Indiana’s mistake. Following Eli Lilly and Co.’s decision to shift corporate expansion away from Indiana because of the sweeping abortion ban state lawmakers OK’d Friday, Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg writes: “What’s amazing is how fast Lilly understood their business model—hire smart people to invent new drugs—is threatened by Indiana telling women to shut up and get back in the kitchen.”
■ Engine maker Cummins, too.
‘We need to take children away.’ That quote, attributed to then-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, is the title of The Atlantic’s stunning investigation into the secret history of the Trump administration’s family-separation immigration policy.
■ Poynter’s Tom Jones calls it “journalism at its very finest,” citing possibly “the most chilling passage I’ve read in my nearly three years of writing this newsletter.”
■ Axios has photos of documents Donald Trump allegedly tried (unsuccessfully and potentially illegally) to flush down a toilet.
The one thing it might not do is, um, reduce inflation. But, CNN analyst Stephen Collinson explains, the Inflation Reduction Act pinched out by the Senate over the weekend is “an enormous win” that seemed out of Democrats’ grasp just a few weeks ago.
■ Politico has a tick-tock on how it improbably made its way toward reality.
■ The House could send the package to the president as soon as Friday.
■ Vox explains how this thing “might actually help you …”
■ … as it stands to force companies including Amazon, Exxon Mobil, AT&T, Bank of America, Ford and General Motors to pay, you know, some taxes.
■ The liberal Center for American Progress says it “offers the best opportunity yet to address the climate crisis.”
■ It could send $3 billion to communities split by highway construction over the decades (Friday link) …
■ … a notion long supported by Chicago-area development groups (2021 letter) …
■ … but, The Conversation explains, the bill has an electric vehicle problem.
■ The phony pro-environment group “United for Clean Power” is working to kill the legislation in the House.
■ Read the whole bill.
Quinn or out? Tribune columnist Laura Washington says Mayor Lightfoot should cheer the possibility of a challenge from ex-Gov. Pat Quinn, because it would “split the vote she is least likely to win back.”
■ Amid a fresh batch of violent crime on the CTA—including the caught-on-video case of a man who pushed someone onto the tracks at the Blue Line’s Damen station and a man shot and killed Saturday on the Red Line—Chicago’s top cop is promising more police attention to mass transit.
■ With the start of Chicago’s public school year just two weeks away, a bus driver shortage could leave thousands of kids stranded.
‘On a scale of 1 to 100, we scored a No.’ HBO’s John Oliver says the global monkeypox emergency confirms “what COVID already taught us: America cannot handle a virus outbreak to save its, or just about anyone’s, life.”
■ He adds: “If monkeypox were spreading largely through heterosexual sex … you’d probably be able to get a ‘Free Vax with Purchase’ at every J. Crew in the country” …
■ … but an epidemiologist explains why monkeypox isn’t a sexually transmitted infection.
■ A number of Illinois school districts are abandoning school-based COVID tests.
A little help from your friends. New research spotlights the Chicago area’s best neighborhoods for rich-poor friendships, which WBEZ reports “offer one of the strongest predictors for upward economic mobility.”
■ See how your ZIP code rates for the odds of such relationships.
Mediaquake. 21st-century news startup Axios is selling itself to Cox Enterprises, a newspaper, cable and broadband company that dates back to 1898.
■ Critic Aaron Barnhart issues a modest proposal to cancel (almost) all TV shows after one season.
Ouch. Qatar Airways has fired four pilots after a Boeing 777F hit a pole at O’Hare.
■ The photo may make you flinch.
Thanks. Simon Owens and Ben Meyerson made this edition of Chicago Public Square better.
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