The Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs announced the appointment of Dr. Sean Ercan-Fang as chief medical officer. Ercan-Fang most recently practiced at the Minneapolis VA Healthcare System serving as a staff physician in the Extended Care and Rehabilitation Department.
EDUCATION
Junior Achievement announced that two teams of teen entrepreneurs from Minnesota high schools will compete in Atlanta for the title of Junior Achievement Company of the Year against other student-run business: Green Garden Bakery, a maker of vegetable-based desserts, was created by a group from various north Minneapolis high schools through the nonprofit Urban Strategies; and EARTHA, which creates fashion accessories from recycled glass beads, was started by a team of female entrepreneurs from Mounds View High School. … The Goddard School, a national early childhood education franchise, announced plans to open a campus at 2364 Valleyhigh Drive NW, Rochester, in September; the franchise owner is Callie Voelz.
FINANCIAL SERVICES
TopLine Financial Credit Union, Maple Grove, announced the opening of a branch at 7015 Alvarado Lane North, Maple Grove. … Holmes Murphy, an Iowa-based insurance brokerage, announced the following shareholder additions in Minneapolis: Abby Zipoy, Annie Bushey, Erin Velo, Michael Roane, Nathan Cassin and Nick Karls. … Merrill Lynch Wealth Management announced that Minnetonka-based financial adviser Krystal Julius was named to Forbes‘ 2025 “Top Women Wealth Advisors”, Forbes’ 2025 “Top Women Wealth Advisors Best-in-State”, Barron’s “Top 1,200 Financial Advisors”, and Financial Planning’s “Top 40 Brokers Under 40” lists.
HEALTH CARE
Health insurer UnitedHealth Group, Eden Prairie, has promoted Mike Cotton to lead the company’s Medicaid insurance segment; Bobby Hunter, head of the Medicare insurance division, will take on an expanded role as chief executive officer of government programs, overseeing both Medicaid and Medicare. In UnitedHealth’s Optum unit, Dhivya Suryadevara, a former chief financial officer at General Motors, becomes CEO of Optum Insight, and Roger Connor, who previously held that role, is now CFO of the broader Optum division. The changes were reported by Bloomberg News. … MNsure, the Minnesota state health insurance exchange, announced the appointment of Yusra Arab to its board of directors and the reappointment of Dr. Daniel Trajano to a second term. Arab previously served as a policy aide for the Minneapolis City Council. Additionally, the board elected David Fisher as chair and Trajano vice chair.
LAW
Janet Dorr has been elected secretary/treasurer of the Minnesota State Bar Association’s Labor and Employment Section. Dorr is a shareholder at Fredrikson, Minneapolis, which announced the election.
MEDIA
Minnesota Public Radio, St. Paul, announced two additions to its board of trustees: Sarah Karon, board president of the Library Foundation for Sarasota County, Fla., and District 5 Town Commissioner in Longboat Key Fla.; and Brian Harrison, political scientist and author, who most recently taught at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.
NONPROFITS
Old School by Steeple People, a thrift store, announced that it will take over the former Huge Improv Theater/Art Materials space at 2728 Lyndale Ave. S., Minneapolis, with an expected opening date of July 18. … Project for Pride in Living, a Minneapolis-based affordable-housing and employment services provider, announced Pauleen Le has joined as the director of communications and marketing. Le most recently was a news anchor and reporter at WCCO-TV.
REAL ESTATE
HomeServices of America, a Minneapolis-based Berkshire Hathaway franchised real estate agency, announced the appointment of Renee Gonzales as vice president-core services integrations, a newly created role. Gonzales will remain as CEO of Long Realty, Tucson, Ariz.
UTILITIES
Xcel Energy, Minneapolis, announced the appointment of Ryan Long as executive vice president and chief legal and compliance officer, succeeding Rob Berntsen. Long will continue is his current role as president of Xcel Energy – Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. Long previously served as interim general counsel in late 2023 and early 2024.
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LOS ANGELES — Inside a bright new building in the heart of Skid Row, homeless people hung out in a canopy-covered courtyard — some waiting to take a shower, do laundry, or get medication for addiction treatment. Others relaxed on shaded grass and charged their phones as an intake line for housing grew more crowded.
The Skid Row Care Campus officially opened this spring with ample offerings for people living on the streets of this historically downtrodden neighborhood. Pop-up fruit stands and tent encampments lined the sidewalks, as well as dealers peddling meth and fentanyl in open-air drug markets. Some people, sick or strung out, were passed out on sidewalks as pedestrians strolled by on a recent afternoon.
For those working toward sobriety, clinicians are on site to offer mental health and addiction treatment. Skid Row’s first methadone clinic is set to open here this year. For those not ready to quit drugs or alcohol, the campus provides clean syringes to more safely shoot up, glass pipes for smoking drugs, naloxone to prevent overdoses, and drug test strips to detect fentanyl contamination, among other supplies.
As many Americans have grown increasingly intolerant of street homelessness, cities and states have returned to tough-on-crime approaches that penalize people for living outside and for substance use disorders. But the Skid Row facility shows Los Angeles County leaders’ embrace of the principle of harm reduction, a range of more lenient strategies that can include helping people more safely use drugs, as they contend with a homeless population estimated around 75,000 — among the largest of any county in the nation. Evidence shows the approach can help individuals enter treatment, gain sobriety, and end their homelessness, while addiction experts and county health officials note it has the added benefit of improving public health.
“We get a really bad rap for this, but this is the safest way to use drugs,” said Darren Willett, director of the Center for Harm Reduction on the new Skid Row Care Campus. “It’s an overdose prevention strategy, and it prevents the spread of infectious disease.”
Despite a decline in overdose deaths, drug and alcohol use continues to be the leading cause of death among homeless people in the county. Living on the streets or in sordid encampments, homeless people saddle the health care system with high costs from uncompensated care, emergency room trips, inpatient hospitalizations, and, for many of them, their deaths. Harm reduction, its advocates say, allows homeless people the opportunity to obtain jobs, taxpayer-subsidized housing, health care, and other social services without being forced to give up drugs. Yet it’s hotly debated.
Politicians around the country, including Gov. Gavin Newsom in California, are reluctant to adopt harm reduction techniques, such as needle exchanges or supervised places to use drugs, in part because they can be seen by the public as condoning illicit behavior. Although Democrats are more supportive than Republicans, a national poll this year found lukewarm support across the political spectrum for such interventions.
Los Angeles is defying President Donald Trump’s agenda as he advocates for forced mental health and addiction treatment for homeless people — and locking up those who refuse. The city has also been the scene of large protests against Trump’s immigration crackdown, which the president has fought by deploying National Guard troops and Marines.
Trump’s most detailed remarks on homelessness and substance use disorder came during his campaign, when he attacked people who use drugs as criminals and said that homeless people “have no right to turn every park and sidewalk into a place for them to squat and do drugs.” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reinforced Trump’s focus on treatment.
“Secretary Kennedy stands with President Trump in prioritizing recovery-focused solutions to address addiction and homelessness,” said agency spokesperson Vianca Rodriguez Feliciano. “HHS remains focused on helping individuals recover, communities heal, and help make our cities clean, safe, and healthy once again.”
A comprehensive report led by Margot Kushel, a professor of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco, this year found that nearly half of California’s homeless population had a complex behavioral health need, defined as regular drug use, heavy drinking, hallucinations, or a recent psychiatric hospitalization.
The chaos of living outside, she said — marked by violence, sexual assault, sleeplessness, and lack of housing and health care — can make it nearly impossible to get sober.
An unresponsive woman lies sprawled out on a sidewalk on Skid Row in Los Angeles on an afternoon in late May. (Angela Hart/KFF Health News/TNS)
Skid Row Care Campus
The new care campus is funded by about $26 million a year in local, state, and federal homelessness and health care money, and initial construction was completed by a Skid Row landlord, Matt Lee, who made site improvements on his own, according to Anna Gorman, chief operating officer for community programs at the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. Operators say the campus should be able to withstand potential federal spending cuts because it is funded through a variety of sources.
Glass front doors lead to an atrium inside the yellow-and-orange complex. It was designed with input from homeless people, who advised the county not just on the layout but also on the services offered on-site. There are 22 recovery beds and 48 additional beds for mostly older homeless people, arts and wellness programs, a food pantry, and pet care. Even bunnies and snakes are allowed.
John Wright, who goes by the nickname“ Slim,” works as a harm reduction specialist at the new Skid Row Care Campus, a center that provides both harm reduction services and treatment for mental illness and substance use disorder. (Angela Hart/KFF Health News/TNS)
John Wright, 65, who goes by the nickname Slim, mingled with homeless visitors one afternoon in May, asking them what they needed to be safe and comfortable.
“Everyone thinks we’re criminals, like we’re out robbing everyone, but we aren’t,” said Wright, who is employed as a harm reduction specialist on the campus and is trying, at his own pace, to stop using fentanyl. “I’m homeless and I’m a drug addict, but I’m on methadone now so I’m working on it,” he said.
Nearby on Skid Row, Anthony Willis rested in his wheelchair while taking a toke from a crack pipe. He’d just learned about the new care campus, he said, explaining that he was homeless for roughly 20 years before getting into a taxpayer-subsidized apartment on Skid Row. He spends most of his days and nights on the streets, using drugs and alcohol.
The drugs, he said, help him stay awake so he can provide companionship and sometimes physical protection for homeless friends who don’t have housing. “It’s tough sometimes living down here; it’s pretty much why I keep relapsing,” said Willis, who at age 62 has asthma and arthritic knees. “But it’s also my community.”
Anthony Willis, who has an apartment on Skid Row, spends most of his time on the streets. (Angela Hart/KFF Health News/TNS)
Willis said the care campus could be a place to help him kick drugs, but he wasn’t sure he was ready.
Research shows harm reduction helps prevent death and can build long-term recovery for people who use substances, said Brian Hurley, an addiction psychiatrist and the medical director for the Bureau of Substance Abuse Prevention and Control at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. The techniques allow health care providers and social service workers to meet people when they’re ready to stop using drugs or enter treatment.
“Recovery is a learning activity, and the reality is relapse is part of recovery,” he said. “People go back and forth and sometimes get triggered or haven’t figured out how to cope with a stressor.”
Swaying Public Opinion
Under harm reduction principles, officials acknowledge that people will use drugs. Funded by taxpayers, the government provides services to use safely, rather than forcing people to quit or requiring abstinence in exchange for government-subsidized housing and treatment programs.
Los Angeles County is spending hundreds of millions to combat homelessness, while also launching a multiyear “By LA for LA” campaign to build public support, fight stigma, and encourage people to use services and seek treatment. Officials have hired a nonprofit, Vital Strategies, to conduct the campaign including social media advertising and billboards to promote the expansion of both treatment and harm reduction services for people who use drugs.
The organization led a national harm reduction campaign and is working on overdose prevention and public health campaigns in seven states using roughly $70 million donated by Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York.
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“We don’t believe people should die just because they use drugs, so we’re going to provide support any way that we can,” said Shoshanna Scholar, director of harm reduction at the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. “Eventually, some people may come in for treatment but what we really want is to prevent overdose and save lives.”
Los Angeles also finds itself at odds with California’s Democratic governor. Newsom has spearheaded stricter laws targeting homelessness and addiction and has backed treatment requirements for people with mental illness or who use drugs. Last year, California voters approved Proposition 36, which allows felony charges for some drug crimes, requires courts to warn people they could be charged with murder for selling or providing illegal drugs that kill someone, and makes it easier to order treatment for people who use drugs.
Even San Francisco approved a measure last year that requires welfare recipients to participate in treatment to continue receiving cash aid. Mayor Daniel Lurie recently ordered city officials to stop handing out free drug supplies, including pipes and foil, and instead to require participation in drug treatment to receive services. Lurie signed a recovery-first ordinance, which prioritizes “long-term remission” from substance use, and the city is also expanding policing while funding new sober-living sites and treatment centers for people recovering from addiction.
Cindy Ashley recovers from surgery on her hand and arm on Skid Row on an afternoon in late May. (Angela Hart/KFF Health News/TNS)
Cindy Ashley recovers from surgery on her hand and arm on Skid Row on an afternoon in late May. (Angela Hart/KFF Health News/TNS)
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Cindy Ashley recovers from surgery on her hand and arm on Skid Row on an afternoon in late May. (Angela Hart/KFF Health News/TNS)
State Sen. Roger Niello, a Republican who represents conservative suburbs outside Sacramento, says the state needs to improve the lives of homeless people through stricter drug policies. He argues that providing drug supplies or offering housing without a mandate to enter treatment enables homeless people to remain on the streets.
Proposition 36, he said, needs to be implemented forcefully, and homeless people should be required to enter treatment in exchange for housing.
“I think of it as tough love,” Niello said. “What Los Angeles is doing, I would call it harm encouragement. They’re encouraging harm by continuing to feed a habit that is, quite frankly, killing people.”
Keith Humphreys, who worked in the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations and pioneered harm reduction practices across the nation, said that communities should find a balance between leniency and law enforcement.
“Parents need to be able to walk their kids to the park without being traumatized. You should be able to own a business without being robbed,” he said. “Harm reduction and treatment both have a place, and we also need prevention and a focus on public safety.”
Just outside the Skid Row Care Campus, Cindy Ashley organized her belongings in a cart after recently leaving a local hospital ER for a deep skin infection on her hand and arm caused by shooting heroin. She also regularly smokes crack, she said.
She was frantically searching for a home so she could heal from two surgeries for the infection. She learned about the new care campus and rushed over to get her name on the waiting list for housing.
“I’m not going to make it out here,” she said, in tears.
DOLTON, Ill. — The village of Dolton, which is where you may find yourself if you’re traveling south through Chicago and run out of Chicago to travel through, which we have heard more about in the past 30 days or so than since it was established 130-odd years ago, which is now best known to the world as the hometown of Pope Leo XIV, is like a lot of Midwestern places. Or a lot of the blink-and-you-miss-it boondocks, backwaters and wherevers other popes have come from.
You never give it a second thought, until you do.
A water tower rises above residential streets, June 10, 2025, in Dolton. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
And so, before our attention swings forever more to the Vatican, know this:
Dolton, whether or not you ever think about it again, is full of kindness and hope. But interesting. It’s a pocket-sized village (4.6 square miles, with a population that peaked at around 26,000 in 1970 and has drifted off ever since). It’s on the banks of muddy Little Calumet River and modest Lake Cottage Grove, though it feels far from anything damp. The town water tower always seems like it could use a fresh coat of paint. Railroad tracks shoot here and there, all over the place. It’s been working class since European settlers (Germans, Dutch) arrived in the 1800s. But after industry faded away generations ago, the future never trended brighter. Dolton kept hoping. Its new wish for a burst of pope-related tourism resonates with another moment in its history 130-odd years ago, when Dolton so hotly anticipated a boom of new residents and tourists to emerge from the success out of Chicago’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, Dolton civic leaders decided to get incorporated.
That boom landed with a wet pop.
Neighboring South Holland began touting itself as the fancy and inviting Onion Capital of the World; meanwhile Dolton became home to a large sauerkraut factory and several nondescript industrial warehouses that churned out canned beets, lima beans, baking equipment, castings and barrels.
See, until a few weeks ago — May 8, to be precise — there wasn’t a lot of there there.
If you’re planning a pilgrimage to the pope’s hometown this summer, keep that in mind: Dolton was never a remarkable place, and never asked to be considered remarkable.
Dolton has good history and bad history, and lawns, stores, squirrels, parks, good people, bad people, boring people, people with too much to say, people with nothing to say. It’s seen plenty of characters: The grandma in the 1800s who would drag her rocking chair out to new railroad construction sites and knit all day, hoping to block yet another soot-spewing steam engine from lumbering into town. The mayor (Ira Hastings) who served from 1935 to 1957, having found his calling after knocking around minor-league baseball — a stint so bad, he played on 12 different teams in only four years and retired with exactly zero home runs and zero RBIs. More ominously, there was that friendly guy down at the local trophy shop (Trophys Are Us), the one who turned out to be a serial killer (David Maust). And that Marine radio operator who was in Desert Storm, who also turned out to be a serial killer (Andrew Urdiales).
There was the Dolton man whom everyone called Motorcycle Mike though it was a misnomer: Mike, an associate of Al Capone’s, was known for stealing cars, so many around the Midwest that when he was finally caught at 82-years old, he became the oldest car thief in Minnesota history.
An eager crowd surges toward President Jimmy Carter on Oct. 16, 1979, as he arrives at Thornridge High School in Dolton. (John Irvine/Chicago Tribune)
Students attend a homecoming celebration for the Thornridge High School boys basketball state champs on March 19, 1972, in Dolton. (Ed Feeney/Chicago Tribune)
Children from Berger-Vandenberg School march through Dolton in their bicentennial parade in the fall of 1975. It was arranged by 5th-grade teacher Mary Kahn. (Lynette Miller/Chicago Tribune)
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An eager crowd surges toward President Jimmy Carter on Oct. 16, 1979, as he arrives at Thornridge High School in Dolton. (John Irvine/Chicago Tribune)
Jimmy Carter once held a town hall meeting in Dolton. And Gene Hackman shot a single scene in Dolton for a movie you never saw (“The Package”). Dennis DeYoung lived with his parents in Dolton, just as he began to play rock music with a few friends who later called themselves Styx.
That said, other than, again, you know, the pope, the second most remarkable thing to happen in Dolton was a demographic shift driven by the decline of factory work and textbook white flight. Which was not that remarkable for Illinois, either. In 1980, there were only 490 Black residents in Dolton; by the 1990s, there were more than 14,000. Today, Dolton is around 90% Black.
Dolton may look different now than it did when it was a blue-collar postwar suburb, but it’s not really all that different. You can still count the stoplights on a few dozen fingers. No one over at Kandy Kane Park (including Park District officials) can tell you why it’s Kandy Kane. The village hall is no larger than a small bank branch; and inside is like a DMV on a slow morning. Official village vehicles are so tiny, a resident described them to me as “clown cars.” So no, it’s not Mayberry. Midwest snark comes factory-installed, as do caveats: Dolton’s fine, you hear. A family place. A quiet place. That’s why people move here. One morning at Olivia’s, where everyone stops for pancakes, a Jamaican retiree showed off photos of grandkids to a retiree who drove a truck for years. They didn’t know each other until that day; before saying goodbye, they made dinner plans.
If it all sounds too idyllic to be true all the time, yes, it is, and so what?
Even the locals who never wanted to live anywhere but Dolton will quickly add, sure, they live among the faded lettering and tattered awnings of far too many shuttered storefronts, businesses that, decades ago, seemed promising to someone. Yes, they say with a self-deprecating chuckle, there’s still no there there in Dolton. But there are thoughtful people who, long before a pope came out of their ranks, were already doing onto others as they would have done onto themselves.
Jevon Ollins and his son, Josiah, 11, have breakfast at Olivia’s on June 10, 2025, in Dolton. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Jacques Lamarre waves to a neighbor on his block, June 10, 2025, in Dolton. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
The first resident I approached was mowing his lawn — except, I learned, it was actually the lawn of an aging neighbor who lives on a fixed income and needed a hand. The man with the mower, Jacques Lamarre, 70, semi-retired, had the time, so … He says it self-consciously. He’s not looking to become a pope or a saint or anything. He speaks with the musical French timbre of his native Haiti. He’s lived in Dolton since the 1970s. He talks long and wittily, it’s as if he had been waiting for someone to ask him why he lives on this block, in this neighborhood, in this town, in this state.
He smiles and says: It’s a place of “two faces.”
North side is rough, west side is easy. “But that’s also relative,” he adds generously. He raised three kids here, all of whom moved away as they got older. His neighbors, also elderly. South Holland, a stone’s throw away, is “upper grade,” but he prefers here. “We get Fourth of July fireworks. And we have a lot of churches. Do something you shouldn’t, you don’t go far to tell someone you feel bad!”
Indeed, down at the end of the street, at Faith United Methodist, there’s a wide wall with a sun-washed sign that seems to beg: “NO BALL PLAYING.” You can tell, ages ago, this was the perfect wall for hitting a ball against, but whatever concrete existed beneath it is now overgrown grass.
Just the other day, one of Katrina Cotton’s neighbors called her at work. They were worried because it appeared someone suspicious was creeping around Cotton’s backyard. After a few worried moments, it dawned on Cotton: Oh, wait, that’s just the termite man, spraying.
“I love Dolton,” she said, “it’s my hometown, people look out for one another. I know everyone. I know the person who lives in that house.” She points across a park. “And that house. It’s cozy. The kind of place where, from where I am standing, I know if I cross two train tracks there, I’m in Chicago.”
It’s the kind of place where the landmarks on your personal map are the same as everyone else’s. To reach, say, the Free-N-Deed Market downtown, near the village hall: Pass the basketball court, continue by that long parking lot nobody parks in, pass the brown and tan houses that look like brown and tan houses, the apartment complex that could be anywhere, and when you get to the building that used to be New Zion church, by the closed obstetrics office, turn left — there you are.
Founder Nicole Scott, center, helps a customer bag groceries with volunteers at her Free-N-Deed food pantry, June 10, 2025, in Dolton. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
You’ll find Nicole Scott, who founded the Free-N-Deed food pantry, as well as, next door, Tabitha’s Closet-N-Thrift, which is named for the Biblical Tabitha, also known as Dorcas, also known as a compassionate soul who helped widows. A long note in the window explains all of this and much more. Sales go to the American Association of Single Parents, which Scott founded. Scott created all of this. But she doesn’t like to acknowledge that. “Because God does it all, in my book.”
She’s short and imposing and sizes you up and keeps moving.
You are taking her time but she doesn’t want to brush you off, she’s not rude. She’s building a soup kitchen in an adjoining space; she’s calling it Elijah’s Cafe. Beside that, an emergency shelter; she’s calling it Jacob’s House. She’s been repurposing an entire strip mall, with Free-N-Deed as the anchor, mainly for Dolton residents who could use help. Many do: About 20% of residents live below the poverty line; unemployment is roughly double the state rate.
Scott whispers it’s been great working with Jason House, the new mayor of Dolton, but the last few years were a trial. She says nothing more. She’s discreet. Her eyes search your face and tell you what you already know: The previous mayor, Tiffany Henyard, voted out last winter beneath a cloud of financial probes and federal investigations, had a nickname: “Worst mayor in America.” Scott smiles tightly.
The two things you’re never supposed to talk about, politics and religion, have become the only two things that anyone wants to talk about when it comes to Dolton, Illinois.
A homeowner of 25 years looks out over her decorated front yard, June 10, 2025, across from the Park District in Dolton. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Dolton police sit June 10, 2025, outside the former Prevost family home where Pope Leo XIV grew up on East 141st Place in Dolton. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
At one time, it was just land.
As late as the 1960s, much of that dirt held on to an endemic smell of onion fields. Its first residents were Potawatomi and Winnebago. Eventually the town was named for the Dolton Family, who traveled here from Ohio in a carriage pulled by oxen. They settled on this land for reasons many people still settle here: They found Chicago expensive and crowded. Dolton suggested opportunity, and indeed, the railroads arrived quickly, then the corporations. Industry was good to Dolton for decades. The soil made for perfect bricks. The rivers were ideal for shipping. Plus, Chicago was right there. US Steel, as well as other factories, brought in solid, middle-class factory jobs, and the railroads attracted employees from Pullman who eventually stayed. Residents around the Southland began referring to Dolton as “Dolton Station,” a place so crisscrossed with rail lines that children headed to school could be spotted sitting crosslegged by the tracks, doing homework as they waited, blocked again by slow-moving trains inching past.
Dolton, for a while, turned into the archetype of the 20th century blue-collar Midwest, modest union work, affordable bungalows. The first movie theater in the south suburbs was built here. Churches, in particular, proliferated, as well as the kinds of churchgoers who lecture on street corners about the evils of drinking and dancing (while being known to go out drinking themselves every night).
After 1970, Dolton became another kind of Midwest example.
Corporate globalization, slowly snowballing, closing its factories, taking jobs. The property tax base evaporated, and real estate speculators bought homes from deserters. More of Dolton now rented. By the 1980s, residents were putting signs in their windows urging neighbors to stay.
The first Black residents came from Chicago for affordable housing, better schools, more quiet and less crime. Many others arrived from the South. Cotton’s parents moved here from Alabama, partly because, like the Europeans who had come here a century earlier, rural life agreed with them.
James Stewart, partly retired, sat in his driveway the other day watching a neighbor curl his body around a lawn mower, fine-tuning its innards, picking at clumps of fresh grass. For years, he built sidewalks here, he said. He was a cement mason. He moved to Dolton 30 years ago, from Englewood, to avoid gang violence. Before that, he was in Holly Springs, Mississippi, home of Ida B. Wells, the sort of place you can get on a horse and ride for miles. He lived on a 3,800-acre plantation; he calls himself one of the last sharecroppers. He longed for that quiet. He’s so entrenched here now, he figures he could be mayor himself. He holds no illusions and suffers no doubters: “Dolton is up, down, good days, bad days, like anywhere these days.”
Tony, 15, cuts grass at family member’s home, June 10, 2025, across from the Park District in Dolton. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
New Dolton may have come for many of the reasons as old Dolton but by the 1990s, the land was no longer firm. Warehouse jobs were replacing factory jobs. Residents became familiar with the hollow optimism of “redevelopment” and “enterprise zones.” It’s hard to hear when the house next door leans so improbably to one side you don’t know what’s holding it up. Against a closed government office there’s a painted sign boasting of Dolton as a “certified city,” a reference to a state development plan from 1983. In 2025, it comes across like a reassurance that Dolton still exists.
Except hope is as easy to spot as decline.
The way bungalow owners emerge on a bright morning to weed whack away a burst of dandelions. The way the library lines its shelves with books about spring and renewal and optimism. The way Wilma’s Famous BBQ still sells its beloved Obama Juice — lemonade, tea and raw honey — in those small plastic jugs you used to see in the ‘70s. Hope here can look as modest as the sign at Dolton Bowl promising “freshly oiled” lanes every day. I knocked on the door of a home that — considering this is the pope’s hometown — has an unfortunate street number: 666. No one answered. That’s a win. Sometimes you take hope where you can find it.
A fence closes off the private fishing club at Lake Cottage Grove, June 10, 2025, in Dolton. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
I asked Nakita Cloud, the village spokesperson, about Lake Cottage Grove — one of the few sites of natural beauty here. It’s controlled by a “privately owned fishing club” named the Piscateers, who keep Dolton out using chainlink fence; that arrangement, once disputed by the village, upheld by state courts, began in the 1940s. She said the Piscateers, in fact, recently invited Dolton trustees for a barbecue and, though nothing will change about the lake, she found them “hospitable.”
That’s what progress can look like.
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Cloud grew up in Chicago, but she pictured Dolton as “the goal,” the quiet suburb to retreat one day. “There was a period of riff-raff, I won’t lie,” she said, “but crime’s down. A better future is not far.” Dolton hadn’t marched in any local parade in years, but on Memorial Day, when village staff carried a banner in a South Holland parade, strangers from neighboring communities stepped off the sidewalks and met them spontaneously in the street, hugging them, urging them to keep going.
Hold that image tight.
Because, surprised as everyone was that a new pope came from Dolton, again, this is exactly the kind of place where popes come from, where miracles get reported and saints grow up. Working class, ramshackle, tight knit, borderline rural, hoping against hope. Remember that the next time someone tells you this new pope is from Chicago. He’s not — not really. He’s from Dolton, a small place where nothing interesting has ever happened and the primary export these days is decency.
The vast tract of land off Route 85 was meant to be a symbol of Made-in-America manufacturing. A billion-dollar battery factory was going to rise, bringing thousands of new jobs. The business announced, “Get Ready Arizona,” the governor said the state was thrilled and even the U.S. president gave the project a shoutout.
But here, in the boomtown of Buckeye, less than an hour away from Phoenix, the 214-acre lot sits empty. Work on the site had started, said Shelby Lizarraga, who manages the gas station next door, “but then it went all quiet.”
Four years after the fanfare, battery maker Kore Power Inc. abandoned its plans for a plant in Buckeye. The company’s chief executive officer stepped down and a promised $850 million federal loan was cancelled.
Kore isn’t alone in its dashed ambitions. In Massachusetts, a wind turbine cable factory set to be built on the site of a former coal power plant was scrapped. In Georgia, the construction of a facility that would have made parts for electric vehicle batteries was suspended more than halfway through. And in Colorado, a lithium-ion battery maker said it wouldn’t go forward with its factory there, at least for now.
They’re among the dozens of planned green factories that have been cancelled, with more delayed or downsized, all hit by soaring costs, high interest rates and slow-growing EV demand. About 9% of the $261 billion in green factory investment announced since 2021 has been shelved — most of it since President Donald Trump returned to office in January — according to research firm Atlas Public Policy. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has said his agency doesn’t plan to move forward with some of the big-dollar loans that had been made to green manufacturing plants during President Joe Biden’s term.
Now there’s another, major threat to the sector: Trump’s massive tax-and-spending package, which rolls back Biden’s generous green subsidies.
Signed into law by Trump on Friday, it phases out credits for producing solar and wind energy years before they were designed to expire. It also ends federal tax credits for electric vehicles this September instead of in 2032.
Under Biden, a Democratic Congress passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act a year later, setting aside hundreds of billions of dollars in incentives for clean-energy projects. New factories were announced from South Carolina to Michigan to Arizona, set to churn out EVs, batteries and clean-energy parts. Biden and Democrats sought to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. and make the country independent of, and competitive with, fast-electrifying China.
Many of the projects would be in red and purple states, shielding the policy against GOP attacks — or so the thinking went. That idea has now collapsed. (Among the members of Congress who voted for Trump’s bill was Paul Gosar, a Republican who represents Buckeye.)
Trump said at the signing that the country “is going to be a rocketship economically.” But fallout is likely to include more clean energy projects and the jobs they provide, or could have. Tesla Inc. Chief Elon Musk had lambasted the package on X as “severely damaging” to “industries of the future.”
The U.S. pulling back now means it will lag other countries that have invested in green technologies, and that will hurt economic growth and boost reliance on overseas manufacturers long term, said Hannah Hess of Rhodium Group, a research firm.
“There’s also the risk of stranded investments, a sizable amount,” she said.
Lithium-ion battery manufacturers like Kore face strict rules on using foreign components, plus knock-on effects from the solar and EV credit phaseouts. Because of the former, fewer grid batteries will be installed over the next decade, according to the research group Energy Innovation. The demise of the EV credit will likely dent consumer appetite for electric vehicles — and by extension, demand for the batteries they run on.
Buckeye — a former farming town named by settlers from Ohio — is a hotbed of building activity. Close to the Kore site is the suburban sprawl that’s come to characterize the Phoenix area’s rapid growth. Concrete is being poured in foundations and piles of rebar are stacked on construction sites, where tracts of desert are being transformed into new neighborhoods.
Executives at Kore had scoured 300 sites across the country before settling on Buckeye. Land was cheap, it was close to major West Coast ports and Arizona’s dry climate wouldn’t impair the chemistry of lithium-ion batteries. The company announced its factory in 2021, planning to start construction that year and roll out batteries in 2023. It would be Buckeye’s biggest employer, creating 3,000 jobs.
But as executives drew up construction plans, inflation hiked costs, while rising interest rates made financing more expensive. And the project got mired in the same slow permitting that stalls projects nationwide.
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Costs swelled to $1.25 billion from $1 billion, so the company made adjustments to control expenses — even downsizing the factory — and worked aggressively to keep the project alive, Kore’s current CEO Jay Bellows said in a telephone interview. “We were trying to move as fast as we could,” Bellows said. “But ultimately, the costs were just really high.” The battery maker later got a loan commitment from the Energy Department.
Kore ended up getting approvals to move forward with construction in 2024, almost a year after it had wanted to start producing batteries. And then uncertainty loomed over the fate of federal green incentives if Trump were to win the election.
In Buckeye’s city hall, about 10 minutes away from Kore’s site, Mayor Eric Orsborn sensed that things were amiss. The project’s timeline kept getting longer and delays dragged out. “Things slipped a little bit more, a little bit more,” he said in an interview in his office.
Kore then said it was ending its plans to build in Buckeye, 10 days after Trump was sworn in. It’s one of 53 out of 715 green factories announced since 2021 that have been cancelled, according to Atlas Public Policy.
The outlook for green enterprises has darkened as policy shifts unsettle manufacturers, with EV makers feeling it the most, said Matt Shanahan of Marathon Capital, an investment bank focused on the energy transition. “The rules have changed,” he said.
The pace of cancellations and delays depends on how the market reacts to the law, he added, but early-stage projects are especially at risk. “To break ground on a new facility — I think it’s very challenging right now.” Energy storage may remain more resilient thanks to surging data center demand, he said.
Kore is now on the hunt for an existing building to move into, with power and infrastructure in place so it can save money and get to market faster, Bellows said. Looking back, he said he learned the need to move more quickly and efficiently. The company tried, he said, but “it’s a long, arduous process” to go from dirt to a fully operating factory.
Even so, other green facilities in the region are forging ahead. In Queen Creek, another fast-growing community that’s about 80 miles to the west of Buckeye, construction is underway on a $3 billion EV battery facility by LG Energy Solution. Cranes tower over the sprawling site, while bulldozers kick up plumes of desert dust as forklifts scuttle by. The project has faced its own challenges — construction was paused for some time last year as the company scrapped plans for a bigger plant.
But now the factory is set to open next year, and LG plans to employ 1,500 workers there by 2027. The company said in an April press release that it aims to contribute to a “local battery ecosystem” and that it will hire locally.
“It’s a manufacturing powerhouse,” Queen Creek Mayor Julia Wheatley said in an interview, adding that the town is seeing strong interest from companies looking to move near the plant.
On a Monday in late June, the empty Kore plot scorched in 100F-plus heat. Nearby, desert gave way to parcels of farmland, discount stores and palm-tree-lined neighborhoods. Dairy cows took shade from the heat, while trucks stacked with hay bales hurtled by.
Across the road, Joe Skoog, who runs a trucking company, said he would have liked to have pitched his business to Kore had the factory gone ahead. But he didn’t see the cancellation as much of a setback for the growing region. “Come back in five, 10 years’ time, and there will be more manufacturers and warehouses, and fewer farms,” he said.
Orsborn, Buckeye’s mayor, said he was disappointed, but not disheartened. He enthused about Buckeye’s population boom, fueled by Californian transplants, the big-box retailers and movie theaters opening up and how Kore’s shovel-ready site — with power, water and infrastructure now installed — is now even more attractive for other businesses that want to move in.
