New York Times: “The four-building, 19-acre ‘working center for citizenship,’ set to be built in a public park on the South Side of Chicago, will include a 235-foot-high “museum tower,” a two-story event space, an athletic center, a recording studio, a winter garden, even a sledding hill.”

“But the center, which will cost an estimated $500 million, will also differ from the complexes built by Barack Obama’s predecessors in another way: It won’t actually be a presidential library.”

“In a break with precedent, there will be no research library on site, and none of Mr. Obama’s official presidential records. Instead, the Obama Foundation will pay to digitize the roughly 30 million pages of unclassified paper records from the administration so they can be made available online.”

A new Gallup poll finds Michelle Obama has unseated Hillary Clinton as the most admired woman in the U.S., claiming the title alongside her husband, former President Barack Obama, who has remained the most admired man for 11 straight years.

Michelle Obama is continuing her book tour and adding new cities to the lineup, People magazine reports.

Said Obama: “I’ve been so humbled by the response to the tour thus far and the overwhelming interest we’ve received from so many communities we weren’t able to visit this year. That’s why I’m thrilled that we’re able to expand our conversations to these new settings and wider audiences. I can’t wait to continue the discussions that have been so meaningful for me and, I hope, for so many others.”

Vice President Pence told Fox News that it was “very disappointing” to see former President Obama return to the campaign trail and “become so political.”

Said Pence: “It was very disappointing to see President Obama break with the tradition of former presidents, and become so political and roll out the same tired argument that he and liberals have made over the last eight years.”

This looks really great: Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents by Pete Souza.

“Shade is a portrait in Presidential contrasts, telling the tale of the Obama and Trump administrations through a series of visual juxtapositions. Here, more than one hundred of Souza’s unforgettable images of President Obama deliver new power and meaning when framed by the tweets, news headlines, and quotes that defined the first 500 days of the Trump White House.”

Axios: “The administration is allowing the sale of health insurance plans that undermine some of the main rules of the Affordable Care Act. And today, it will freeze federal fuel efficiency standards, undermining Obama’s goal of making them progressively tougher.”

“This is being done through rulemaking, which gets the attention of health care and environmental reporters, yet flies under the radar of the cable news networks. These moves have huge, long-term consequences — and they show how easily Trump can achieve his policy goals while the TV cameras are focused on the outrage of the day.”

Max Boot: “I say that as someone who worked to defeat him: I was a foreign policy adviser to John McCain in 2008 and to Mitt Romney in 2012. I criticized Obama’s ‘lead from behind’ foreign policy that resulted in a premature pullout from Iraq and a failure to stop the slaughter in Syria. I thought he was too weak on Iran and too tough on Israel. I feared that Obamacare would be too costly. I fumed that he was too professorial and too indecisive. I was left cold by his arrogance and his cult of personality.”

“Now I would take Obama back in a nanosecond. His presidency appears to be a lost golden age when reason and morality reigned. All of his faults, real as they were, fade into insignificance compared with the crippling defects of his successor. And his strengths — seriousness, dignity, intellect, probity, dedication to ideals larger than self — shine all the more clearly in retrospect.”

Washington Post: “The conventional move for a post-presidency life is back home: a return to roots, a presidential library and distinguished service. No modern president has remained in the nation’s capital after leaving office; the last was the ailing Woodrow Wilson in 1921. So the idea of the vibrant, glamorous Obamas — two of the most famous people in the world — living here was a very big deal. Expectations were high.”

“Longtime Washingtonians hoped they would become unofficial ambassadors for the nation’s capital, embracing their adopted city. Instead, they’ve embraced their new lives as private citizens, emphasis on private.”

“In the past 18 months — aside from a few carefully curated public appearances — they are rarely spotted around town. They still love going to restaurants and attending the occasional exhibition or play. But outside a rarefied circle of close friends, they fly pretty much under the radar.”

“Men have been getting on my nerves lately. Every day I read the newspaper, and I just keep thinking—brothers, what’s wrong with you guys? What’s wrong with us? We’re violent; we’re bullying. Just, you know, not handling our business. I think empowering more women on the continent is going to, right away, lead to some better policies.”

— Barack Obama, quoted by CNN, speaking in South Africa.