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I almost feel guilty for mentioning that the netting season for rainbow smelt in Chicago opens next Tuesday, as usual on April 1.What was once a memorable night experience up and down the lakefront for generations — with a community history and buckets of the small, oily, invasive fish — has virtually disappeared. A small core group of hardcore netters keeps the tradition alive on the shores of Lake Michigan, despite the lake rarely even delivering a few smelt anymore.Expect the same this year for the Chicago lakefront.“Nothing new from our surveys last spring,” emailed Vic Santucci, Lake Michigan program manager for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. “We will get the lakewide data [this week] at the Upper Lake Committee meetings. I don’t anticipate any major changes from the past years, but we’ll see.”The Upper Lakes Meetings, a gathering of states, provinces and tribes, will be held through Friday in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.Smelt season runs through April 30. Chicago Park District regulations are mostly the same; the key ones are that nets may go in at 7 p.m. and netters must be out of the parks by 1 a.m. Park staff have noted that gate work on the south side of Montrose Harbor means that lot will not be open or accessible for netting there.License reminderNew fishing and hunting licenses are needed in Illinois beginning Tuesday. The new fishing licenses are also needed Tuesday in the other three states bordering Lake Michigan.Heidecke openerAlso on Tuesday, Heidecke Lake, the former cooling lake near Morris, reopens to fishing with one regulation change. District fisheries biologist Seth Love dropped the 12- to 18-inch protected slot length limit on smallmouth bass because it didn’t seem to be helping their body condition, which remains “somewhat poor.” Heidecke smallmouth revert to the 15-inch minimum length with a three-fish daily limit.Heidecke is one of Love’s favorite lakesto manage.“It has just about anything an angler could want to target,” he said.He’s not kidding. You’ll find everything from crappie to walleye to bass to hybrid striped bass to muskie. Throw bluegill in if you know where they school up.Love is most excited about the muskie fishing. In the spring survey last year, there was “a record high collection of muskie,” he wrote, “with 150 muskie collected in 30 net-nights of effort (comes out to five fish per net-night). We collected not one but two legal fish (48.9 and 49.1 inches).”Average walleye length in the fall survey was 17 inches, with 79% being of legal size (16 inches), topped by one nearly 28 inches.Wild thingsFor such small birds, tufted titmice make a lot of sound. . . . Heard my first wild turkeys calling before dawn over the weekend.MorelsThe first confirmed report of a morel mushroom in the Facebook group Illinois Morel Mushrooms came Thursday from Lawrence County. I think we’ll be into April before reports start around here and “Morel of the Week” begins again.Illinois huntingThe first youth spring turkey season is this weekend.Stray castThe rude bison in that ubiquitous chicken wings commercial made me wonder when bison were extirpated in Illinois (about 1830). I wish the same fate on that commercial.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday targeting a major Chicago-based law firm that previously employed Andrew Weissmann, who worked on special counsel Robert Mueller’s team to investigate suspected Russian interference in Trump’s 2016 election campaign.The executive order names the law firm Jenner & Block. The order aims to probe the law firm’s security clearances, government contracts and its access to federal buildings. It alleges Jenner & Block “engages in obvious partisan representations to achieve political ends.”Weissmann was a Jenner & Block partner from 2006 to 2011, and again from 2020 to 2021.He served as a lead prosecutor from 2017 to 2019 on special counsel Mueller’s team that investigated possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and any collusion with Trump’s campaign associates. Trump continually called the investigation a “witch hunt.”“Jenner & Block has had a long history representing clients, paid and pro bono, in their most difficult matters since 1914,” a Jenner & Block spokesperson said in a statement. “Today, we have been named in an Executive Order similar to one which has already been declared unconstitutional by a federal court. We remain focused on serving and safeguarding our clients’ interests with the dedication, integrity, and expertise that has defined our firm for more than one hundred years and will pursue all appropriate remedies.” Related Mahmoud Khalil has rights Mueller considers new charges for ex-Trump campaign chairman Weissmann was a federal prosecutor for 15 years, served as general counsel for the FBI for three years and has taught criminal law at several universities. He also co-hosts a podcast called “Main Justice,” which was previously titled “Prosecuting Donald Trump.”Chris Gair, a former assistant U.S. attorney and now a defense lawyer who recently defended former Alds. Ed Burke and Patrick Daley Thompson, called the executive order “blatantly illegal.”“It’s an unconstitutional restriction on Jenner’s right to freedom of speech,” said Gair, whose 40-year law career included an eight-year stint at Jenner & Block from 2005 to 2013.“It’s stupid because the things that he’s citing regarding Andrew Weissmann all happened after Weissmann had left Jenner,” Gair said of Trump’s executive order. “And I hope and pray that Jenner has the guts to stand up and fight.”Tuesday’s executive order targeting Jenner & Block follows similar orders in recent weeks singling out other powerful law firms that have challenged Trump or that have ties to cases involving him.This month, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell temporarily blocked parts of a Trump executive order that sought to impose punitive measures against the Seattle-based law firm Perkins Coie, which worked with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016.The Trump administration has since pushed back against the judge’s temporary order, with the Justice Department trying to remove Howell, an Obama-pointed judge, from overseeing the Perkins Coie case.Last week, Trump rescinded a similar executive order targeting the prominent law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Garrison & Wharton, after it cut a deal with Trump to review its hiring practices and provide millions of dollars in free legal services to support certain White House initiatives.That executive order had singled out former Paul, Weiss attorney, Mark Pomerantz, who was involved in an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office into Trump’s finances.Brad Karp, chairman of Paul, Weiss, told colleagues in an email that he made the deal with Trump to avert consequences of the executive order because it “could easily have destroyed our firm.”Contributing: Associated Press

The Walser House — a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed residence in the Austin neighborhood — is finally in line to receive the urgent repairs the historic but dilapidated home has needed for years. The bank holding the mortgage on the vacant 122-year-old home at 42 N. Central Ave. told Cook County Circuit Judge Lisa Ann Marino earlier this month that it would begin repairing the house to correct a raft of long-standing building code violations.Preservationists see the move as a critical first step toward the early Wright home being saved and reused. Lee Bey, a former editorial board member, who also writes a monthly column on architecture, is now the full-time architecture critic for the Sun-Times. The change reflects Chicago’s strong interest in the built environment — and the forces that shape it — from neighborhood development and building preservation to the latest additions to our skyline. Bey is the author of “Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side” (Northwestern University Press, 2019), which showcases his architectural photography and social commentary. He also hosted the public television special, “Building Blocks: The Architecture of Chicago’s South Side,” which earned him a 2023 Midwest Emmy nomination. "[The home] is a valuable part of history, and the thought of it degrading any further and being put at risk of being torn down would be tragic," said Darnell Shields, executive director of the community group Austin Coming Together.Shields' organization, along with the Chicago-based Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, Landmarks Illinois, and Preservation Chicago, have been advocating for the home for the last several years.Built in 1903 for printing executive Joseph Jacob Walser Jr., the stucco home came relatively early in Wright's career. Its strong horizontal lines, overhanging eaves and bands of windows would later become trademarks of his larger and more celebrated Prairie School work, such as the K. C. DeRhodes House, built in South Bend, Indiana, in 1906; the Barton House, in Buffalo, New York, in 1904; and the Emil Bach House, 7415 N. Sheridan Road, from 1915.The Walser House was built four years after Austin, once a stand-alone suburb, was annexed by the city of Chicago. It's a mile east of the village of Oak Park, home of the world's largest collection of Wright-designed houses. John H. Waters, preservation programs director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, said the home is among Wright's first attempts to build moderately priced, well-designed residences."So [after Walser] you have [Wright's] American System-Built houses of the nineteen-teens and then ultimately the Usonians in the '30s, '40s and '50s," he said. "So that thread is very important.But even with that history, the home stood in disrepair for decades. Its last owner died in 2019. This drone shot shows many of the extensive repairs the Walser House needs.Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times The nightmarish list of needed repairs includes rotting wood, cracked and failing exterior stucco, exposed structural elements, a deteriorating roof and chimney — and much more.A status hearing on the repairs is scheduled for April 1. And on top of that, in a separate court, the house is in foreclosure — saddled with a reverse mortgage that exceeds the value of the home.The Austin neighborhood group and the Wright organization hope the home ultimately can be placed in the hands of a nonprofit that can raise the millions needed to restore the house and convert it to public use.Shields said his group wants to own the home and convert it into community spaces, meeting rooms and tourism purposes."Our organization is very interested in acquiring the property via donation so that we can work with the conservancy and work with the community to restore it and repurpose it," Shields said.

BOSTON — When Ash Lazarus Orr went to renew his passport in early January, the transgender organizer figured it would be relatively routine.But more than two months on, Orr is waiting to get a new passport with a name change and a sex designation reflecting who he is. The delay has prevented him from traveling overseas to receive gender-affirming care this month in Ireland since he refuses to get a passport that lists an “inaccurate sex designation.”Orr blames the delay on President Donald Trump, who on the day he took office issued an executive order banning the use of the “X” marker as well as the changing of gender markers. The order says a person is male or female and it rejects the idea that someone can transition from the sex assigned at birth to another gender.“This is preventing me from having an accurate identification and the freedom to move about the country as well as internationally,” said Orr, who is among seven plaintiffs — five transgender Americans and two nonbinary plaintiffs — who have sued the Trump administration in federal court over the policy. “This has really, truly impeded on my life and my freedom as well. ... The government is questioning who I am as a trans person.”Passport policy challenged in courtThe American Civil Liberties Union is suing the federal government on their behalf and was in court Tuesday in Boston seeking a preliminary injunction, which would put the policy on hold while the lawsuit proceeds in court. It is the only lawsuit of its kind filed so far.“This policy is not a passport policy. It’s an anti-trans policy and the executive order is very clear about that,” ACLU lawyer Li Nowlin-Soul, said after the court hearing. “It's very important to take up this fight because there are so many attacks on trans people right now. ... The government has given no justification for why this policy has been put in place.”U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, took the motion under advisement.ACLU lawsuit cites harm to several plaintiffsIn its lawsuit, the ACLU described how one woman had her passport returned with a male designation while others are too scared to submit their passports because they fear their applications might be suspended and their passports held by the State Department. Another mailed in their passport on Jan. 9 and requested a name change and to change their sex designation from male to female. That person is still waiting for their passport — meaning they can't leave Canada where they live and could miss a family wedding in May and a botany conference in July.“All have faced prior mistreatment due to their gender identities, and they fear that having incorrect sex designations on their passports will cause them further mistreatment — including putting them in danger,” the ACLU wrote.Before he applied for his new passport, Orr was accused in early January by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration of using fake documents when traveling from West Virginia to New York — since he had a male designation on his driver's license but a female one on his passport. That prompted him to request the updated passport with a sex designation of male — four days before Trump took office.“We all have a right to accurate identity documents, and this policy invites harassment, discrimination, and violence against transgender Americans who can no longer obtain or renew a passport that matches who they are,” ACLU lawyer Sruti Swaminathan said.Government: President has right to change passport rulesIn response to the lawsuit, the Trump administration has argued the passport policy change “does not violate the equal protection guarantees of the Constitution.” They also contend that the president has broad discretion in setting passport policy and that plaintiffs would not be harmed by the policy, since they are still free to travel abroad.“Some Plaintiffs additionally allege that having inconsistent identification documents will heighten the risk that an official will discover that they are transgender,” the Justice Department wrote. “But the Department is not responsible for Plaintiffs’ choice to change their sex designation for state documents but not their passport.”During Tuesday’s hearing, Kobick pushed back against the government’s argument that plaintiffs would not be harmed and that the policy does not discriminate based on sex. She also raised concerns that the policy could not be seen in isolation but part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to target transgender Americans.“Do you dispute the recent executive orders take away rights or take away things that transgender people had?” Kobick asked Benjamin Takemoto, the Justice Department lawyer who denied the passport policy was anti-trans, in part because it doesn't mention transgender people.Transgender rights threatened by Trump ordersAfter the Trump executive order, the State Department quickly stopped issuing travel documents with the “X” gender marker preferred by many nonbinary people, who don’t identify as strictly male or female. The department also stopped allowing people to change the gender listed on their passport or get new ones that reflect their gender rather than their sex assigned at birth.Applications that had already been submitted seeking gender-marker changes were put on hold. The State Department also replaced its webpage with information for “LGBTQI+” travelers to just “LGB,” removing any reference to transgender or intersex people.The passport policy is among several actions Trump has taken since returning to office that could stifle rights and legal recognition of transgender, intersex and nonbinary people.The same order that seeks to define the sexes to exclude them would also require housing transgender women in prison in men’s facilities. Additional orders could open the door to kicking transgender service members out of the military, barring the use of federal taxpayer money to provide gender-affirming care to transgender people under 19 and keeping transgender girls and women out of girls and women’s sports competitions.

To visit the National Public Housing Museum is to step back in time, era by era. Open the door to one room, you’re transported to the Turovitz family’s late-1930s apartment in Chicago's Jane Addams Homes development. You’ll view old photos and vintage furniture, and explore their kosher kitchen, complete with a treasured gefilte fish chopping bowl.Open another door, and you’re standing in the Hatch family’s apartment from that same complex, but now it’s the 1960s. You’ll see Ebony and Jet magazines on the table, an enormous, antique color TV on the floor, and a beloved, light-up Jesus portrait on the wall.Both spaces are enhanced with audio commentary from family members, including narration from Chicago actor Lil Rel Howery, whose relatives lived in the latter apartment. An exhibit at the National Public Housing Museum at 919 S. Ada St. displays a living room in a recreated 1960s-era apartment in the Jane Addams Homes development Friday afternoon, March 21, 2025. Timothy Hiatt/For the Sun-Times These are two of the recreated, historic apartments featured in the museum, itself now housed in the only remaining building of the Jane Addams Homes at 919 S. Ada St. on Chicago's Near West Side. Opening April 4 and hosting a weekend of events, the institution explores the history of public housing in the U.S. and advocates for housing as a human right. But the experiences of residents — shared through artifacts and oral histories — are the true heart of the space.The museum's executive director, Lisa Yun Lee, said she hopes to challenge visitors’ perceptions of what a history museum can be.“We're also a radically beautiful art museum,” she said. “We're also a place to engage young people and families. And there's a lot of collective joy and wonder in this space, which I think people aren't necessarily expecting when they go to a public housing museum." National Public Housing Museum National Public Housing Museum grand opening weekendOpen hours:Friday, April 4, 2 – 6 p.m.Saturday, April 5, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.Sunday, April 6, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.Where: 919 S. Ada St.Cost: General admission free, reservations encouraged. Visit nphm.org for tour costs and full schedule of events Related Museum will preserve stories of public housing residents: ‘You don’t know where you’re going unless you know where you came from’ The museum was incorporated in 2007, but experienced numerous starts and stops as it worked to raise money and acquire its permanent home from the Chicago Housing Authority. The museum originally operated, for several years, out of 625 N. Kingsbury St. in River North. The museum's permanent location can now focus on allowing residents to preserve their history following the demolition of thousands of public housing units across the country. Staff members say they wanted to convey to visitors the complexity of public housing, rather than perpetuate the common narrative that paints it as a failure.“I want them to understand that the history of public housing is something capacious,” Lee said. “It's something that speaks to all of us. And I want people to see themselves in this museum.” “There’s a lot of collective joy and wonder in this space, which I think people aren’t necessarily expecting when they go to a public housing museum,” says Lisa Yun Lee, executive director of the National Public Housing Museum.Timothy Hiatt/For the Sun-Times Many will relate to the wealth of exhibitions and installations that focus on everyday life. For example, “History Lessons” features household items from people who lived in public housing, including Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Sonia Sotomayor and the late George Floyd’s sister, Latonya. “Feeling At Home” displays replicas of couch cushions owned by residents, including legendary rapper Roxanne Shanté, who once lived in the Queensbridge Houses complex in New York City.The museum offers plenty of visual art, including murals, as well as posters that advertised public housing developments following President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. The “Still Here” exhibition uses art to address the removal of indigenous peoples, and their solidarity with displaced Black communities. In the courtyard, “Animal Court” features restored sculptures Edgar Miller created in the 1930s for the Jane Addams Homes.A standout exhibition is the REC Room, co-curated by DJ Spinderella. Visitors can play vinyl records from a variety of famous musicians who grew up in public housing and view visual presentations about their lives and careers.“It’s just an example of confronting the stereotypes of who lived here, and that it was all doom and gloom,” said museum co-founder and board chair Sunny Fischer. The exterior of the National Public Housing Museum at 919 S. Ada St. Timothy Hiatt/For the Sun-Times Museum board member Francine Washington also referenced the happy times she had living in the now-demolished Stateway Gardens in Bronzeville. She recalled memories of playing marbles, jumping rope, swimming and ice skating with neighbors.“I miss it,” said Washington, who is 69. “It was a family. It was really a village. I never said I lived in the projects. I lived in the community of the Chicago Housing Authority.”But the museum doesn’t shy away from the low points in the history of public housing. During the tour of the recreated Jane Addams Homes, visitors will learn about discriminatory policies that affected the lives of Black public housing residents. Topics such as redlining, racial covenants and blockbusting are explained in a powerful presentation created by Chicago performance collective Manual Cinema and Princeton University professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. Chicago’s Manual Cinema and Princeton University professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor created this silhouette projection display for the National Public Housing Museum.Timothy Hiatt/For the Sun-Times Related Chicago’s National Public Housing Museum to co-present conversation on race events with Smithsonian While other institutions are responding to the current political climate by avoiding conversations about race, Lee said the National Public Housing Museum is committed to discussing social justice concerns. In fact, as an official Site of Conscience, the organization must connect the past to contemporary human rights issues, she said.The museum inspires visitors to consider the future of affordable housing through its "Demand the Impossible Advocacy Space" and case studies exhibition examining a successful public housing project. The museum site itself also includes 15 mixed-income apartments. A photo exhibit and personal essay at the National Public Housing Museum recall Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Sonia Maria Sotomayor’s early years in a public housing development in New York. Timothy Hiatt/For the Sun-Times Lee said the organization is cautious about diversifying its funding, given President Donald Trump's threats to cut some financial support for museums and libraries. This month, he issued an executive order calling for the elimination of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The National Public Housing Museum has received funding from the institute over the years, including a $129,050 grant in 2024. It also was awarded a $500,000 capital grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and other federal funding for ongoing support of its community programs."We believe that the federal government should be responsible for helping to create the best civic, arts and cultural organizations," Lee said. "We hope that the federal government will see the value of this work." The Turovitz family’s late-1930s apartment in the Jane Addams Homes development is recreated in an exhibit at the National Public Housing Museum.Timothy Hiatt/For the Sun-Times For now, museum leadership is celebrating the accomplishment of opening the new building. "We are feeling elated that our dream came true," Fischer said.