Welcome to Chicago 312, where the carp are invasive, the trains are endangered, and the feds think inclusion is the real corruption.

3 Headlines. 1 Big Question. 2 Red Flags. Every Wednesday. Subscribe here.

What To Know This Week: The feds think hiring Black people is a civil rights violation, restaurant bosses want a refund on justice, and Springfield might let the CTA crumble like a Red Line ceiling tile. Let’s get into it.

3 Headlines: Chicago Is a Toxic Moat, A Tip Warzone, and a Federal Target

1. Toxic Carp Politics

From Grist: Illinois is locked in a surreal standoff with itself: to stop invasive carp from gutting the Great Lakes, the state needs land poisoned by coal ash from a bankrupt power company.

The Brandon Road Interbasin Project—a $1.1B underwater fortress of electric shocks and bubble curtains—could stop the carp from leaping into Lake Michigan and wrecking a multi-billion-dollar ecosystem. But the project is delayed because Midwest Generation won’t let the state test the polluted soil before buying it. If that sounds backwards, it’s because it is.

Scientists think the only reason carp haven’t reached the lake already is the pollution itself—Chicago’s wastewater may be stressing them out so much it’s holding them back. So Illinois is now scrambling to stop an ecological disaster with a fish-stunning toxic moat it might be legally responsible for cleaning up.

2. Restaurant Owners Want a Do-Over on One Fair Wage, Ideally One Less Fair

From WBEZ: A group of Chicago restaurant owners, backed by the Illinois Restaurant Association, is pushing to repeal the city’s One Fair Wage ordinance—passed in 2023 and phasing out the subminimum wage for tipped workers by 2028. They claim the law is forcing them to cut jobs, raise prices, and delay hiring. A repeal effort is now echoing a similar one in D.C., with Ald. Bennett Lawson floating a “pause” ordinance that got quietly punted to Rules.

• Some owners say the law forced them to eliminate dozens of jobs, even though tipped workers were only bumped from $9.48 to $11.02 last year.

• Others claim their workers average $35/hr and the law was just “too cleverly named” to fight politically.

• Meanwhile, workers—mostly Black and Brown women—say they’ve been shorted for years, often earning less than minimum wage when tips were low and employers failed to make up the difference.

Why It Matters: If your business model only works when you underpay workers and hope customers cover the gap… there’s an issue. Tariffs, inflation, and national cost pressures are real. But it’s telling which margins and what political issue is immediately on the table — this city’s business class has never seen a labor win they didn’t immediately frame as a catastrophe.

Yes, the economy’s rough. But the solution isn’t clawing back one of the few recent wins for working people. If this repeal moves forward, it’s not because this law failed—it’s because it worked.

3. Brandon Johnson Hired Black People It’s a Federal Emergency

I talked about this last week, but days after Mayor Brandon Johnson publicly highlighted the Black leadership in his administration, the Trump DOJ launched a civil rights investigation into whether City Hall’s hiring violates Title VII. The Johnson team says they haven’t even received the letter directly.

Hand-wringing over Johnson saying “our people hire our people,” is obviously Fox News theater. But, as MBJ pointed out, no one filed federal complaints when mayors filled entire floors with Irish ward operatives.

• The TRiiBE covered how Black clergy rallied around Johnson at historic Quinn Chapel, calling the probe a political hit job—and a direct threat to Black political power.

• In the Tribune, Alice Yin traced the long Chicago tradition of ethnic patronage and how every group—from the Daleys’ Irish bloc to the Hispanic Democratic Organization—used City Hall jobs to build power. The only difference now? It’s our turn, and it’s on camera.

Why It Matters: Chicago’s power brokers—media, donors, feds—have always had one story locked and loaded: Black leadership is corrupt, the Black church is compromised, and Black self-determination is suspicious by default.

This is such a wild thing to me about the current stories told about Chicago nationally and in the outrage machine: it’s wild to say, without irony: people know that Black churches didn’t invent patronage, right?

The Black church has contradictions. But it has also been one of the only stable institutions defending working-class Black people in this city—through surveillance, disinvestment, and dispossession. Of course it’s messy. And — either way, this DOJ probe isn’t about policy or that nuance at all —it’s meant to humiliate a mayor for naming race out loud.

1 Question: What if the trains just stop coming?

State lawmakers have days to save the CTA from a looming fiscal cliff. The threat? A 40% service cut if new revenue isn’t secured by fall. Meanwhile, other transit governance reform proposals are circling—and could dilute the mayor’s control over the CTA.I want to hear your takes.

A good updated rundown is here, annnd an irritable “we need to fund this” op ed is here. 

Who are the people working on this issue to highlight and the important things to know?

PS — I think everyone should watch this CTA video by the guy who guesses Chicago neighborhoods.

2 Red Flags: Enshittification Comes For Cities, Pride Month Is Here Already

1. The Internet Is Broken. It’s About to Get Worse IRL.

In an interview with The Tyee, author and digital rights activist Cory Doctorow broke down the concept of “enshittification”—how platforms like Facebook, Amazon, Uber, and Google get worse on purpose: first baiting users, then squeezing them, then delivering all value to shareholders.

Now that same logic is bleeding into real-world systems—from drive-thru pricing to hospital shift apps and surveillance in public services. In cities like Chicago, that means tech tools used for wage theft, policing, and privatized public goods are all quietly operating on the same scam economy logic, and it gets easier to do when municipals funds are scarce.

2. Happy Early Pride Month to the GEO Group

In 1966, trans women fought back against police harassment at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, one of the first known queer uprisings in U.S. history—three years before Stonewall. GEO Group, a private prison corporation best known for immigrant detention, labor abuse, and human rights violations, has been using the site as a “reentry facility” under a state contract that expires June 30.

GEO Group has always been vile but they’ve especially been in the news with Tom Homan receiving consulting fees, the Newark Mayor’s arrest in protest of their 15 year contract for a ‘re-entry facility”.

Trans and queer organizers are demanding the city return 111 Taylor to the people who actually made history there—and transform it into a trans-led space for healing, housing, and care. Learn more here.

That’s It This Week.

Illinois is fighting fish with toxic sludge, the CTA is about to ghost us, and restaurant owners want to reverse a wage win.

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