Good morning, Chicago. ✶
🔎 Below: In a shock to staff and patients, West Suburban Medical Center is closing its doors temporarily and furloughing “many” employees.
🗞️ Plus: The city’s human relations commissioner resigns in protest, the mayor vetoes a plan to freeze the pay of tipped workers, baseball is back — and more news you need to know.
📝 Keeping score: The Bulls suffered a blowout loss to the 76ers, 157-137.
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⏱️: An 8-minute read
TODAY’S WEATHER 🌤️
Mostly sunny early on with a chance of showers, wind gusts up to 30 mph and a high near 70. A powerful cold front is expected to bring storms.
TODAY’S TOP STORY 🔎
West Suburban Medical Center closes temporarily as owner blames medical record system
By Kaitlin Washburn
Medical emergency: West Suburban Medical Center is temporarily shutting its doors and furloughing “many” employees as it struggles to pay staff, according to the Oak Park hospital’s owner, Manoj Prasad. He did not say when the safety net hospital, which has 234 beds, would reopen.
The scope: The hospital’s emergency room, inpatient units and clinics are closing “effective immediately,” Prasad said. He blamed the hospital’s year-old electronic medical record system “that has never functioned correctly” for the payroll issues.
Key context: This comes seven months after Resilience Healthcare shuttered its other facility, Weiss Memorial Hospital in Uptown. Like Weiss, West Suburban serves a high percentage of patients who rely on Medicaid health insurance for people with low incomes or on Medicare for seniors, according to the most recent state data.
Big shock: At the hospital Wednesday afternoon, some patients arriving for appointments were surprised to hear it was closing. Sanyaa Thomas, a hospital employee, said the news was a big shock to her and her co-workers. “It was still morning. And as we’re helping patients out, we just get an email that we were suspending patient care,” she said.
CITY HALL 🏛️
Human relations commissioner resigns after mayor’s office meddles with antisemitism report
By Fran Spielman
Commish out: Nancy Andrade, the city’s human relations commissioner, has resigned to protest what critics contend was an attempt by Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration to whitewash a long-awaited report that was supposed to focus solely on antisemitism.
The report: Human Relations Commission member Dan Goldwin said the report, triggered by a 58% rise in reported anti-Jewish hate crimes from 2023 to 2024, was completed and focused solely on the surge in incidents of antisemitism in Chicago — and what to do about it. But when it was forwarded to the mayor’s office, a consultant was hired to alter the report and turn it into a broader document on all hate incidents, Goldwin said.
LABOR 💰
Mayor Johnson vetoes plan to freeze subminimum wage for tipped workers
By Fran Spielman
Third veto: The mayor on Wednesday used his third veto to bury an ordinance that would have frozen the hourly pay of Chicago’s tipped workers at 76% of the minimum wage, and he’s likely to make it stick unless there’s a compromise to give restaurants a short break.
Key context: Last week, the City Council voted 30-18 to maintain the subminimum wage to throw an economic lifeline to struggling restaurants. That was four short of the 34 votes needed to override Mayor Johnson’s veto. The Illinois Restaurant Association is unlikely to convince the four alderpersons to change their votes.
MORE NEWS YOU NEED 🗞️
- Businessman killed: Jerry Lewis was gunned down in an apparent ambush attack outside his office Tuesday just blocks from the United Center. Lewis, 67, had been working to revitalize the Near West Side around the arena.
- CTA crime: An internal transit crime task force at the Cook County state’s attorney’s office will reportedly train about 30 prosecutors and provide new guidance on seeking court orders to restrict defendants from parts of CTA property.
- Detention center limits: Under a bill that moved out of an Illinois House committee, new immigration detention centers would be prohibited within 1,500 feet of schools, churches, day care centers, public parks and private residences, among other places.
- State Street Bridge to reopen Friday: The bridge has been closed for nearly a year of emergency repairs, adding to downtown traffic woes as other nearby bridges were being replaced at the same time.
- New Route 66 sign: The storied highway, which spans 2,400 miles between Chicago and California, celebrated its centennial with a new sign marking the symbolic start of the route at Navy Pier
- Another robot crash out: A delivery robot shattered the glass of an Old Town bus shelter Tuesday, the second incident of its kind in Chicago this week.
ARTS AND CULTURE 🎭
- Congo Square Theatre dissolves: The prominent Black ensemble theater group, which has produced work in Chicago for a quarter-century, has quietly been dissolved by its board of directors, according to an open letter from the ensemble.
- More César Chavez changes: Murals and memorials of César Chavez are continuing to come down across Chicago after allegations emerged last week that the Latino civil rights activist groomed and sexually assaulted girls and women.
- 4 stars for ‘El último sueño de Frida y Diego’: In this visually stunning production about the famed Mexican painters, the opera depicts the dead being able to come back from the underworld to visit their loved ones for one night, writes Kyle MacMillan.
OPENING DAY ⚾
- Cubs’ long haul: It’s time to play ball. While the Cubs have high expectations for when they host the Nationals at 1:20 p.m. Thursday, they realize it will be a long haul. Here’s a look at their Opening Day roster — and the stormy forecast.
- Where Sox stand: The White Sox will face the Brewers in Milwaukee at 1:10 p.m. the same day — starting the clock on general manager Chris Getz to move from rebuild to results after more than two years at the helm. Here’s the Sox’ Opening Day roster.
- View from Milwaukee: The National League Central division’s back-to-back-to-back champs the Brewers tell the Sun-Times’ Steve Greenberg they aren’t worried about any teams in Chicago this year.
CHICAGO MINI CROSSWORD 🌭
Today’s clue: Water ___ (river-based transit option that re-opens Monday)
BRIGHT ONE 🔆
Chicago-born choreographer honors Black womanhood with new dance
By Erica Thompson
Choreographer Rena Butler’s connection to Chicago runs deep.
She has garnered meaningful experiences in the city, from the halls of her alma mater, the Chicago Academy of the Arts, to the stage of the Lyric Opera House, where she has presented her work. But some of her most formative moments took place at the kitchen table in her grandmother’s South Side home.
Butler will honor that sacred space in her new work, “Her Table,” which will premiere March 28 during La Femme Dance Festival at Harris Theater for Music and Dance. Presented by Red Clay Dance Company, the biennial event showcases diverse works by Black women, who are often underrepresented on large stages.
The work is inspired by “The Kitchen Table Series,” a seminal 1990 photo project by artist Carrie Mae Weems, who is Black. The set of black-and-white images depicts Weems in different scenes around her kitchen table — embracing a lover, getting her hair brushed by her mother, applying makeup with her young daughter, conversing with friends, even sitting in solitude.
“I was seeing myself in a museum for the first time,” Butler, 36, said of first encountering Weems’ work. “I was looking back at myself and my grandmother and my mother and my auntie and my sisters. And it just encapsulated so much lineage and a breadth of differing women within the Black community.”
YOUR DAILY QUESTION ☕️
What’s your defining memory of Opening Day in Chicago? ⚾
Email us your answer. (please include your first and last name). We may run your answer in a future newsletter or story.
Yesterday, we asked you: What animal do you get most excited to see at a zoo, and why?
Here’s some of what you said…
“My late wife loved seeing penguins any time they appeared on TV. I tried to convince her to do a Penguin Encounter, but she never did. In her memory, I went to Brookfield Zoo last spring and signed up for an Encounter, so I had the chance to meet several of these adorable creatures. So very memorable.” — Paul Lockwood
“The big cats. They behave so much like my house cat, I want to pet them.” — Marianne Goss
“Always the majestic polar bear. Largest land carnivore, rare, endangered and beautiful.” — Sharyn Rose Gocal
“Koalas, because when I was growing up there was nowhere in the Midwest that you could see them.” — Laurie Alfaro
PICTURE CHICAGO 📸
Mayor Johnson unveils the “Abolish ICE” snowplow Wednesday. The moniker won this year’s snowplow naming contest, which drew a record number of submissions. The mayor says the winning name is a message that U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement isn’t welcome in Chicago.
Zubaer Khan/Sun-Times
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Written and curated by: Matt Moore
Editor: Eydie Cubarrubia
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