OBAMA CENTER OVERHAUL. Plans for the president’s memorial site have a new look … and a price tag.
■ The Sun-Times’ Lynn Sweet: The museum’s tower would be “taller, slimmer and featuring a more welcoming façade.”
■ A makeover of Field Museum’s central hall will bring hanging “plant clouds” and flying pterosaurs.
■ Chicago’s museums want approval to raise admission prices.
IT’S A FIGHT. Longtime Rahm Emanuel critic and Chicago principals association president Troy LaRaviere has filed paperwork for fundraising to challenge Emanuel for the mayor’s job.
■ Cook County’s ethics board is hitting embattled Assessor Joe Berrios with $41,000 in fines for failing to return campaign cash from tax appeals lawyers whose donations exceeded legal limits.
■ Down to No. 2: Dentist.
■ How U.S. News analyzes jobs.
‘MY DOG WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN DONALD TRUMP.’ But, Neil Steinberg writes in the Sun-Times, Oprah Winfrey might not be an improvement: “Ever look at a copy of O magazine? … Who’s always on the cover? The Queen of the World. Oprah.”
■ Winfrey’s home is in the thick of California’s deadly mudslides.
■ Jonathan Chait in New York: “Republicans love dumb presidents.”
SHE’S BAAAACK. The president has renominated Kathleen Hartnett White to lead the Council on Environmental Quality, despite first-round congressional testimony one critic labeled “embarrassing.”
■ In 2016, she told Rolling Stone, “We’re not a democracy if science dictates what our rules are.”
■ Trump faces charges of playing favorites in exempting Florida from his administration’s moves to open the coasts to more offshore drilling.
■ The Trump administration has been subtly changing the way the government presents climate data.
PORK-BARREL PRESIDENT. Trump is calling for a return to the system of congressional “earmarks,” also known as “pork-barrel spending,” where lawmakers can direct cash to specific projects without merit-based review—a move Fox News notes conservatives consider the “antithesis of draining the swamp.”
■ Republican negotiators say Trump aide Stephen (“the powers of the president … will not be questioned”) Miller is standing in the way of a deal on immigration.
■ The New York Times has canceled a public event with Franco.
■ In France, actress Catherine Deneuve and other prominent women say #MeToo has gone too far, punishing men for “touching a knee, trying to steal a kiss, or speaking about ‘intimate’ things at a work dinner.”
