* Here you go!

* Injustice Watch | Teens at Cook County juvenile jail face excessive force, extreme isolation, and other civil rights abuses, watchdog finds: A yearlong review of practices inside the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center found that staff often use dangerous and illegal forms of restraint and isolation, fail to keep adequate records, and are sometimes “entirely inhumane” to the teenagers they oversee.

* Tribune | Illinois sheriffs’ opposition to enforcing weapons ban signals rightward movement about constitutional authority: The 10-year shift from county sheriffs respecting the courts’ role of determining a law’s constitutionality to now declaring themselves the arbiter of a law’s constitutional compliance represents an increasingly rightward tilt among law enforcement nationally toward what is known as the “constitutional sheriff” movement.

* Tribune | New customer-friendly legal recreational cannabis in Missouri cuts into Illinois’ market: Some cannabis customers say they prefer buying in Missouri, which unlike Illinois, offers home delivery, drive-through windows, and deli style service, in which customers can see and smell the product before they buy it.

* Crain’s Editorial | ‘ComEd Four’ trial shines a spotlight on the Madigan machine: Anyone who has paid even passing attention to Illinois politics for the past several decades has been aware that Madigan ruled the Statehouse. But this trial is prying open the doors to the fabled smoke-filled rooms that those outside the system have long imagined, and there’s something about hearing the details — at times from Madigan’s own lips, via freshly revealed conversations — that drives the point home like never before. Not much went on in the Capitol that didn’t have Madigan’s say-so. Lobbying, it seems, wasn’t so much the rather academic matter of persuading lawmakers of the merits of a particular policy but instead an exercise in trading favors — often with the perceived and sometimes bluntly stated wishes of the speaker in mind.

* Tribune | ‘I wouldn’t do anything to damage my speaker’: Recordings in ComEd Four case show Madigan playing political hardball as trial pivots to week two: Not only was the FBI listening in on that call, within weeks, two agents would knock on the door of a top Commonwealth Edison executive and convince him to cooperate in a burgeoning bribery investigation implicating the speaker.

* Chicago Reader | Asafonie Obed, the diversity advocate: By her own admission, Asafonie Obed might be the last person you’d expect to lead a charge against a MAGA insurgency in DuPage County’s public schools. She’s not even from DuPage County—only moved there about a decade ago, when she was still in college. Yet for about a year she’s been at the forefront of a showdown with MAGA school activist Shannon Adcock, a leader of Awake Illinois and Moms for Liberty—two organizations which, as far as I can tell, fervently believe in liberty for themselves and no one else. Especially members of the LGBTQ+ community.

* Sun-Times | Kennedy Expressway construction begins Monday, expect major delays: Stretches of the inbound Kennedy will be blocked between the Edens Expressway and Ohio Street as part of a three-year construction project that’s sure to cause misery.

* WCCU | Illinois State Senators and the IEA tackle issues within the states education system: The Illinois Education Association (IEA) released its fifth state of education 2022-2023 report. The results show deep concerns around teacher and education employee shortages, retaining and attracting educators, as well as support and respect in the education system.

* Crain’s | Vallas hauls in $1 million in one day as mayoral vote nears: A total of $75,000 came from apartment mogul Harry Langer and an executive at his firm, with $50,000 from Amanda Leopardo of the Barrington electrical contracting company. Trader Ilan Shalit gave $50,000 according to the new disclosure filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections, with $10,000 from former Chicago zoning commissioner and building commissioner Graham Grady. Auto trader Robert Loquercio gave $25,000.

* Sun-Times | Led by Willie Wilson, Black clergy are backing Paul Vallas: ‘We should not look at color’: Willie Wilson’s endorsement of Paul Vallas for mayor — and the endorsement of the pastors who stood with him Sunday — could persuade Black voters to cross racial lines.

* Daily Herald | How health care has changed forever after 3 years of the COVID-19 pandemic: “We knew this was a marathon,” said Dr. Tom Oryszczak, executive vice president and chief medical officer at Northwest Community Healthcare in Arlington Heights. “It was very disheartening to see the level of illness and scale of suffering and destruction to people and their families, but you learn along the way how to provide better care, and we learned collectively as a group of medical professionals across the country and around the world.”

* WPSD | Candidates for Carbondale, Illinois city council address gun violence in the community: Gun violence continues to be at the forefront of focus in Carbondale, Illinois and addressing the issue is vital for the community. It’s one that seven candidates for the city council take seriously.

* Sun-Times | Chicago businesses adapt to outlast ‘agonizingly slow’ COVID recovery 3 years after shutdown: The businesses are in a “long COVID” fight of their own. Some have changed their hours and competitive approaches. But few who run them are certain about the rhythms of urban life they depended on. The pandemic, while receding as a health threat, has had a lasting effect on where people want to work and, therefore, spend.

* Crain’s | Developers share the spoils on big projects — as far as the law allows: Electrical contractor Cristina Beran is benefiting from the billions of dollars pouring into Chicago megaprojects. With jobs at the O’Hare 21 project and Lincoln Yards, her company has grown to about $10 million in revenue and is employing a team of more than 60.

* SJ-R | Nicole Hill makes history as chief doorkeeper for Illinois House: “Safety is my vision and everything we do is about preparedness so we just want to be prepared for every event,” Hill said. “I had never envisioned being in leadership in the House chamber but I’m excited to work with the leaders of Illinois.”

* Crain’s | She was the queen of Chicago’s arts community. But her collection now means trouble for the Art Institute.: Twenty-four objects from the Alsdorf collection at the Art Institute have incomplete provenance by modern standards, according to a national online registry of museum pieces. No other single collection at the museum that’s listed on the registry has as many gaps. Beyond that, ProPublica and Crain’s Chicago Business have identified at least four Alsdorf pieces at the Art Institute for which there’s evidence that they may have been looted from Nepal and exported illegally.

* Chicago Mag | Want Great Lakes Water? Move Here.: I thought of Sam last week when I read a USA Today article about water shortages in the western states. Apparently, the Colorado River, which flows through Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California, “is drying up from drought and overuse.” Perhaps, NASA hydrologist Jay Famiglietti suggested, the West could slake its thirst by draining the Great Lakes, which contain 6 quadrillion gallons of water — 20 percent of the surface freshwater on Earth.

* NYT | Kenji López-Alt Spent 5 Months Studying Chicago Thin-Crust Pizza. Here’s What He Learned.: With its roots in the 1940s at working-class taverns like Vito & Nick’s on the South Side of Chicago, the cheap-to-produce, thirst-inducing style was invented to encourage customers to linger long enough to order another beer.

* LA Times | At this California prison, ‘we are no longer prisoners. We are professionals’: For more than a year and a half, these 20 men had been working for this: their graduation from training as alcohol and drug counselors. It was an accomplishment that could help them secure jobs both inside and outside the California prisons. It had also become a brotherhood they dubbed the Storming Cohort: Scarred Team of Recovering Men Inspiring New Generations.