The Chicago press corps have gathered around a lectern. The city is in crisis. Schools are closed. Garbage is piling up. Government workers are striking. Businesses are fleeing. As cameras flash, the mayor of Chicago, flanked by the governor, makes a chilling announcement: “We’re flat broke.” Unless Congress steps in, he says, the state and the city will default.

This scene, pulled from Yale Prof. David Schleicher’s 2023 book, In A Bad State, which chronicles the history of federal responses to state and local budget crises, is hypothetical. But after years of rampant corruption and chronic mismanagement, Chicago is facing a confluence of crises eerily similar to the one laid out in Schleicher’s book. Once America’s most vibrant city, Chicago has been hobbled by its own leaders. The question now facing Chicago — and so many deep-blue cities that, for too long, have pursued a similar path — is whether it can be fixed, and, if so, how?