* Crain’s…

A heated push to boost pay for Chicago’s rideshare drivers has been shelved — but in its place, Uber has agreed to support a statewide effort allowing drivers to unionize in Illinois, a major shift in the gig economy labor fight.

Legislation will be filed in Springfield to give rideshare drivers the right to unionize in the state. Uber has agreed to support the effort and the city ordinance will be scrapped. The ride-hailing giant will also stay neutral as the influential Service Employees International Union Local 1 and the Automobile Mechanics’ Local 701 seek to organize their drivers.

The deal came together after it became clear the city ordinance was on thin ice amid an onslaught of opposition from the business community and public silence from Mayor Brandon Johnson. After being delayed last week, a rescheduled vote on the measure set for this afternoon will now be canceled.

While approval of the measure was no sure bet, Uber now avoids having to sweat it out to learn whether members of the City Council who expressed hesitance to support it would buckle under the pressure of the SEIU, one of Chicago’s most influential unions.

* Gov. JB Pritzker reduced the appropriations bill by $161 million due to a couple of drafting errors…

The bill, among other things, appropriates money for grants to finance certain capital projects for State fiscal year 2026. Certain new appropriations included in Article 129 of Senate Bill 2510 appear to have been intended to replace portions of other appropriations and reappropriations in Articles 129 and 181 of the bill, which were not reduced by a corresponding amount.

It is evident that these appropriations were included at their current amounts in error and that the General Assembly intended for the amount of new appropriations from the Build Illinois Bond Fund to not exceed the total amount of Build Illinois bond authorization reflected in House Bill 3374.

* WICS | Illinois State Treasurer’s Office to auction unclaimed treasures online: The auction will feature a diverse array of collectibles, including a rookie baseball card of Chicago Cubs legend Ryne Sandberg, “Star Wars” comic books, a Yoda Pez dispenser, Elvis Presley coins, and a 1995W $50 Gold Eagle coin. Stamp collections and other sports collectible cards of iconic players such as Ernie Banks, Bob Gibson, Johnny Bench, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Wayne Gretzky, and Gordie Howe will also be available.

* Journal Courier | Illinois Department of Natural Resources seeking wild turkey sightings: Biologists with the state are trying to track turkey populations in Illinois to see their reproductive success according to the department. Summer is when young turkeys are hatching, so the Illinois Department of Natural Resources said it’s a good time to track them. From 2019 to 2024, data showed the success rate of a turkey’s brood has about doubled. The rate went from 1.62 poults, or young turkeys, per hen to three poults per hen. The data also showed the male-to-female turkey population stayed about the same, suggesting male populations stay stable even after spring hunting season.

* WBEZ | Trump directs ICE to expand deportations in Chicago, other Democratic-run cities: In a social media posting, Trump called on ICE officials “to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.” He added that to reach the goal officials ”must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside.”

* WTTW | CPD Officers Shot and Killed as Many People in First 5 Months of 2025 as They Did in All of 2024: Data: All but two of the police shootings took place on the South and West sides. Mayor Brandon Johnson has said there is evidence that officers have engaged in an “egregious form of policing” in neighborhoods that are home to a majority of Black and Latino Chicagoans. A spokesperson for Johnson said each shooting should be investigated “based on the unique circumstances of the incident.”

* Block Club | Chicago Mom Arrested By ICE Faces ‘Inhumane’ Conditions In Kentucky Jail, Organizers Say: Gladis Yolanda Chavez Pineda, an organizer with Organized Communities Against Deportations, was among the at least 10 people arrested June 4. Through phone calls to her young daughter and lawyers, Chavez Pineda has described the conditions of three facilities where she has been held since getting detained, said Antonio Gutierrez, leader of Organized Communities Against Deportations. Chavez Pineda and other immigrants detained last week at check-ins under a monitoring program in the South Loop are being held at the Kentucky jail, Gutierrez said. “People are sleeping on concrete floors. Last Sunday, one mattress was given to a group of 20 mothers to share. No blankets are given, no hygiene products,” he said. “There is no privacy. In one of the facilities, only one bathroom is given to 20 or more individuals, with no partitions and privacy.”

* Crain’s | McDonald’s settles Byron Allen’s $10B ad discrimination lawsuit: Allen, who owns properties such as The Weather Channel and Justice Central, filed a lawsuit against McDonald’s in 2021 alleging the Chicago-based chain discriminated against his company through racial stereotyping and refusals to contract. Two years later, Allen escalated by buying a full-page ad in the Chicago Tribune soliciting activist investor Carl Icahn to join the legal fight and suing again, alleging McDonald’s was not on track to meet a 2021 commitment to spend more of its advertising budget with Black-owned media companies. That complaint was dismissed in 2024.

* Sun-Times | Night Out In The Parks event in Little Village canceled: The family event at La Villita Park, 2800 S. Sacramento Ave., was postponed “out of an abundance of caution taking into account multiple contributing factors and a range of concerns raised in connection to a few recent situations,” Adler Planetarium said. Officials did not say when the event would be rescheduled.

* Crain’s | City ups financial incentives for developers to rehab derelict homes: In its Rebuild 2.0 program, which will focus on properties in the Roseland and Englewood neighborhoods, the city is taking over two elements of a developer’s cost to bring a run-down property up to current homeownership standards. The city will pay the developer’s cost of acquiring a property from the Cook County Land Bank Authority — often in the $35,000 range — and cover the difference between the total investment in the rehab and the market price for the home, so the developer isn’t selling at a loss.

* WTTW | Downtown Road Closures for 2025 NASCAR Chicago Street Race to Begin Thursday: The Office of Emergency Management and Communications on Monday released the full list of closures as the city preps for the third annual street race through Grant Park and several highly trafficked areas on July 5-6. Beginning at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, Balbo Drive will become fully closed from Columbus Drive to DuSable Lake Shore Drive, while “No Parking” restrictions will be put in place along Columbus Drive in both north and southbound lanes between Jackson and Balbo drives.

* Crain’s | Lou Malnati’s hires new CEO: Julie Younglove-Webb arrives on the scene with over a decade of experience overseeing corporate and restaurant operations, including Auntie Anne’s, a GoTo Foods brand. She has also led operations at Domino’s and Potbelly. Her operational leadership with more than 450 locations helped generate nearly $500 million in revenue, according to her LinkedIn profile.

* Daily Herald | Carmel Catholic High withdraws plan for international student dorm: Last year, council members approved a deal with Aurora telecom company Scientel Solutions to add 55 new cameras to public areas downtown and key city-owned facilities. The cameras are slated to be online and recording by the first week of July. However, the rules about who can watch from the other side, when and why are still being decided. City and police department officials worked to draft a policy identifying who would have access to which cameras and how that access would be tracked and managed.

* Daily Herald | Fox River Grove gets OK to demolish ‘monstrously ugly’ half-built apartments: Almost a dozen companies are suing The Grove Residences LLC and Branko Tupanjac of Lake Forest, who is identified as its manager, in a lawsuit filed in 2022 in McHenry County court. Village Administrator Derek Soderholm said the town is soliciting proposals from qualified contractors for the demolition. Once a contractor is selected, the village will proceed with the necessary steps to complete the demolition, he said.

* Daily Herald | Former Rosemont village hall to be torn down for new restaurant campus near Rivers Casino: Rosemont officials are in talks with developer Jeff Bernstein of Bradford Allen and Braden Real Estate Chairman/CEO Marc Offit, who serves as the village’s commercial real estate broker, over a redevelopment deal that would put as many as three eateries on the site of the eight-story building at 9501 W. Devon Ave. Fencing has been installed around the 1960s-era office building, which housed Rosemont’s government offices and public safety department from the 1980s until last year. Demolition was to have begun by Memorial Day but has been delayed while crews complete teardown of an old parks building across town.

* Aurora Beacon-News | Batavia salutes Flag Day with a nod to its special connection to the holiday: Like Rufo, Callahan admitted Batavia has a Flag Day celebration unlike any other in the country given Cigrand’s connection to the city. “We always get questions about this but Cigrand is recognized as the father of Flag Day as he lived in Batavia at the time of President Wilson’s first official 1916 proclamation for Flag Day,” he said. “That is why – here locally – that one man, it kind of gives us that bit of recognition. The only other place that can say that is Waubeka, Wisconsin, where he was born. They celebrate where he came from … but they don’t have anything on this scale.”

* Tribune | One year in, Wayfair’s first brick and mortar is win-win for store, Wilmette: The company is not disclosing specific sales results of the Wayfair store, but in a statement they listed some accomplishments including over 720,000 visitors since its opening, the creation of more than 120 local jobs and 50% of the store’s customers being new to the Wayfair brand. “So we are introducing ourselves to a bunch of people that we weren’t accessing before. So the store itself is a giant billboard for the brand,” Lefkowski said.

* Aurora Beacon-News | Aurora Juneteenth celebration about history, culture and community: Juneteenth – officially celebrated on June 19 – commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S. While President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863, it wasn’t until June 19, 1865, that the last enslaved African Americans were freed in Texas after the end of the Civil War. Aurora’s new communication manager Jon Zaghloul said while the city does not organize the annual celebration at the park, “it is truly an amazing event.”

* WCIA | Paris school district looking to find nearly $750K of ‘missing money’: Exactly two years after their former superintendent’s home was raided by the FBI, an Edgar County school district is trying to retrace the county’s steps after more than $700,000 went missing. The current Paris Union School District 95 superintendent said they have been getting shortchanged for the last six years, and now they’re working to find out why. Superintendent Mary Morgan Ryan said the district makes a request for money to the county every year. The number they give is what they use for budgets, and what they send to the state to get funding from them.

* WGLT | Federal funding for these ag research labs ended. Now the search is on for new support: Work at the University of Illinois’ Soybean Innovation Lab has resumed, although on a reduced scale. Lab director Peter Goldsmith said that’s thanks to a $1 million anonymous private donation. “They reached out back at the end of February, and they liked our story,” said Goldsmith. “They liked what we were proposing to do and they put things in position.”

* WCIA | Truck carrying liquid nitrogen crashes in Shelby Co.; ‘no threat to the public’: ISP: The crash happened north of Windsor near the intersection with County Road 1800 N. Officials with the Illinois State Police said the driver was hurt and was transported to an area hospital. There is no word on their condition. State Police said the liquid nitrogen does not pose a threat to the public. However, Route 32 is closed as responders try to upright the semi-truck.

* BND | Roadwork on closed down I-255 in St. Clair County to finish ahead of schedule: The reopening of 3.5 miles of I-255 from Illinois 15 to Illinois 157 will be about six weeks ahead of the previously anticipated finish date of July 31, the Illinois Department of Transportation announced Friday. This section of the highway was closed on Feb. 1.

* NYT | How Amy Coney Barrett Is Confounding the Right and the Left: But she rarely abandons the other Republican appointees in the most significant cases. “It’s a mistake by ignorant conservatives and wishful liberals to believe she’s moderating,” said Noah Feldman, a Harvard law professor who befriended her when they clerked at the court. Like others who know her, he said that both the right and the left had misread her. “She’s exactly the person I met 25 years ago: principled, absolutely conservative, not interested in shifting.”

* NYT | Slain Minnesota Lawmaker Remembered as Pragmatic Problem Solver: Colleagues remembered Ms. Hortman, who was fatally shot early Saturday in what officials described as a political assassination, as a hardworking, problem-solving leader who managed to negotiate her way through impasses, even within her own party, over two decades in the Legislature. “We have a huge division of values, thoughts and beliefs,” said Representative Leigh Finke, a Democrat from St. Paul. “But she held us together.”

* STAT | Hundreds of NIH grant terminations are ‘void and illegal,’ federal judge rules: The decision comes after Judge William G. Young heard arguments for over two hours at the U.S. District Court in two suits filed against the administration over the termination of hundreds of research grants by the National Institutes of Health. The decision, which can be appealed, hands a temporary victory to researchers across the country, reeling from unprecedented changes at the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research. One suit was led by the American Public Health Association, along with several other organizations and researchers whose grants were terminated. One study estimated terminated grants amounted to $1.8 billion, but one database of terminated grants puts the figure much higher. The other was filed by a group of 16 states.

* Politico | Trump’s FAA pick has claimed ‘commercial’ pilot license he doesn’t have: President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Federal Aviation Administration long described himself in his official biography as being certified to fly aircraft commercially — but records examined by POLITICO show that he does not hold any commercial license. … Questions about Bedford’s credentials do not appear to threaten his prospects for heading the FAA, an agency trying to recover from years of high-level leadership shake-ups, failures of key aviation technology, a spate of near-misses in the skies and January’s 67-fatality crash near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.