THERE IS AUDIO. Author Michael Wolff has dozens of hours of recordings to back up the bombshell quotes in Fire and Fury, his insider story of the Trump campaign and its first year in office.
■ New York Magazine runs excerpts: Trump didn’t really want to be president.
■ Wolff in the past “has been accused of not just re-creating scenes in his books and columns, but of creating them wholesale.”
■ The president’s lawyer is demanding the publisher cancel distribution of the book.
■ The White House is moving to ban the use of personal cellphones in the West Wing.
‘A STRATEGIC GENTRIFICATION PLAN … TO PUSH PEOPLE OF COLOR OUT.’ Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris Kennedy says Mayor Emanuel is tacitly supporting policy that is “cutting off money for schools, cutting off money for police, … closing hospitals, closing access to mental health facilities” in Chicago.
■ Emanuel’s former top cop is closer to running for mayor himself.
‘IT’S GOING TO DRY UP A LOT OF … INVESTMENT THAT HAS GONE TOWARD MARIJUANA.’ Updating coverage: An anti-pot advocate hails Attorney General Sessions’ decision to roll back the Obama-era policy that let marijuana become legal across the country.
■ Sessions is sending Chicago four more federal prosecutors to focus on violent crime.
■ In Lake Forest, a man and a woman are dead in what apparently was a domestic dispute that led to gunfire.
BOMB CYCLONE. Updating coverage: The East is shivering under assault from a storm that has prompted emergency declarations up and down the coast.
■ … disrupting transportation in Chicago and across the country.
■ The nationwide deep freeze is driving heating fuel demand that may trigger shortages.
■ The Dakota Access oil pipeline runs through Central Illinois, where farmers are realizing, “What you really think is yours really isn’t anymore.”
■ The vast majority of computers and computing devices—including phones—made since 1995 are vulnerable to newly exposed security flaws.
CHICAGO EYES ON L.A. Newsroom staffers at Chicago-based Tronc Inc.’s Los Angeles Times vote today on a proposal they join the NewsGuild union—a landmark moment at a company with a history of strong opposition to unionization.
■ Update your inappropriate behavior scorecards, please: Ousters for CBS News' political director and the IGN website's editor in chief.
■ Facebook board member and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel—the guy who funded the lawsuit that brought down Gawker and who was one of the few Silicon Valley leaders to support Donald Trump’s campaign openly in 2016—is considering launching a new conservative cable TV network.
■ … at least some vestiges of which, as of this morning, survived online.
■ … in a story that was by far yesterday’s most-clicked Chicago Public Square item.
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