and gender.
The AIDS Foundation Chicago, the National Urban League and the National Fair Housing Alliance filed the lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C., seeking to halt three recent executive orders.
After spending nearly six years in six courts, the legal battle between the Forest County Potawatomi Community of Wisconsin and the city of Waukegan is likely over after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit put an end to the last pending case.
Chicago Cubs left-hander Shota Imanaga is excited about his first opening-day start, made more special by the fact it's at the Tokyo Dome in Japan.
Former Illinois guard Terrence Shannon Jr. is trying to create something positive out of the school's upside-down banner mishap over the weekend.
As if Chicago didn't have enough problems. Here comes Godzilla, as in Gojira, the Big G, Tokyo's Own.
Apple has released a sleeker and more expensive version of its lowest priced iPhone in an attempt to widen the audience for a bundle of artificial intelligence technology that the company has been hoping will revive demand for its most profitable product lineup.
The iPhone 16e unveiled yesterday is the fourth-generation of a model that's sold at a dramatically lower price than the iPhone's standard and premium models.
Chicago first embraced this Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice irreverent Biblical creation with the help of some 500 performances from a bare-chested Donny Osmond back in the mid-1990s.
Any show that was so successful for so long in downtown Chicago that an Osmond was persuaded to move himself and his family to Wilmette is a piece of theater that deserves respect, writes Tribune theater critic Chris Jones.
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Forbes
33 minutes ago
- Forbes
Travel Ban Reinstated By Trump With Mostly Muslim Countries
President Donald J. Trump, citing national security concerns, has reinstated and expanded the controversial nationality-based travel ban first introduced during his initial term. The new ban, formalized in a Presidential Proclamation that came into effect on Monday, June 9, 2025, suspends the entry of nationals from 19 countries, primarily targeting Muslim-majority and African nations. The proclamation fully suspends immigrant and nonimmigrant visa issuance to nationals of 12 countries: Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. It imposes partial restrictions on B-1/B-2 tourist visas and F, M, and J student and exchange visas for nationals of Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela. Exceptions apply to green card holders, dual nationals, certain special immigrant visa holders, athletes in international competitions, and immediate relatives of U.S. citizens. The administration relies on a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which authorizes the president to suspend the entry of any class of noncitizens deemed 'detrimental to the interests of the United States.' That authority was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Trump v. Hawaii (2018), which ruled 5-4 that President Trump's third version of the travel ban was constitutional, emphasizing executive deference on immigration and national security. But critics argue that this expanded ban perpetuates discriminatory intent, noting the disproportionate impact on Muslim and African nations and the invocation of Trump's 2024 campaign pledge to 'restore the travel ban and keep radical Islamic terrorists out.' Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law at Cornell Law School, predicts court challenges but warns that they may fail under the current precedent. 'Even if this expansion is legal, it is not good policy,' he said. 'Families will be separated, and we are not necessarily safer.' The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called the order 'ideologically motivated,' 'unnecessary,' and 'overbroad,' criticizing its chilling effect on lawful travel, academic exchange, and humanitarian reunification. Legal scholars have started to question the constitutionality of this policy. More specifically, they contend that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits governments from denying equal legal protection, while the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment forbids favouring or disfavoring any religion. Critics argue that Trump's policy, which targets specific nations commonly associated with certain religions, risks violating both clauses by enabling discrimination based on nationality and faith. Additionally, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished national origin quotas to prevent such bias. By reinstating restrictions linked to religious or national identity, opponents claim the policy mirrors discriminatory practices that the law aimed to eliminate. Jeremy Robbins, Executive Director of the American Immigration Council, noted: 'Blanket nationality bans have never demonstrated any meaningful national security value. This ban hurts our economy and punishes immigrants who qualify to come legally.' According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) 'In total, just under 162,000 immigrant visas and temporary work, study, and travel visas were issued in fiscal year 2023 to nationals of the affected countries in the now banned visa categories, according to the Migration Policy Institute.' Nationals from the banned countries represent more than 475 million people globally. Beyond family separations, the ban may deter students, scientists, and health professionals at a time when the U.S. is experiencing labor shortages in STEM and healthcare. Universities like Harvard have expressed alarm at the targeting of international students, as the administration simultaneously suspended new visas for foreign scholars at select institutions, further stoking fears of ideological purges in academia. The 2025 travel ban echoes policies from Trump's first term and extends their scope. The first 'Muslim ban' of 2017 was repeatedly struck down until a more narrowly tailored version survived judicial review. Today's ban, while more procedurally refined, raises the same fundamental concern: are Americans safer by denying entry based on birthplace? Lyndon B. Johnson's signing of the 1965 INA famously stated that 'the harsh injustice of the national origins quota system' would never return. Critics now argue that President Trump has revived that very shadow, using presidential proclamations instead of legislative quotas. 'This is not national security—it's national scapegoating,' said CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad. 'It undermines constitutional values and stigmatizes entire populations for political gain.' The legality of the 2025 travel ban reinstated as it is may pass muster under Trump v. Hawaii, but its morality, logic, and long-term consequences remain in question. As lawsuits mount and civil rights groups prepare their defences, the nation must decide: do we protect ourselves by shutting doors or by standing firm in our values of openness, equality, and due process?
Yahoo
33 minutes ago
- Yahoo
An Uproar at the NIH
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Updated at 10:26 a.m. on June 9, 2025 Since winning President Donald Trump's nomination to serve as the director of the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya—a health economist and prominent COVID contrarian who advocated for reopening society in the early months of the pandemic—has pledged himself to a culture of dissent. 'Dissent is the very essence of science,' Bhattacharya said at his confirmation hearing in March. 'I'll foster a culture where NIH leadership will actively encourage different perspectives and create an environment where scientists, including early-career scientists and scientists that disagree with me, can express disagreement, respectfully.' Two months into his tenure at the agency, hundreds of NIH officials are taking Bhattacharya at his word. More than 300 officials, from across all of the NIH's 27 institutes and centers, have signed and sent a letter to Bhattacharya that condemns the changes that have thrown the agency into chaos in recent months—and calls on their director to reverse some of the most damaging shifts. Since January, the agency has been forced by Trump officials to fire thousands of its workers and rescind or withhold funding from thousands of research projects. Tomorrow, Bhattacharya is set to appear before a Senate appropriations subcommittee to discuss a proposed $18 billion slash to the NIH budget—about 40 percent of the agency's current allocation. The letter, titled the Bethesda Declaration (a reference to the NIH's location in Bethesda, Maryland), is modeled after the Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter published by Bhattacharya and two of his colleagues in October 2020 that criticized 'the prevailing COVID-19 policies' and argued that it was safe—even beneficial—for most people to resume life as normal. The approach that the Great Barrington Declaration laid out was, at the time, widely denounced by public-health experts, including the World Health Organization and then–NIH director Francis Collins, as dangerous and scientifically unsound. The allusion in the NIH letter, officials told me, isn't meant glibly: 'We hoped he might see himself in us as we were putting those concerns forward,' Jenna Norton, a program director at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, and one of the letter's organizers, told me. None of the NIH officials I spoke with for this story could recall another time in their agency's history when staff have spoken out so publicly against a director. But none of them could recall, either, ever seeing the NIH so aggressively jolted away from its core mission. 'It was time enough for us to speak out,' Sarah Kobrin, a branch chief at the National Cancer Institute, who has signed her name to the letter, told me. To preserve American research, government scientists—typically focused on scrutinizing and funding the projects most likely to advance the public's health—are now instead trying to persuade their agency's director to help them win a political fight with the White House. In an emailed statement, Bhattacharya said, 'The Bethesda Declaration has some fundamental misconceptions about the policy directions the NIH has taken in recent months, including the continuing support of the NIH for international collaboration. Nevertheless, respectful dissent in science is productive. We all want the NIH to succeed.' A spokesperson for HHS also defended the policies the letter critiqued, arguing that the NIH is 'working to remove ideological influence from the scientific process' and 'enhancing the transparency, rigor, and reproducibility of NIH-funded research.' The agency spends most of its nearly $48 billion budget powering science: It is the world's single-largest public funder of biomedical research. But since January, the NIH has canceled thousands of grants—originally awarded on the basis of merit—for political reasons: supporting DEI programming, having ties to universities that the administration has accused of anti-Semitism, sending resources to research initiatives in other countries, advancing scientific fields that Trump officials have deemed wasteful. Prior to 2025, grant cancellations were virtually unheard-of. But one official at the agency, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of professional repercussions, told me that staff there now spend nearly as much time terminating grants as awarding them. And the few prominent projects that the agency has since been directed to fund appear either to be geared toward confirming the administration's biases on specific health conditions, or to benefit NIH leaders. 'We're just becoming a weapon of the state,' another official, who signed their name anonymously to the letter, told me. 'They're using grants as a lever to punish institutions and academia, and to censor and stifle science.' NIH officials have tried to voice their concerns in other ways. At internal meetings, leaders of the agency's institutes and centers have questioned major grant-making policy shifts. Some prominent officials have resigned. Current and former NIH staffers have been holding weekly vigils in Bethesda, commemorating, in the words of the organizers, 'the lives and knowledge lost through NIH cuts.' (Attendees are encouraged to wear black.) But these efforts have done little to slow the torrent of changes at the agency. Ian Morgan, a postdoctoral fellow at the NIH and one of the letter's signers, told me that the NIH fellows union, which he is part of, has sent Bhattacharya repeated requests to engage in discussion since his first week at the NIH. 'All of those have been ignored,' Morgan said. By formalizing their objections and signing their names to them, officials told me, they hope that Bhattacharya will finally feel compelled to respond. (To add to the public pressure, Jeremy Berg, who led the NIH's National Institute of General Medical Sciences until 2011, is also organizing a public letter of support for the Bethesda Declaration, in partnership with Stand Up for Science, which has organized rallies in support of research.) Scientists elsewhere at HHS, which oversees the NIH, have become unusually public in defying political leadership, too. Last month, after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—in a bizarre departure from precedent—announced on social media that he was sidestepping his own agency, the CDC, and purging COVID shots from the childhood-immunization schedule, CDC officials chose to retain the vaccines in their recommendations, under the condition of shared decision making with a health-care provider. Many signers of the Bethesda letter are hopeful that Bhattacharya, 'as a scientist, has some of the same values as us,' Benjamin Feldman, a staff scientist at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, told me. Perhaps, with his academic credentials and commitment to evidence, he'll be willing to aid in the pushback against the administration's overall attacks on science, and defend the agency's ability to power research. But other officials I spoke with weren't so optimistic. Many at the NIH now feel they work in a 'culture of fear,' Norton said. Since January, NIH officials have told me that they have been screamed at and bullied by HHS personnel pushing for policy changes; some of the NIH leaders who have been most outspoken against leadership have also been forcibly reassigned to irrelevant positions. At one point, Norton said, after she fought for a program focused on researcher diversity, some members of NIH leadership came to her office and cautioned her that they didn't want to see her on the next list of mass firings. (In conversations with me, all of the named officials I spoke with emphasized that they were speaking in their personal capacity, and not for the NIH.) Bhattacharya, who took over only two months ago, hasn't been the Trump appointee driving most of the decisions affecting the NIH—and therefore might not have the power to reverse or overrule them. HHS officials have pressured agency leadership to defy court orders, as I've reported; mass cullings of grants have been overseen by DOGE. And as much as Bhattacharya might welcome dissent, he so far seems unmoved by it. In early May, Berg emailed Bhattacharya to express alarm over the NIH's severe slowdown in grant making, and to remind him of his responsibilities as director to responsibly shepherd the funds Congress had appropriated to the agency. The next morning, according to the exchange shared with me by Berg, Bhattacharya replied saying that, 'contrary to the assertion you make in the letter,' his job was to ensure that the NIH's money would be spent on projects that advance American health, rather than 'on ideological boondoggles and on dangerous research.' And at a recent NIH town hall, Bhattacharya dismissed one staffer's concerns that the Trump administration was purging the identifying variable of gender from scientific research. (Years of evidence back its use.) He echoed, instead, the Trump talking point that 'sex is a very cleanly defined variable,' and argued that gender shouldn't be included as 'a routine question in order to make an ideological point.' The officials I spoke with had few clear plans for what to do if their letter goes unheeded by leadership. Inside the agency, most see few levers left to pull. At the town hall, Bhattacharya also endorsed the highly contentious notion that human research started the pandemic—and noted that NIH-funded science, specifically, might have been to blame. When dozens of staffers stood and left the auditorium in protest, prompting applause that interrupted Bhattacharya, he simply smiled. 'It's nice to have free speech,' he said, before carrying right on. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Yahoo
34 minutes ago
- Yahoo
L.A. Burns
Riots in Los Angeles: President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles following three days of clashes between protesters and police. The riots were set off when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided workplaces in pursuit of immigrants here illegally. Most of the violence has so far been contained to downtown L.A. There, rioters have set self-driving Waymo taxis on fire and vandalized buildings. Protests are also happening some 15 miles south in Paramount, to the east of Compton and north of Long Beach. Jim McDonnell, the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), implied the protests were not occurring organically and that the violence should be attributed to "anarchists" and "people who do this all the time." More than 150 people have been arrested in the L.A. protests since Friday, with 60 arrested in San Francisco (where similar protests are happening, but with less damage so far). At one point, it looks like the LAPD shot a journalist with a rubber bullet: "Trump's order for the troops was the first time since 1965 that a president had activated a state's National Guard force for a domestic operation without a state governor's request for the purposes of quelling unrest or enforcing the law," reports The New York Times. The paper quoted California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, saying Trump's move "is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions"; he added that "this is the wrong mission and will erode public trust." (As for what he thinks the right mission is, I guess I just haven't listened to enough of his podcasts to be able to say.) It's hard to know where this goes: Whether it escalates further, whether the National Guard's presence will actually quell the unrest, whether public sentiment toward deportations changes based on the conduct of the rioters, and how much property damage Angelenos are willing to tolerate. One thing is clear: The Trump administration appears to relish the opportunity to send in the National Guard. And another: The senseless property destruction that has become commonplace at such events since the summer of George Floyd means normal, uninvolved people sometimes lose their livelihoods when cities descend into chaos. Shouldn't she be right now? Greta Thunberg and a group of 11 other activists—including Game of Thrones actor Liam Cunningham and Rima Hassan, a French-Palestinian member of the European Parliament—set sail from Sicily about a week ago and have made their way to Gaza in an attempt to deliver aid to people there. Along the way they picked up four Libyan migrants whose own boat was sinking and who reportedly feared being nabbed by the Libyan coast guard. When the crew were about 120 miles off the coast of Gaza, the Israeli military apprehended the ship. The Freedom Flotilla Coalition, the organizers of the trip, declared in a statement that the activists were "kidnapped by Israeli forces." "The ship was unlawfully boarded, its unarmed civilian crew abducted, and its life-saving cargo—including baby formula, food and medical supplies—confiscated," said the group. Israel's foreign ministry disagrees, derogatorily calling the boat a "selfie yacht" full of "celebrities." "I urge all my friends, family and comrades to put pressure on the Swedish government to release me and the others as soon as possible," said Thunberg in a recorded message. (Presumably she means to get the Swedish government to pressure the Israeli government to release her.) Human rights groups in Israel say the country has "no legal authority" to seize the boat, since it was in international waters. "An attempt last month by Freedom Flotilla to reach Gaza by sea failed after another of the group's vessels was attacked by two drones while sailing in international waters off Malta, organizers said," reports the Associated Press. Israel argues that these "aid shipments" don't amount to significant help for Gazans. "While Greta and others attempted to stage a media provocation whose sole purpose was to gain publicity—and which included less than a single truckload of aid—more than 1,200 aid trucks have entered Gaza from Israel within the past two weeks, and in addition, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has distributed close to 11 million meals directly to civilians in Gaza," the foreign ministry claimed. The state Senate is expected to vote today on a bill that would legalize assisted suicide for all New Yorkers. The Medical Aid in Dying Act would be available to patients whose doctors say they have incurable conditions with less than six months left to live. The state Assembly has already passed the bill. So if it passes the Senate, it will head to Gov. Kathy Hochul's desk for either a signature or a veto. Two separate doctors might sign off on a ruling that a patient has just six months to live in order for the patient to legally gain access to these drugs. "If either determines the patient 'may lack decision-making capacity' for any reason, they are required to refer them to a mental health professional for further evaluation," reports Gothamist. "Otherwise, a mental health check is not required." " I think my colleagues have come to the conclusion that medical aid in dying isn't so much about ending a person's life but shortening their deaths," state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, a Manhattan Democrat, told Gothamist. As I've said before, we're barreling toward Ättestupa, toward a world in which humans design when and how others come into this world as well as when and how they leave it. I worry important things are lost when we try to supplant our creator, but your mileage may vary. HERE FOR THIS! In many ways, consumer goods have improved over time and we can afford basic household supplies much more easily than we used to. But in other areas, there has been a degradation of quality. Nancy French has a nice thread illustrating this: "The wildly popular Nutella competitor El Mordjene has been banned by the European Union," reports The New Yorker in "How a Hazelnut Spread Became a Sticking Point in Franco-Algerian Relations." "Senate Republicans intend to propose revised tax and health-care provisions to President Donald Trump's $3 trillion signature economic package this week, shrugging off condemnations of the legislation by Elon Musk as they rush to enact it before July 4," reports Bloomberg. The post L.A. Burns appeared first on
