It’s that time. TV ads have begun in the Chicago mayor’s race. First up: Bill Daley.
■ The influential Chicago Teachers Union is backing ex-Chicago teacher Toni Preckwinkle.
■ The top slot on the ballot goes to …
Nice work if you can get it. An ex-suburban police chief who left that job under a cloud has landed a biiiig raise as a community college administrator.
■ A Tribune editorial: If government pension loopholes are protected, amend the Illinois Constitution.
■ Conservative Tribune columnist John Kass is getting a promotion to the paper’s editorial board (third item in Robert Feder’s post).
‘Redacted innocence.’ Stephen Colbert is mocking President Trump’s defenders who say that heavily blacked-out sentencing memo from special counsel Robert Mueller is good news for the president.
■ Trump’s having trouble filling empty jobs in his administration—partly because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says the president can’t have any of his caucus members.
■ Forbes: Trump has shifted $1.1 million of campaign-donor money into his business.
■ Savage play-by-play from Wonkette’s Evan Hurst on Trump’s appearance at George H.W. Bush’s funeral: “What happens when you are in a room where 99.9% of the people present hate you.”
‘Wisconsin should be embarrassed.’ Gov.-elect Tony Evers is asking the man he’ll replace to veto a Republican plan to strip power from the state’s incoming administration.
■ Michigan Republicans are up to the same sort of thing.
■ More than a thousand likely Democratic absentee ballots may have been destroyed in a controversial North Carolina House race.
■ Satire from The Washington Post’s Alexandra Petri: “Don’t mind us! We are just making the voting more fair.”
■ After the Parkland, Fla., massacre, the gun industry is struggling.
‘Carp cowboys.’ The Tribune’s Tony Briscoe reports Illinois fishermen are using noise to harvest the invasive Asian carp from the Illinois River, which researchers say has one of the highest concentrations on the planet.
■ A coalition of U.S. representatives led by rebel Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is proposing a “Green New Deal” to wean the nation off fossil fuels by 2030.
■ The new U.S. ambassador to Canada: “I respect both sides of the science” on climate change.
■ The world’s carbon dioxide emissions are increasing again.
‘Your sign has our neighborhood concerned.’ A suburban woman who’s posted the word “RESIST” in her yard has received a complaint from an anonymous crank.
■ Residents of Chicago’s “cool” Pilsen neighborhood are sounding alarms about a seminar they say is designed to help “money-hungry developers” create “inaccessible housing.”
Thanks …
■ … to reader Mike Braden, who correctly noted that a couple of items about Ald. Ed Burke appeared out of order in yesterday’s Chicago Public Square. A reminder: If you’re the first to report an error to Squerror@ChicagoPublicSquare.com, you get a nod here, too.
■ … to the people who keep Square coming: The members of The Legion of Chicago Public Squarians. Join ’em here for just a few cents a day.