Welcome to Chicago 312: 3 Headlines. 1 Big Question. 2 Red Flags. Subscribe here.

It's -10 degrees tomorrow. Be safe. Wear a hat.

Let’s get into what happened this week:

3 Headlines:

1. Lurie’s Lets Trump Get Away With Targeting Trans Kids

Erin Reed: Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital—Chicago's only independent pediatric research hospital—just announced it's cutting off puberty blockers and hormones for new trans youth patients. IE — Lurie folded and they didn’t have to.

Trump's HHS is weaponizing the threat of federal funding cuts to force hospitals into compliance with policies that don't actually exist as law. They're holding Medicare and Medicaid funding hostage—money that pays for cancer treatment, emergency care, everything—and betting that hospitals will sacrifice their trans patients rather than risk it. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sent scary letters to six hospitals on January 15th, including Lurie. No funding actually got pulled. No judge issued any ruling. Just a letter saying "we're referring you for investigation." And Lurie—along with hospitals in Delaware, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, Oregon, and now San Diego—immediately stopped providing legal, medically necessary care to trans kids.

Trans Up Front Illinois nailed it in their statement: "This is pre-compliance. No hospital system has lost federal funding. No court has ruled. No law has changed."

Lurie already stopped doing gender-affirming surgeries back in February, and now they've cut off hormones and blockers for new patients. Northwestern Memorial canceled surgery appointments for kids Lurie had referred to them. Trans youth who were days or weeks away from starting treatment that would literally save their lives—just got told "sorry, the feds scared us."

Hundreds of protestors stood outside Lurie in Chicago's winter cold last week because they understand something the hospital's executives apparently don't: abandoning vulnerable patients to appease Trump sucks, but also won’t work. At that point, you've already lost everything worth defending.

Why It Matters: Lurie had options. The HHS knows they can't pass a federal ban on gender-affirming care through Congress, so they're doing an end-run by terrorizing hospitals into stopping care voluntarily. If major research hospitals like Lurie are caving this quickly, what happens to smaller providers? What happens in states without strong non-discrimination laws?

There's a public comment period open until February 17th for proposed federal funding cuts to hospitals providing trans care. You can submit comments here. 

PS — quick correction from Erin Reed since this was posted: Lurie Children's in HAS just rolled back trans youth care in shameful capitulation to Trump, and the decision is causing nightmares for families in the region. Protests, however, happened last year in response to a separate rollback there.

2. Boring Procurement Law Is Kind of a Big Deal When It Comes to Equity in the Trades

Tribune: Mayor Brandon Johnson, the Department of Procurement Services (DPS), and the Department of Water Management (DWM) announced January 20 the award of four Lead Service Line Replacement Small Business Initiative contracts totaling $1,670,000 to three small local construction companies owned by minorities and women.

The contracts are the first under the city's expanded Small Business Initiative for lead service line replacement projects. They follow a year of listening sessions with minority contractors from the African American Contractors Association, Black Contractors United, and the Hispanic American Construction Industry Association—sessions that actually resulted in structural changes to procurement processes.

The city reduced performance and payment bond requirements from 100% to 33-1/3% of total base bid, making bonds easier for small businesses to obtain.Future construction projects were identified and repackaged as opportunities for small and mid-sized firms, among other things that let’s be honest, I don’t understand at all. But it matters because construction and skilled trades remain one of the few pathways to stable middle-class income without a college degree—and because those pathways are still heavily gatekept by industry relationships, union politics, and procurement structures that favor established firms.

Women remain 3-5% of construction apprentices in Illinois, a rate that's been mostly flat since 2009 (I couldn’t find stats on POC apprentices or journeymen but feel confident from CWIT anecdotes over the years that it’s not much better).

Even when organizations like Chicago Women in Trades (CWIT) run pre-apprenticeship programs—12-week, 180-hour training courses teaching basic skills across carpentry, electrical, plumbing, pipefitting, and other trades, the real barrier isn't skills, especially at the level of procurement for a project as intensive as the lead pipe replacements.—it's access to the networks and companies that hire apprentices. Which is where procurement reform actually matters. When DWM creates small business set-asides and adjusts bonding requirements, it opens slots for firms that hire from communities usually locked out of union apprenticeships. When those firms get city contracts, they need workers. When they need workers, they create demand for apprentices.

The city has a massive lead service line replacement mandate—hundreds of millions in contracts over multiple years. Chief Procurement Officer Sharla Roberts told the press: "I am very proud of this collaborative effort to enhance our services and equitable access to the economic benefits of doing business with the City." That's bureaucratic language, but it describes something real: a procurement process that was actively hostile to small and minority-owned firms is now marginally less hostile.

Why It Matters: Lowering bonding requirements and dividing contract scopes sounds technical and boring. It is. It's also the difference between announcing commitments and building infrastructure that creates economic access. Chicago will blow through hundreds of millions on lead service line replacement over the next decade. The question isn't whether that money gets spent—it's who captures it.

3. Uber Drivers Are Unionizing

Block Club Chicago: Tuesday, rideshare drivers across Illinois launched a push for legislation that would let them unionize and bargain collectively with Uber and Lyft. The bill—sponsored by state Sen. Ram Villivalam and state Rep. Yolonda Morris—would create a legal framework for the state's 100,000+ drivers to organize without changing their contractor status, modeled on recent wins in Massachusetts and California.

The proposed legislation would let drivers select a union if enough sign on, then bargain statewide over compensation, benefits, safety standards, and—critically—deactivation appeals. Right now Uber can just turn off your income stream with no explanation, which this legislation would change.

In June, the Illinois Drivers Alliance announced Uber had agreed not to oppose statewide bargaining legislation. Which means either Uber thinks it can win this fight at the negotiating table, or it's finally figured out that openly fighting workers who move your entire customer base around makes you look like absolute shit.

Why It Matters: These drivers keep Chicago moving. They get people to O'Hare at 4am. This legislation would be a real challenge to the gig economy model that's been built on pretending employment relationships don't exist when they're inconvenient for the company.

1 Big Question: Can We Bend Reality Too?

I'm always thinking a lot about Ursula Le Guin, but I've been thinking about her a lot this year (already), partially because I’m rereading The Dispossessed.

But I’ve also been thinking about how the Trump administration is really living up to the action parts of one of her most famous out of context quotes that circulates online:

"We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. But so did the divine right of kings."

To me, this has always been about imagining a world beyond what seems possible today, and understanding that systems that seem permanent can disappear or collapse overnight — and boy, has the Trump administration put that into action lately!

Sometimes it feels like many progressives are still defending the collapsing system, while the right is building: New economic structures (that serve billionaires) New information ecosystems (that astroturf the hell out of everything) New institutional arrangements (that build their stock portfolios).

But can we bend reality too?

Yes. Minneapolis is showing us one answer to that question. Chicago's rapid responders are building another. Uber drivers organizing statewide are building a third.

But bending reality, moving past the inescapable power of what’s always been true only works when we stop reacting and start building the structures that let us set terms instead of responding to theirs — no matter where that momentum comes from.

2 Red Flags: 

🚨 "Frictionmaxxing" as Resistance

P.E. Moskowitz: The always excellent P.E. Moskowitz's wrote about the recent hype around tools to block social media like Brick and resist tech platforms' extraction: the problem isn't that life got too easy, it's that deteriorating material conditions make frictionless hits more appealing. When institutions can't deliver material security, people reach for easy dopamine hits. When life gets harder, the allure of frictionless relief increases exponentially. Phones, gambling, doom-scrolling—these aren't moral failures. They're rational responses to deteriorating conditions.

🚨  Rapid Responders Hold the Line in Minneapolis and Chicago

Margaret Killjoy: In Chicago, rapid responders aren't waiting for government to do its job. They're building the infrastructure to track, document, and obstruct ICE operations because they understand that institutions—from the mayor's office to the oversight commission to the police department—will perform concern while federal agents operate with impunity.

What’s happening in Minneapolis is horrifying, but seeing Minneapolis’ rapid response network protecting residents from an occupying federal force and setting the tone for resistance made me feel more hopeful, at least. Here’s how to support the strike tomorrow.

Really recommend reading this thread from Margaret Killjoy on Bluesky if you’re feeling down, all about the Minneapolis resistance. As she says, ”I don't want to paint a rosy picture, because it's a city under siege.”

But she also says “With what I've seen, I genuinely believe we're going to win.”

That’s it this week.

A few more links that didn’t make it in: City Council banned hemp, too many people in Chicago politics are flunking the “be normal about Kat Abugazaleh online” test as things heat up in 09, I love this transman pitmaster, and the federal trial of a man Bovino accused of threatening him is moving fast.

Also btw, Bovino’s new coat is ugly as hell, just while we’re talking about him. 

Have a good week + stay safe out there.