Two of Chicago’s most pivotal but challenging undeveloped sites — Foundry Park on the North Side and the vacant South Loop parcel known as The 78 — moved forward in a big way Wednesday before the City Council adjourned for a summer recess.

Mayor Brandon Johnson introduced a $201.6 million tax increment financing subsidy for JDL Development’s scaled back vision for North Side industrial land along the Chicago River that once was supposed to be home to the Lincoln Yards megaproject.

And despite a slew of concerns from Council members, the full Council approved a $425 million TIF for The 78, a reference to Chicago’s unofficial 78th community area. The subsidy will bankroll public improvements needed for the South Loop development, anchored by a $750 million soccer stadium privately financed by Chicago Fire billionaire owner Joe Mansueto.

Downtown Ald. Bill Conway (34th), whose adjacent TIF is being raided to help The 78, again refused to go along with the $250.1 million piece of the infrastructure package that will primarily be used to build a 1,200-space parking garage. The $216 million garage will serve as the “podium” for an open-air plaza and future high-rise development on the air rights above the garage.

Referring to the Bears’ long-running stadium saga, Conway said Wednesday he appreciates the Fire “not trying to move to Hammond, Indiana, and become the Hammond Sparks.” But he said he “cannot look the taxpayers in the eye and tell them” he supported spending “$250 million to build a stadium parking garage and plaza.”

Finance Chair Pat Dowell, whose 3rd Ward includes The 78, has argued that the podium “brings the site to grade at Roosevelt Road” and is the key to “unlocking the site from the isolation that has stalled every previous development proposal.”

Deputy Planning Commissioner Jeff Cohen made that same point Wednesday, with a new wrinkle.

“The idea here is to incorporate that garage into the podium,” Cohen said. “It’s addressing a design and development plan that allows for all of the land within The 78 to be open for investment, rather than having to have either temporary or permanent surface parking lots to accommodate the car traffic.”

The $201.6 million subsidy proposed for Foundry Park pales by comparison to the $1.3 billion that former Mayor Rahm Emanuel once proposed for Lincoln Yards. That massive subsidy became a political lightning rod, with the avalanche of criticism led by the Chicago Teachers Union and then-union organizer Brandon Johnson.

The $201.6 million subsidy that Johnson introduced at Wednesday’s Council meeting is more likely to be criticized for being too little.

It will support just over 25% of the $800 million worth of roads, bridges, utilities and mass transit improvements that 2nd Ward Ald. Brian Hopkins has said were mandated as part of the Lincoln Yards plan.

Foundry Park developer Jim Letchinger acknowledged that there is “other infrastructure that the neighborhood would like to see done that is not possible right now.”

But Letchinger added it’s a start that includes the long-promised extension of the popular 606 Trail. “If you don’t start with something that’s achievable, you can’t achieve anything.”

“We have a plan to actually start building and creating revenue right away in conjunction with building our infrastructure … A lot of parks. Massive riverwalk. Ten acres of public open space. Very usable, very engaging,” Letchinger said Wednesday.

“As we continue to build, since we’re not using anywhere near all the increment that we’re creating, the other increment can go toward other projects that the neighborhood would like to see — whether it’s to build a bridge or fixing Elston Avenue, or anything else that they’re anxious about,” he said.

Public improvements promised to residents, but not covered by the $201.6 million subsidy, include another bridge crossing the Chicago River and a realignment of Elston Avenue, which Letchinger called a positive move in the long run, but a “massive undertaking” complicated by cost and property control.

“No private developer can realign Elston. It’s impossible. The city is the only one that can do that, and they’re working on it. There’s plans for it. But it will take a very long time,” Lechtinger said.

Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd) said there is “one bridge that a lot of people still want,” but it goes through private properties owned by Ozinga Ready Mix Concrete and several other owners.

“The city would have to do it as a taking [of property], and that would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. So they took that off the table because … that bridge wasn’t necessary at this time,” Waguespack told the Chicago Sun-Times.

Letchinger’s plan for roughly 34 vacant acres of the site calls for up to 3,737 residences, 20% of them designated as affordable to comply with the city’s set-aside rules. The new design includes low- to mid-rise buildings, some for offices, grouped near open space and riverfront access. Buildings would get ground-floor retail, and one is slated as a boutique hotel.

The project’s reduced density has drawn praise from residents. And Waguespack said he’s satisfied with the reduced public subsidy.

“In the future if there’s more needed, we could go back and do it. But this is much more grounded in a realistic infrastructure project that will still satisfy all the needs of connecting the neighborhoods,” Waguespack said.

Hopkins said he views the scaled-down subsidy and the infrastructure projects as “wholly inadequate” and a broken promise to Lincoln Park and Bucktown residents.

“Lincoln Yards provided for two bridges with the possibility of a third. Foundry Park has zero,” Hopkins said. “I don’t want to move on a vague verbal promise that we might consider adding a bridge later. The time to add it is now while the redevelopment agreement is still pending. And the fact that it was omitted is tragic. Also, the [Elston-Armitage] intersection redesign and the new Metra station seems to have fallen by the wayside.”

Also at Wednesday’s meeting, Johnson proposed a tax break for Chicago’s booming film and television industries — by reducing the 15% personal property lease transaction tax to 11%.

The tax has been raised twice in recent years and was the biggest piece of the revenue package that helped balance the $16.7 billion budget for 2026. It has exceeded revenue projections by $40.3 million through June 30, allowing Johnson to offer the break in hopes of attracting more film and TV productions to Chicago.

The City Council also followed a trail blazed by Gov. JB Pritzker and his counterparts in six other states by prohibiting present and former city employees — and elected officials — from using insider information to bet on prediction markets. Apps including Kalshi and Polymarket are used to place bets on everything from election winners and the number of candidates entering a specific race for office, to budgetary and foreign policy decisions by elected officials.

Championed by Ald. Timmy Knudsen (43rd), the ordinance prohibits current or former city officials, appointees and employees from using “confidential information or any non-public information, including the identity of the subject of an investigation” to either participate in prediction markets or “assist any other person” placing those bets.

The Council also confirmed Johnson’s appointment of Dr. Garth Walker as the city’s public health commissioner.

Covering the cost of fertility treatment can feel like yet another hurdle in a process that is already physically and emotionally draining. Not only do you have to go through the testing and medical procedures involved, you can also end up paying tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

For families who want to have kids or women who want to afford themselves a little more time, though, this can feel like a price well worth paying. But the process may necessitate some financial planning. Research can also go a long way, as insurance companies increasingly offer coverage.

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Fifty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down campaign spending limits in the landmark decision Buckley v. Valeo, finding the curbs violated First Amendment free-speech protections. Since then, several rulings, including the 2010 Citizens United case, which ended restrictions on election donations by corporations, nonprofits, and labor unions, have further loosened campaign finance regulations.

In this interview, which has been edited and condensed for length and clarity, Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, spoke about the recent ruling by the Supreme Court that lifted restrictions on how much money political parties can spend in coordination with candidates, its downside and potential upside, and its possible impact on the midterm elections.

Can you explain what the recent campaign finance ruling means? How is it going to affect political parties?

The recent decision is a not a huge blockbuster like some other campaign finance cases we’ve seen in recent years. That’s because the decision only involves limits on political parties’ coordinated expenditures with candidates, and that pool of money, both today and potentially in the future, is not enormous.

Before this ruling, parties could spend whatever they want, even before they could coordinate a lot of expenditures with candidates. Now they can just coordinate somewhat more. So, the stakes here were sort of moderate.

The two things the decision means above all are these: On the negative side, it’ll be easier now for a corrupt donor [to skirt individual donation limits] to funnel more money to a candidate using a party as the conduit or the vehicle for that contribution. On the positive side, parties are permanent, important political institutions, and now somewhat more money might flow to parties instead of super PACs and dark money groups and other more problematic organizations.

Justice Elena Kagan, who dissented from this ruling, said this decision would increase the likelihood of “political corruption.” Do you agree?

First of all, notice that Kagan isn’t challenging the fundamentals of campaign finance law. She’s not claiming that money isn’t speech. She’s not claiming that all campaign finance regulations should be upheld. She’s fully arguing within the current court’s doctrinal framework. She thinks that the law at issue is necessary to prevent corruption.

Kagan points out that, with a little bit of bookkeeping, it should be fairly straightforward now for a donor to give effectively half a million dollars to a candidate channeled through a party, as opposed to the $7,000 the donor is allowed to give directly to the candidate.

With much bigger sums that can now be given through a party to a candidate, there’s the possibility of more quid pro quo corruption. A candidate isn’t likely to do very much in return for $7,000 but a candidate may do quite a bit more in return for $500,000. So I think we’ll see somewhat more corruption in politics as a result of today’s decision.

What’s the idea behind “money is speech,” which has been at the core of most campaign finance decisions since the 1970s?

The premise that money is speech, or at least it enables political speech, means that it can be covered by the First Amendment. That premise underlies all campaign finance doctrine since the 1970s.

It’s a controversial doctrine. Individual justices over the years have pointed out that money is not speech, and merely enabling speech is not the same thing as being speech itself. All campaign finance decisions since the 1970s have assumed that regulations of political funding involved the First Amendment because there’s a close enough connection to political speech, and even the progressive justices in the 1990s and 2000s still accepted that the First Amendment was involved here.

The implication of fully endorsing the position that money isn’t speech is that all of these cases would quickly fall by the wayside. If money isn’t speech and there’s no First Amendment issue presented here, then Congress can regulate campaign finance however Congress wants to, without any possible First Amendment problem. But that view has never been the view of the majority of the court.

Can you compare the impact of this recent ruling to that of the 2010 Citizens United case?

Citizens United involved independent spending by corporations, by unions, and the court said that there’s no valid justification for limiting any independent campaign spending, whether it’s by candidates, rich individuals, parties, corporations, or unions.

The current case involves the somewhat less-explosive issue of coordinated expenditures. Citizens United was a sweeping decision, striking down a very important federal law and opening the door to huge new sums to be spent in politics. This decision isn’t like that. It doesn’t involve independent spending. It only involves one actor, political parties, not the whole range of actors. The stakes are a lot lower than the Citizens United case.

With this ruling, the Supreme Court overruled a 2001 decision, which upheld the same limits on coordinate expenditures with candidates. How do you explain that?

The 2001 case was decided by the court when it was at its most pro-regulatory in the campaign finance context. What changed since 2001 is the composition of the court.

The critical change was when Sandra Day O’Connor retired in 2006, and Sam Alito replaced her. Alito has always been a skeptic of campaign finance regulations, whereas O’Connor, especially toward the end of her time on the court, was willing to uphold a lot of campaign finance regulations.

Almost everything that’s followed since then, Citizens United in 2010, McCutcheon in 2014, and other decisions striking down campaign finance laws, happened not because the world of politics changed or because there was some big insight on the court. It happened because the court became more conservative and what had been a five-four pro-regulation majority became a five-four anti-regulation majority.

It’s no surprise that the current court, which is now six-three against campaign finance regulation, doesn’t like a decision from this earlier period.

Will this ruling impact the midterm elections?

In the near term, this will somewhat benefit the Republican Party committees that have more funds at their disposal because they have just happened to raise a lot more money recently than the Democratic Party entities.

However, even before this decision, all of those Republican entities could still spend their money however they wanted to, so it’s not that big of a change for them. I think Democrats will direct more of their donors to give some more money to party organizations. There might be a short-term benefit for Republicans, but I don’t think this will cause a great imbalance in the system going forward.

Overall, I’m not incredibly alarmed by this ruling. We’re still going to have in place various other laws and precautions that will stop some corruption.

It’s bad for our system to allow super PACs and dark-money groups to become the leading actors in campaign finance. I’d rather have the money in parties’ hands than in super PACs or dark-money groups’ hands. I don’t think the doors are really open for that much additional corruption here. I think there’s a non-trivial silver lining in strengthening political parties, which are valuable institutions.