Daywatch: How abortion access in Illinois — and election-year politics — could be affected if Roe is overturned | Bally’s casino plan is front-runner

Good morning, Chicago.

The unprecedented leak of a draft U.S. Supreme Court opinion that would strike down Roe v. Wade thrust abortion to the fore of an already heated election year. President Joe Biden blasted the “radical” draft opinion that threatens “other basic rights” like access to birth control and marriage, while Chief Justice John Roberts said he had ordered an investigation into what he called the “egregious breach of trust” in leaking the draft document.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker and dozens of other Illinois Democrats — facing election-year headwinds on crime, corruption and the economy — gathered at the James R. Thompson Center in the Loop early Tuesday to extol their efforts in recent years to ensure abortion remains legal and accessible in the state in the event Roe is overturned. For Republicans in solidly Democratic Illinois, the potential decision is a double-edged sword: a long-coveted victory for the party’s conservative base but one that could cause headaches in the general election.

Planned Parenthood of Illinois President and CEO Jennifer Welch predicted that anywhere from 20,000 to 30,000 additional patients could travel to Illinois each year to terminate a pregnancy if federal abortion rights are overturned.

A decision to overrule Roe would lead to abortion bans in roughly half of states. Here’s how abortion access in Illinois could be affected.

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With the state expected to unveil a new standardized testing program in the coming months, educators, union leaders and parents have joined forces to oppose more frequent interim assessments, which they say would waste valuable classroom instruction time and offer no benefits to student learning.

“We have a testing regime that has gone too far and is not helping children learn, it’s not helping educators teach, especially right now, post-COVID, when the needs of our students’ recovery are great and pressing … especially for our more underprivileged students,” Dan Montgomery, president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, said at a union-sponsored virtual discussion last week.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot is expected to select Bally’s bid at the Chicago Tribune Publishing Center in River West as the site of Chicago’s casino, sources told the Tribune. The deal is not yet final and could fall through, sources cautioned, but Bally’s has been the front-runner throughout much of the process.

Bally’s plans to use a former Tribune Publishing warehouse once earmarked for a residential and office development as its temporary casino while Freedom Center is demolished to create a $1.74 billion casino, hotel and entertainment complex that would supplant the Tribune’s printing plant.

Chicago’s public health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said Tuesday that she anticipates the city’s COVID-19 risk could jump from “low” to “medium” levels as early as Friday, following the raised risk levels in suburban Cook County last week.

But she said the increased risk level is not enough to trigger any new citywide mask mandates.

The NFL draft has come and gone, and judging by the questions in Brad Biggs’ weekly Chicago Bears mailbag, readers aren’t impressed with the depth chart at wide receiver.

Biggs answers those and other questions about the post-draft state of the Bears roster.

Chicago is introducing its own brand of water, Chicagwa, sourced from the expansive freshwater body that is Lake Michigan, and processed through the city’s water treatment plants. In other words, Chicago tap water in a can.

A limited run of Chicagwa tap water will be packaged in cans featuring six colorful designs created by local artists, from a hot dog in a boat to a depiction of the Chicago’s historic Water Tower, where the unusual branding campaign was unveiled. The cans will be given away free at various events throughout the city this summer and at locations including Real Good Stuff, Wiener’s Circle and Manny’s delicatessen.