* Crain’s…

Gov. JB Pritzker and Illinois business leaders visiting Mexico City this week on a trade mission have gotten an earful about the tariffs the Trump administration plans to impose.

“There is deep concern that the tariffs seem so broad-based and not well negotiated or thought out that they will potentially destroy some businesses in Mexico that U.S. companies rely upon,” Pritzker said this morning.

“The uncertainty that we’ve heard over and over again in discussions with our Mexican counterparts is going to lead to them pulling back on making investments and potentially pulling back on supplying items U.S. businesses need. There is a great deal of concern.”

The Trump administration already has announced tariffs on auto imports from Mexico and is expected to announce more tariffs later today in what the White House is billing as “Liberation Day.” The governor, who has been a frequent critic of President Donald Trump and his policies, said he doesn’t think the tariffs will spur a new wave of decisions by manufacturers to set up facilities in the U.S. or bring work back here.

* Forbes…

The University of Illinois system will team up with One Million Degrees, a Chicago-based nonprofit that supports community college students, to pilot a multiyear program aimed at increasing transfer rates from community colleges to four-year universities.

The program will focus on first-generation students across Illinois. Plans call for the pilot to serve as many as 240 students initially in two cohorts from Illinois community colleges selected by the university. The first cohort will be recruited this fall for a pilot beginning spring 2026, and the second cohort will start in spring 2027.

The initiative will provide eligible students a comprehensive suite of wraparound support services — including academic coaching, financial assistance and career advice — as they transfer to University of Illinois System campuses in Urbana-Champaign, Chicago and Springfield.

The U of I system will evaluate the pilot to assess the possibility of later scaling the program beyond the initial pilot partners. The ultimate goal is to increase transfer and bachelor’s degree completion rates, preparing the participants for careers in high-growth fields.

*** Statehouse News ***

* Covers | Illinois Issues Cease-and-Desist Orders to Prediction Companies: The Illinois Gaming Board sent cease-and-desist orders to Kalshi, Robinhood, and Crypto.com dated April 1, claiming that those companies are operating illegally without a sports betting license with their sports-event outcome contracts that act like wagers. Kalshi, which burst on the scene last fall with election trading markets, got into the sports outcome business earlier this year with Super Bowl and March Madness markets. The company linked with Robinhood to list those offerings on its popular trading platform.

*** Downstate ***

* NBC Chicago | Legendary rock band The Black Crowes added to 2025 Illinois State Fair lineup: Legendary rock band The Black Crowes has been added to the Springfield lineup, according to a Wednesday press release. The popular rock and roll band will perform at the fair Sat. Aug. 9, the release said. “The Illinois State Fair is all about bringing people together for great entertainment, and The Black Crowes are the perfect addition to our lineup,” Illinois State Fair Manager Rebecca Clark said in the release. “Their music has resonated with fans across generations, and we’re excited to bring their legendary sound to this year’s Fair.”

* WCIA | ‘I think they’re extremely important’: Champaign Co. Clerk breaks down voter turnout in Consolidated Election: By 5 p.m. on Election Day, Aaron Ammons, the Champaign County Clerk, said about 6,000 people had voted in person that day and about 4,000 others voted early. Once those ballots are counted, plus the ones in the mail, he estimates about 15-20% of voters will participate in this election, which is a pretty standard trend.

* BND | The pink elephant along I-55 is eye-catching, but wait until you see the inside: The Pink Elephant Antique Mall in Livingston is more than an antique shop — literally. It houses three businesses in one, including a retro diner, fudge shop and haunted house, and has dozens of unique, custom-built figures to pose next to.

*** Chicago ***

* WBEZ | Venezuelans in Chicago relieved their deportation protection is safe, for now: A federal judge in San Francisco paused plans Monday by the Trump administration to end temporary legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, including in Illinois, one week before they were scheduled to expire on April 7. Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, allows non-U.S. citizens from 17 countries, including Venezuela, to live and work in the United States if they face extremely difficult or unsafe conditions in their home country. The Trump administration announced an end to the program for Venezuelans in February.

* Crain’s | Downtown office vacancy hits new high for 11th straight quarter: The downtown office vacancy rate edged up to 26.5% at the end of March from 26.3% at the beginning of the year, according to data from real estate services firm CBRE. The share of available workspace has now hit record highs for 11 straight quarters and is up from 13.8% when the public health crisis began. The grim data points tell the same tale of woe that has now plagued landlords for a half-decade: Remote work’s rise has pushed many companies to reduce their footprints, a shift that has stripped the central business district of about 2.1 million square feet of tenants over the past couple of years, CBRE data shows.

* Crain’s | Rahm Emanuel returns to investment banking: Rahm Emanuel is going back to investment banking, rejoining Centerview Partners, where he worked for two years after leaving office as mayor of Chicago. It’s familiar territory for Emanuel, who has toggled between investment banking and public office throughout his long career. In addition to his previous stint at Centerview, Emanuel worked at Wasserstein Perella, where he was involved in the 1999 merger that created Exelon, before running for Congress.

* Tribune | George McCaskey has no intention for family to sell the Chicago Bears: ‘Another 100 years would be great’: Less than eight weeks after the death of principal owner Virginia Halas McCaskey, George McCaskey said his mother long ago established a sustainable succession plan that the NFL approved. “She gave us the playbook,” McCaskey said. “She coached us up. Now we’ve got to execute the plan. And we’re prepared to do that. We’ve got to stick together.”

* Crain’s | Ex-employee alleges testing fraud at Chicago-based real estate appraisers group: A former employee filed a whistleblower lawsuit alleging years-long fraud in the certification process for real estate appraisers at the Chicago-based Appraisal Institute. Alissa Akins, who was the institute’s director of education and publications from February to December last year, claims in her suit that for at least five years, the 16,000-member Appraisal Institute has been aware that many of its test results are incorrect. She also claims that when she reported the pattern of incorrect results to her superiors, they fired her.

* Crain’s | Chicago Reader avoids closure after successful fundraising campaign. Here’s how much they raised.: The newspaper said in a memo to subscribers that its “Save the Reader” campaign was a success and has raised over $300,000 to date. The proceeds will allow the company to restructure, cut costs and rework its budget in order to continue operating. The Reader’s staff of 33 will continue to print its weekly paper for free, the memo said.

* Chicago Reader | The legacy of Marty Goddard: In 1972, Marty Goddard, an executive at a Chicago philanthropic foundation and an independent-minded divorcee, sought to change that. Goddard wasn’t a picket-waving activist; in fact, she didn’t identify as a feminist at all. But she did recognize that sexual assault was seething under the surface of society, like a quiet epidemic for which there was little or no recourse.

* Block Club | Art Institute Of Chicago Returned A Sculpture To Nepal But Obscured Its Connection To A Wealthy Donor: That omission obscured a simmering controversy about whether Chicago philanthropists Marilynn Alsdorf and her husband, James, both of whom are dead, improperly built their collection of hundreds of South Asian works and why the Art Institute, which houses some of that collection in its Alsdorf Galleries, has been reluctant to return those works to countries with compelling claims for them.

*** Cook County and Suburbs ***

* WTTW | Retirement Not in Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s Lexicon: “I don’t believe in retirement,” said Preckwinkle, who last month on her 78th birthday announced she will run for a fifth consecutive term in 2026. “If I didn’t do this job, I’d pick another one and it wouldn’t be as interesting or challenging or as impactful,” said Preckwinkle, who has led Cook County since 2010.

* Naperville Sun | Voter turnout across DuPage, Will counties about average for consolidated election: As of 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, DuPage County was sitting at 16.3% turnout out of a total 626,499 registered voters, with 27,128 casting their ballots on election day so far, according to DuPage County Chief Deputy Clerk Adam Johnson. Though it’s difficult to know what to expect out of turnout, it looks as though DuPage is on pace to “be pretty close if not slightly higher than the overall turnout in 2023,” Johnson said in a call. Just over 20% of the county’s registered voters participated in the last consolidated election.

*** National ***

* The Bond Buyer | States loosen restrictions on pension funds and crypto: According to an S&P Global Ratings report released last week “U.S. states and statewide pension plans are increasingly considering cryptocurrencies, particularly bitcoin, as a reserve investment.”

* The Bond Buyer | Closing Education Department unlikely to dent K-12 bonds, but some charter schools could feel pinch: “For traditional public schools, I do not foresee an increased risk of default due to potential delays of federal funding,” Lowin said, adding, however, that some charter schools, particularly those that are smaller and have fewer reserves, “could be a little more challenged.”

* AP | Amazon’s last-minute bid for TikTok comes as platform’s ban set to take effect Saturday: Amazon has put in a bid to purchase TikTok, a Trump administration official said Wednesday, in an eleventh-hour pitch as a U.S. ban on the platform is set to go into effect Saturday. The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Amazon offer was made in a letter to Vice President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

* Accu Weather | Atmospheric river to trigger central US flooding that may become life-threatening, historic: A firehose of moisture is forecast to produce repeating thunderstorms with torrential downpours over the middle of the United States through much of this weekend. More than a foot of rain may pour down from portions of Arkansas to Kentucky and Ohio, likely triggering rapid, major and historic flooding, AccuWeather meteorologists warn. More than 46 million people will be affected by rounds of intense rainfall over the central U.S. Of this, at least 13 million will be within a high- to extreme-flood risk zone. Within these higher-risk areas, there is the potential for catastrophic flooding in some communities.