The Quebec-based electric school bus maker found eager customers in Illinois school districts, which wanted to take advantage of generous federal grants, reduce pollution and give kids a cleaner, quieter ride to school.

But the bad news about Lion, which has been building for months, got worse Monday, with a court-appointed monitor saying there is a “very high” likelihood that the company will be liquidated, according to the Globe and Mail and other outlets.

“It’s a bit of a sad story, because it’s the right company with an interesting product,” said Yan Cimon, a professor of business strategy at the Université Laval in Québec City. He said Lion followed an ambitious path — including a bold expansion into the United States — and ultimately the company’s sales didn’t keep up.

“Had Lion been a bit more conservative, maybe they wouldn’t be where they are,” he said.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a strong proponent of clean energy, attended the opening of Lion’s now-shuttered Illinois plant in 2023, along with both Illinois senators.

“Illinois has made tremendous strides turning the state into a manufacturing hub for electric vehicles,” the governor’s press secretary, Alex Gough, said Monday in a written statement.

“Governor Pritzker remains committed to maintaining an ecosystem where EV companies and their employees are able to thrive,” the statement said. “Just this morning, (electric vehicle-maker) Rivian made a major commitment to their growth in Illinois by bringing a supplier park to Normal.”

Rivian is constructing a new 1.2 million-square-foot supplier park in Normal, according to a news release from the company. As part of that, Rivian will invest nearly $120 million, which will enable the company to develop the supplier park and create nearly 100 new direct jobs.

Lion announced in December that it was suspending operations at its Illinois plant and temporarily laying off approximately 400 workers in Canada and the United States.

Then last week the company suffered another major setback when Quebec announced it would not invest $24 million in an effort to relaunch the company, according to the Globe and Mail.

“It does not bode well for Lion,” Cimon said. “It may be worth more if it’s dismembered and its assets are sold individually than if the company is kept whole.”

Workingman Capital, a company that helps sell or liquidate manufacturing assets, is listing an equipment auction at its website for a “Lion-Electric Chicago Facility,” at the address of Lion’s Illinois plant.

Susan Mudd, a senior policy advocate at the Environmental Law and Policy Center, said Lion’s apparent failure is very unfortunate, but she sees it as a small step back rather than a reflection of broader trends.

“It doesn’t mean that electric school buses themselves are the problem. A particular company expanded in too many ways, too fast,” she said.

She pointed to new players in the electric school bus business, such as GreenPower in West Virginia, and she noted that big legacy school bus companies such as Bluebird, which sell both electric and diesel buses, have a “huge advantage” over newer, electric-only companies like Lion.

Electric buses are still “where the future is going,” Cimon said.

“The long-term trends are there,” he said. “The whole world is moving toward electric. You see it in China. You see it in Europe. Europeans are really interested in electric. There are other North American companies that look toward electric. So in that sense, it will come.”

nschoenberg@chicagotribune.com

The El Segundo, California-based company said the increases are necessary even though it is speeding up its plans to diversify its manufacturing base away from China. Trump imposed a 145% tariff on most Chinese-made products.

Company executives told analysts on a conference call that China currently accounts for 40% of Mattel’s global production. The company plans to move roughly 500 products this year from manufacturers in China to sources in other countries, compared to 280 products last year.

For some highly sought after toys, Mattel said it would enlist factories in more than one country. To prevent possible shortages, the company said it was focusing on getting products to stores without interruptions.

The company said that even with price increases it expects 40% to 50% of its toys will cost customers $20 or less.

“The diversified and flexible supply chain in global commercial organizations are clear advantages to Mattel in this period of uncertainty,” CEO and Chairman Ynon Kreiz told analysts.

Citing the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the president’s trade policies, however, Mattel withdrew its annual earnings forecast on Monday. The company said it would be “difficult to predict” consumer spending and the company’s U.S. sales for the remainder of the year without more information.

Mattel reported larger-than expected first-quarter sales but also a wider loss. Mattel said sales rose 2% to $827 million for the quarter that ended March 31.

The company’s loss expanded to $40.3 million, or 12 cents per share, in the quarter. That compares with a loss of $28.3 million, or 8 cents per share, in the year-ago period.

Analysts expected a loss of 10 cents on sales of $786.1 million for the first quarter, according to FactSet.

Mattel’s shares were down less than 1% in after markets trading.

Justice Department attorneys stayed the legal course charted by Biden administration, though they didn’t directly weigh in on the underlying issue of access to the drug that’s part of the nation’s most common method of abortion.

Rather, the government argued the states don’t have the legal right, or standing, to sue.

“The states are free to pursue their claims in a district where venue is proper, but the states’ claims before this court must be dismissed or transferred pursuant to the venue statute’s mandatory command,” federal government attorneys wrote.

The lawsuit from Idaho, Kansas and Missouri argues that Food and Drug Administration should roll back access to mifepristone. They filed their complaint after the Supreme Court preserved access to mifepristone last year. They want the FDA to prohibit telehealth prescriptions for mifepristone, require three in-office visits and restrict the point in a pregnancy when it can be used.

The case is being considered by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas, a Trump nominee who once ruled in favor of halting approval for the drug.

Kacsmaryk’s original ruling came in a lawsuit filed by anti-abortion groups. It was narrowed by an appeals court before being tossed out by the Supreme Court, which found the plaintiffs lacked the legal right to sue.

The three states later moved to revive the case, arguing they did have legal standing because access to the drug undermined their abortion laws.

But the Department of Justice attorneys said the states can’t just piggyback on the earlier lawsuit as a way to keep the case in Texas.

Nothing is stopping the states from filing the lawsuit someplace else, attorney Daniel Schwei wrote, but the venue has to have some connection to the claims being made.

Besides, Schwei wrote, the states are challenging actions the FDA took in 2016, when it first loosened restrictions on mifeprostone. That’s well past the six-year time limit to sue, he said.

Abortion is banned at all stages of pregnancy in Idaho. Missouri had a strict ban, but clinics recently began offering abortions again after voters approved a new constitutional amendment for reproductive rights. Abortion is generally legal up to 22 weeks in Kansas, where voters rejected an anti-abortion ballot measure in 2022, though the state does have age restrictions.

Trump told Time magazine in December he would not restrict access to abortion medication. On the campaign trail, said abortion is an issue for the states and stressed that he appointed justices to the Supreme Court who were in the majority when striking down the national right to abortion in 2022.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s stance on abortion seems to have shifted at times, drawing criticism from both abortion rights advocates and anti-abortion forces. During his first confirmation hearing in January, he repeatedly said, “I have always believed abortion is a tragedy,” when pressed about his views.

Mifepristone is usually used in combination with a second drug for medication abortion, which has accounted for more than three-fifths of all abortions in the U.S. since the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.

Over the weekend, Trump accused other countries of “stealing the movie-making capabilities” of the U.S. and said that he had authorized the Commerce Department and the U.S. Trade Representative to immediately begin the process of implementing this new import tax on all foreign-made films. But further specifics or dates weren’t provided. And the White House confirmed that no final decisions had been made as of Monday.

Trump later said that he would meet with industry executives about the proposal but a lot remains unclear about how an import tax on complex, international productions could even be implemented.

If imposed, experts warn that such a tariff would dramatically hike the costs of making movies today. That uncertainty could put filmmakers in limbo, much like other industries that have recently been caught in the crosshairs of today’s ongoing trade wars.

Unlike other sectors that have recently been targeted by tariffs, however, movies go beyond physical goods, bringing larger intellectual property ramifications into question. Here’s what we know.

Why is Trump threatening this steep movie tariff?

Trump is citing national security concerns, a justification he’s similarly used to impose import taxes on certain countries and a range of sector-specific goods.

In a Sunday night post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump claimed that the American movie industry is “DYING to a very fast death” as other countries offer “all sorts of incentives” to draw filmmaking away from the U.S.

Trump has previously voiced concern about movie production moving overseas. And in recent years, U.S. film and television production has been hampered between setbacks from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Hollywood guild strikes of 2023 and the recent wildfires in the Los Angeles area. Incentive programs have also long-influenced where movies are shot both abroad and within the U.S., with more production leaving California to states like Georgia and New Mexico — as well as countries like Canada.

But unlike other sectors targeted by Trump’s recently-imposed tariffs, the American film industry currently holds a trade deficit that’s in the U.S.’s favor.

In movie theaters, American-produced movies overwhelmingly dominate the domestic marketplace. Data from the Motion Picture Association also shows that American films made $22.6 billion in exports and $15.3 billion in trade surplus in 2023 — with a recent report noting that these films “generated a positive balance of trade in every major market in the world” for the U.S.

Last year, international markets accounted for over 70% of Hollywood’s total box office revenue, notes Heeyon Kim, an assistant professor of strategy at Cornell University. She warns that tariffs and potential retaliation from other countries impacting this industry could result in billions of dollars in lost earnings and thousands of jobs.

“To me, (this) makes just no sense,” she said, adding that such tariffs could “undermine otherwise a thriving part of the U.S. economy.”

The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represents behind-the-scenes entertainment workers across the U.S. and Canada, said in a statement Monday that Trump had “correctly recognized” the “urgent threat from international competition” that the American film and television industry faces today. But the union said it instead recommended the administration implement a federal production tax incentive and other provisions to “level the playing field” while not harming the industry overall.

How could a tax on foreign-made movies work?

That’s anyone’s guess.

“Traditional tariffs apply to physical imports crossing borders, but film production primarily involves digital services — shooting, editing and post-production work that happens electronically,” notes Ann Koppuzha, a lawyer and business law lecturer at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business.

Koppuzha said that film production is more like an applied service that can be taxed, not tariffed. But taxes require Congressional approval, which could be a challenge even with a Republican majority.

Making a movie is also an incredibly complex — and international — process. It’s common for both large and small films to include production in the U.S. and in other countries. Big-budget movies like the upcoming “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,” for instance, are shot around the world.

U.S. studios frequently shoot abroad because tax incentives can aid production costs. But a blanket tariff across the board could discourage that or limit options, Kim said — hurting both Hollywood films and the global industry that helps create them.

“When you make these sort of blanket rules, you’re missing some of the nuance of how production works,” added Steven Schiffman, a longtime industry veteran and adjunct professor at Georgetown University. “Sometimes you just need to go to the location, because frankly it’s way too expensive just to try to create in a soundstage”

Schiffman points to popular titles filmed outside the U.S. — such as Warner Bros’ “Harry Potter” series, which was almost entirely shot in the U.K. “The cost to have done that would have like literally double to produce those movies under this proposed tariff,” he said.

Could movie tariffs have repercussions on other intellectual property?

Overall, experts warn that the prospect of tariffing foreign-made movies ventures into uncharted waters.

“There’s simply no precedent or sense for applying tariffs to these types of creative services,” Koppuzha said. And while the Trump administration could extend similar threats to other forms of intellectual property, like music, “they’d encounter the same practical hurdles.”

But if successful, some also warn of potential retaliation. Kim points to “quotas” that some countries have had to help boost their domestic films by ensuring they get a portion of theater screens, for example. Many have reduced or suspended such quotas over the years in the name of open trade — but if the U.S. places a sweeping tariff on all foreign-made films, these kinds of quotas could come back, “which would hurt Hollywood film or any of the U.S.-made intellectual property,” Kim said.

And while U.S. dominance in film means “there are fewer substitutes” for retaliation, Schiffman notes that other forms of entertainment — like game development — could see related impacts down the road.

Others stress the potential consequences of hampering international collaboration overall.

“Creative content distribution requires thoughtful economic approaches that recognize how modern storytelling flows across borders,” notes Frank Albarella, U.S. media and telecommunications sector leader at KPMG. “The question hanging over every screen: Might we better nurture American storytelling through smart, targeted incentives, or could we inadvertently force audiences to pay more for what could become a narrower creative landscape?”

AP Writers Jake Coyle and Jill Colvin in New York, Aamer Madhani in Palm Beach, Florida and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.

Richard Donta Cotton, 32, appeared before Judge William Gamboney about 12:30 p.m. at the courthouse on multiple gun felony charges, according to court records.

After Gamboney made his decision, Cotton “ran from the courtroom and exited the courthouse,” according to a statement from the sheriff’s office.

A warrant was issued for his arrest.

Anyone with information is asked to call the sheriff’s police at 847-635-1188 or dial 911.

Two cases were identified in Missouri, and one each in Florida, Illinois, South Dakota, Utah and Wisconsin, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

People got sick in February and March of this year, the CDC said. They all had the same strain of salmonella — a version that has been traced to hatcheries in the past. The investigation is continuing, health officials said.

Salmonella bacteria cause about 1.35 million infections in the United States every year, and recent outbreaks have been tied to sources such as cucumbers, eggs, unpasteurized milk, fresh basil, geckos and pet bearded dragons.

But one concern is that chickens and other backyard poultry can carry salmonella bacteria even if they look healthy and clean. A backyard poultry-associated outbreak that ended last year was tied to 470 cases spread across 48 states, including one death.

Chipparoni is the president and CEO of Res Publica Group, a PR firm whose major clients include the White Sox, Lollapalooza parent company C3 and the Wirtz family’s corporation, which owns the Blackhawks, co-owns the United Center and operates Breakthru Beverage Group. He declined to comment, as did a Choose Chicago spokesperson. Crain’s Chicago Business first reported the news.

The appointment should coincide with Choose’s annual meeting, where the organization’s new CEO, Kristen Reynolds, will also be sworn in. Sources familiar with Chipparoni’s appointment said he would be a natural local complement to Reynolds, a Texas native who has worked in Arizona and Long Island’s equivalent tourism organization for more than a decade.

There has been no permanent CEO at the organization for more than a year. After Lynn Osmond stepped down at the end of January 2024, board member and former Chicago Tribune executive Rich Gamble has served in an interim role.

Glenn Eden, the current board chair, wrote to fellow board members to give notice that Johnson had slated Chipparoni and Barrett for the seats, and that Chipparoni’s term would begin on July 1. Board members can serve up to two, three-year terms.

Johnson’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Chipparoni, a press aide to former Gov. Jim Edgar, was previously a member of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority and also chaired Navy Pier and its marketing committee.

Barrett, chief diversity and engagement officer for developer Sterling Bay, recently served as a senior adviser to the Chicago host committee for the DNC. She previously was deputy director of the Heartland Alliance, national press secretary for Rainbow PUSH and was director of communications for the Congressional Black Caucus.

“There is a mess in Washington right now and we need to send someone who will fight for all of us in Illinois, but that person will not be me,” Frerichs wrote in an email to supporters.

“After many conversations with friends, and lengthy talks with my wife, I have reached the decision that the answer is no,” he wrote. “I am not willing to travel to Washington, D.C., 30-some weeks a year and spend so many nights away from my children. I don’t want to miss their games, their recitals, or even that many bedtimes.”

Frerichs, a native of Gifford in central Illinois and a former Champaign County auditor and state senator who later moved to Chicago, remarried in 2022 and has twin 2-year-old sons as well as a college-age daughter from his first marriage.

Frerichs said he “aspired to follow in Sen. Durbin’s footsteps” and said he was “humbled at the outpouring of support” following the April 23 announcement by the state’s senior senator that he would not seek a sixth senate term.

So far, two-term Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton is the only announced Democrat seeking to replace Durbin, although three members of Congress — U.S. Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Schaumburg, Robin Kelly of Matteson and Lauren Underwood of Naperville — also are considering a bid for the party’s March 2026 nomination.

Stratton, who has the backing of billionaire Gov. JB Pritzker, announced Monday she had named Laura Ricketts and her spouse, Brooke Skinner Ricketts, as among four co-chairs of the campaign’s finance committee. Laura Ricketts is a board member of the Chicago Cubs ownership and she is lead owner of the Chicago Red Stars women’s soccer team. Ricketts is also a Chicago Sky women’s basketball team co-owner

The department made the announcement after reassuring the community Monday that it had increased patrols and was stationing unmarked units in strategic areas, according to its social media page. Police said they’d deemed the threat against a school resource officer, principal and security officer “lower level” after preliminary investigation.

“Our dedicated officers, in collaboration with the Merrillville Community School Corporation, have worked swiftly and diligently to investigate these threats and ensure the safety of our students, staff, and community,” the statement read. “For now, please rest assured that our schools are secure, and we look forward to finishing off the school year as we move towards summer.”

The investigation started seemingly after someone posted screenshots of the threat on another social media page dedicated to the town. The person said they’d contacted police after they were sent the messages, which threatened to included a threat to shoot up and bomb the school and listed names. The Post-Tribune isn’t naming them because they’re the victims.

Merrillville Community School Corporation for its part released on its social media page Sunday that the administration was aware of an “altered image circulating on social media, which references Pierce Middle School.”

“While this image originated from an unrelated incident in another state, it was modified to include specific threats against members of our staff,” the release said. “We have a very credible lead on the source of this altered image, and the matter is currently under active investigation.

“Please know that threats of any kind are taken very seriously and carry serious consequences — both within the school system and through law enforcement.”

School wasn’t canceled Monday for Merrillville students, the release said.

Corporation Spokeswoman Tina Davis-Powell said via email Monday that the schools had no further comment at this time.

Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.

Police responded just before 4:30 p.m. to the branch at 11960 Western Ave., after reports three men armed with handguns robbed an armored vehicle, according to the FBI.

The men wore dark-colored sweatpants and hooded sweatshirts, a black facial covering and light grey gloves, the FBI said. They fled in a car and are still at large, the FBI said.

The FBI said no injuries were reported.

The FBI asks anyone with information to call 312-421-6700 or go to tips.fbi.gov.