Mayor Lori Lightfoot after a City Council meeting on May 26, 2021. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)
In the run-up to summer, when violence here tends to rise with the mercury, Mayor Lori Lightfoot vowed an “all hands on deck” approach in the city’s effort to stop the surge in shootings, the Tribune’s Gregory Pratt writes.
“But even as the city canceled days off for Chicago cops and forced them to work 12 hour days, two of the mayor’s top aides took time off leading up to the Fourth of July holiday, where at least 108 people were shot, 17 fatally,” he writes. Those taking time off included the deputy mayor for Public Safety.
The mayor caught up local reporters last night on her trip to California, where she was busy making sales pitches to Big Tech. Lightfoot also acknowledged some executives expressed concerns about the violence in Chicago and whether it would be safe for their employees to move here, the Tribune’s John Byrne writes. More below.
Gov J.B. Pritzker said this morning he was “very pleased” to see the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest guidelines for schools: Vaccinated teachers and students don’t have to wear masks inside school buildings.
He said he believes the CDC’s goal matches state public health officials, namely to see children get vaccinated and return to their classrooms safely.
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This afternoon, the state announced it was adopting the new guidance.
But the announcement from the nation’s top public health agency is likely to prompt questions and confusion for school districts across the nation. That includes how school administrators and educators would be able to monitor who is vaccinated and who is not in their buildings.
The news comes as case rates, hospitalizations and deaths fall nationally, though state and federal government data show the number of newly diagnosed COVID-19 patients is once on the rise in pockets of Illinois.
Low vaccination rates and highly transmissible variants — or some combination of the two — are the likely culprits.
But one concern, my Tribune colleague Joe Mahr notes, is that the more COVID-19 lingers, the greater chance today’s variants have of mutating into something that would be dangerous even for vaccinated people.
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Mayor Lori Lightfoot at Gately Park in Chicago on July 6, 2021. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune)
Top Lightfoot aides took days off leading into violent Fourth of July weekend despite ‘all hands on deck’ strategy
Some of the mayor’s biggest critics are hammering her over the fact that some of her top deputies took time off in the run-up to the Fourth of July weekend, Gregory Pratt writes.
Here’s what he found:
*Lightfoot chief of staff Sybil Madison was out of the office on Thursday and Friday leading up to the Fourth of July weekend.
*The deputy mayor for public safety, John O’Malley, was also out for most of last week, sources told the Tribune.
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Pratt writes: “Early in her first term, Lightfoot issued an edict banning top police leaders from taking time off during the summer months, saying they need to set an example for rank-and-file officers.
“It also comes as city police leaders canceled days off for all Chicago cops over the weekend, forcing them to work 12 hour days in an effort to saturate the streets.”
Southwest Side Ald. Raymond Lopez said: “We’ve heard about the ‘whole of government’ approach (to dealing with violence) for weeks now. But I guess that doesn’t apply to the people responsible for actually creating the policies.” Full story here.
Data points on all those appearance Mayor Lightfoot makes on left-leaning cable news outlet MSNBC: “Chicago’s mayor in just over two years in office has given exclusive, one-on-one interviews to the national MSNBC network an eye-popping 40 times,” Crain’s Greg Hinz and A.D. Quig report in a new story out today. “That’s once every 2？ weeks—and nearly twice the 22 sit-down interviews the mayor has granted in the same period combined to Chicago’s two major daily newspapers, the Tribune and the Sun-Times.”
Mayor Lori Lightfoot after a City Council meeting on May 26, 2021. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)
Lightfoot woos Big Tech in San Francisco but is surging crime a deterrent?
In a virtual news conference, the mayor acknowledged that some of the executives she spoke to during her trip to the San Francisco area expressed concerns about the violence in Chicago and whether it would be safe for their employees to move here. But she said they understand that violence is increasing in cities nationwide.
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“There were certainly some conversations about that, and we had a long conversation about what, from my perspective, I thought we were seeing, not just in Chicago, but really across the U.S.,” Lightfoot said in a Zoom call with reporters to discuss the trip. “They’re in the city of San Francisco. They’re proximate to L.A. They obviously know a lot about New York and other markets they’re in that are experiencing the same kinds of challenges that we are over this last year around public safety.”
The mayor told reporters she also was doing a little politicking on the road but it wasn’t clear whether that meant she was fundraising, wooing potential backers or what. Stay tuned.
More city news: City’s inspector general finds Chicago Police Department struggles to keep Black candidates in hiring process, the Tribune’s Jeremy Gorner and Annie Sweeney write.
Target no longer in talks for Water Tower Place space vacated by Macy’s, alderman says: “There are no current negotiations with Target and have not been for some time,” downtown Ald. Brian Hopkins said. “This is pure speculation, but I believe negative publicity was a factor.”
When word got out that the Minneapolis-based retailer was eyeballing the Magnificent Mile space, nearby resident and Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas argued in a WGN radio interview that Target’s arrival could make Michigan Avenue and nearby Oak Street less desirable to higher-end retailers. My colleague Ryan Ori has the full story here.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker at the formal opening of the K-Town Business Centre on West Polk Street in Chicago on June 28, 2021. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune)
Pritzker signs bill making Illinois first state to require teaching of Asian American history in public schools
From the Tribune’s Dan Petrella: “In the wake of increased anti-Asian violence during the coronavirus pandemic, Illinois on Friday became the first state to require Asian American history to be taught in public schools.
“Under the measure Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law Friday, every public elementary and high school in the state will be required to include a unit on the history of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, including their history in Illinois and the Midwest. The requirement begins during the 2022-23 school year.
“State Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, a Glenview Democrat and one of five Asian Americans in the Illinois legislature, said during a bill-signing ceremony at Niles West High School that she didn’t learn about the Chinese Exclusion Act and her grandparents’ struggles with discrimination and the fear of deportation until she was in law school.” Full story here.
Data points: The measure was approved on a 108-10 vote in the House, where some Republicans argued that curriculum decisions should be left up to local school districts. It passed without opposition in the Senate, where it was sponsored by Democratic Sen. Ram Villivalam of Chicago, the first Indian and Asian American to serve in the chamber.
Other state news: Illinois weed sales remain strong, with a near-record $116 million in June, the Tribune’s Robert Channick. A reminder that weed purchases are generating a new influx of sales tax dollars to state and local government at a time they could use the money.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., in Washington on June 15, 2021. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
Firebrand GOP congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene doubles down on election lies at downstate fundraiser
More than 500 donors packed a banquet hall in southern Illinois where controversial Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene served as the keynote speaker at a fundraiser for fellow freshman Republican U.S. Rep. Mary Miller of Oakland, Andrew Adams writes for the Effingham Daily News.
Greene focused on her typical talking points that ranged from false statements about the 2020 presidential election to the offensive comments about the COVID-19 outbreak.
The freshmen GOP lawmakers rode into office as loyalists to President Donald Trump and tonight’s event has drawn criticism from Democrats for weeks.
On the November presidential election, Green said: “I can tell you for a fact, Joe Biden did not win Georgia.”
Adams reminds that Georgia, Greene’s home state, audited and recounted its ballots and Congress certified the results that declared Biden the winner in that state.
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“We need to make sure we have elections you cannot cheat. Because we don’t want to have elections that can be stolen,” said Greene. More here.
WBEZ-FM 91.5′s Dan Mihalopoulos wrote in his piece about the fundraiser that “Greene peppered her speech with other bigoted comments about ‘the great Chinese pandemic’ and Muslim members of Congress and their allies, who she called ‘the jihad squad.’ ” More here.
U.S. House Rep. Jesus "Chuy" Garcia at Adalberto United Methohdist Church in Chicago on Nov. 3, 2020. (Youngrae Kim / Chicago Tribune)
U.S. Rep. Garcia flexes muscle, won’t back Biden’s ‘human infrastructure’ budget legislation without pathway to citizenship for Dreamers
President Joe Biden’s first trip to the Chicago area as president this week was a sales pitch to the public for a piece of his domestic agenda aimed at easing the financial burden on working- and middle-class families by creating free community college, extending the child tax credit and achieving universal pre-K education.
Because Republicans are balking over Biden’s multi-trillion-dollar American Families Plan, Democrats are trying to push through it through a budget process known as “reconciliation” to sidestep Republican support.
But some Democrats are either raising their own red flags or calling for their pet initiatives to be tacked on to the budget reconciliation bill.
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This week, Chicago U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia told Washington D.C.’s The Hill newspaper: “A robust and equitable budget reconciliation deal must include a pathway to citizenship for immigrants — our country can’t make a full recovery without it, and I can’t support any deal that leaves so many people in my district behind.”
The Wall Street Journal notes that “Democrats must stick together if they want to move the education and child care plan without the backing of Republicans. Democrats can lose no more than four Democratic votes in the House and none in the Senate on legislation opposed by all Republicans.”
Read the full WSJ story here (subscription) and The Hill story here.
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Billie Jean King in 2019. (Chuck Burton/AP)
Nation’s only woman-owned bank gets the green light to open in Chicago
The Tribune’s Robert Channick writes, ‘First Women’s Bank received the first new Illinois banking charter in more than a decade and is set to open this fall with a mission to bolster women-owned small businesses.”
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The nascent Chicago-based bank bills itself as the only women-owned, women-led and women-focused commercial bank in the country. It received regulatory approval July 1 and raised more than 200 investors include tennis great Billie Jean King. King recently headlined a political fundraiser for Mayor Lightfoot.
Marianne Markowitz, the bank’s president and CEO, served as acting administrator of the Small Business Administration under former President Barack Obama.
Data point: Women own 42% of all small businesses, but receive 16% of commercial loans, Markowitz said. The bank’s aim is to close the gap. Read the full story here.
And that’s it for this first week of July. Keep up with our coverage on the Tribune’s Politics page here.
Thanks for reading The Spin, the Tribune’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to have it delivered to your inbox weekday afternoons. Have a tip? Email host Lisa Donovan at ldonovan@chicagotribune.com.
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