Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Michael Fassnacht who as CEO of World Business Chicago leads the city’s public-private economic development arm, are part of an entourage in the San Francisco Bay Area this week for a multiday visit, the mayor’s office says.

“Mayor Lightfoot is visiting San Francisco to meet with tech leaders with Chicago affiliations to help generate awareness and keep up with the growing demand of available tech jobs in the city,” the mayor’s office said in a statement.

Lightfoot’s first meeting in San Francisco, though, was with the city’s mayor, London Breed, according to her office. Lightfoot and Breed each made history as the first African American women to be elected mayor of their cities. And each have talked — sometimes on the same panel — about creating policy to address racial and economic inequalities made worse by the pandemic.

Lightfoot has called an early evening virtual news conference to talk with reporters about the trip.

It’s a change of subject for the mayor and the city after another violent Fourth of July weekend in Chicago. Lightfoot and her hand-picked top cop are in the hot seat over strategies to curb ongoing gun violence.

Lightfoot talked briefly with President Joe Biden about the situation yesterday when he landed at O’Hare International Airport at the beginning of a whirlwind first official visit to Illinois to tout his American Families Plan. Last night the mayor’s office sent out a fairly nondescript statement about the tarmac chat.

Controversial Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is in downstate Effingham tonight for a fundraiser with U.S. Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois. The freshmen GOP lawmakers rode into office as loyalists to President Donald Trump and tonight’s event has drawn criticism from Democrats for weeks.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Marie Newman’s political team is trying to cash in on the moment. The Newman campaign sent out an email slamming Greene and Miller for controversial comments they’ve made and asking supporters to “chip in to stop Republican bigotry.”

And the first winners in the state’s COVID-19 vaccine lottery include an adult from Chicago, who took the $1 million cash prize, the Tribune’s Bill Ruthhart writes. More here.

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Lightfoot, Fassnacht and co. in California

City Hall wasn’t talking today about who in the San Francisco Bay tech world the mayor was rubbing shoulders with. There’s no shortage of possibilities with Uber, Lyft, Facebook, Twitter, Slack, Cash App, Adobe and so many others headquartered there.

But as the mayor’s office told me earlier today, they’re reaching out to companies that already have “affiliations” in town.

Months after Lightfoot’s election in 2019 Uber Freight, which connects truck drivers with shippers, announced it planned to establish a headquarters and engineering hub that would be key to redeveloping the city’s Old Post Office. But some of Uber’s plans have been scaled back, in part because of the pandemic.

Fassnacht’s presence in the group could offer some clues about the trip’s goals. As CEO of World Business Chicago, his duties include recruiting companies and jobs to the city. He also serves as the city’s chief marketing officer, a post that includes building up the city’s reputation and luring tourists, conventioneers and business travelers to Chicago as we start to recover from the economic toll of COVID-19.

The delegation also includes several Chicago tech entrepreneurs including Garry Cooper, CEO of Rheaply, Chris Gladwin CEO and Founder of Ocient, Suzanne Muchin, CEO of Bonfire, and Brian Barnes, CEO of M1 Finance.

Today, Gov. J.B. Pritzker attended a downtown rally organized by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights whose leaders are calling for an immediate end to deportations in Chicago and for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Follow-up file: Mayor Lightfoot on what she and Biden chatted about

We all saw the TV footage and still photos of Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle greeting President Joe Biden on the tarmac but they were well out of earshot.

It would take hours for Lightfoot’s office to issue a statement about the meeting; she and Preckwinkle greeted the president and briefly chatted with him just before noon.

Meantime, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters the president brought up a shooting that occurred hours before his arrival in Chicago. Two Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents and a Chicago police officer working undercover together were wounded when their vehicle was fired at on the South Side.

Psaki said: “President Biden expressed his personal support for the two ATF officials and the Chicago police officer who were shot earlier today,” Psaki said. “He reiterated his commitment to working with the mayor and leaders in Chicago in the fight against gun violence and conveyed that the Department of Justice would soon be in touch about the strike force announced just a few weeks ago that will be working with cities like Chicago.”

Last month, Biden’s Justice Department announced the launch of five cross-jurisdictional firearms trafficking strike forces, including one in Chicago. Local U.S. attorneys are leading the effort, with the ATF playing a lead role along with state and local law enforcement in an effort to curb illegal gun trafficking believed to be fueling the violence.

Lightfoot said earlier this week she wanted to see the president speed up the strike force’s work in the city.

Just after 9 p.m. yesterday, the mayor’s office offered this statement about her conversation with the president: “During today’s meeting, Mayor Lightfoot gave President Biden an update on the ATF agents’ medical conditions and thanked him for his additional supports in the city’s fight against gun violence. She lauded the president for listening to the needs of cities and for the federal government’s recent announcements on public safety reform.”

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Ald. Carrie Austin pleads not guilty to bribery charges tied to her office, Lightfoot stops short of calling for her to resign

The Tribune’s Madeline Buckley and Gregory Pratt write: “Ald. Carrie Austin through her lawyer pleaded not guilty to federal bribery charges Thursday, a week after she and her chief of staff were accused of shepherding a real estate development through City Hall bureaucracy while they were given home improvement perks from a contractor seeking to influence them.”

Austin remains a member of City Council and still heads a committee on racial equity in contracts.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot issued a statement later in the day reiterating that a federal indictment against an alderman makes their “ability to deliver for residents” and their “effectiveness as a member of the City Council, let alone a committee chair, very difficult.”

But as Buckley and Pratt write, the statement stopped short of calling for Austin’s resignation, either as a chairwoman or as a member of the City Council.

Side note: When federal authorities charged Ald. Edward Burke with corruption in January 2019, he stepped down as Finance Committee chairman.

Lightfoot’s statement continues: “I reached out to Alderman Austin upon learning of the indictment, and intend on having a substantive conversation with her about her future role in the City Council.”

Austin is now the third sitting Chicago alderman currently under federal indictment. Full story here.

Ronna McDaniel op-ed: Democrats can’t win on the issues, so they cheat with partisan maps

No surprise here: Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel is blasting Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker for signing into law last month new partisan-drawn districts for the General Assembly and state Supreme Court designed to maintain his party’s control in Illinois.

In an op-ed she wrote for the Chicago Tribune, McDaniel criticizes Pritzker for going back on a campaign trail promise to veto a partisan map and for signing into law a map designed using questionable data.

She writes: “It’s bad enough that Pritzker is shamelessly breaking a clear-cut promise to the people who elected him. Even worse, his decision is predicated on questionable preliminary data that’s likely inaccurate. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. census has been delayed. Instead of waiting out that delay in order to redraw districts based on solid data, Pritzker and Illinois Democrats opted to use population estimates from something called the American Community Survey.

“There is virtually no chance that these numbers will be as accurate as the intensive, house-by-house census results expected later this year. Not only is Pritzker breaking a promise to his constituents for partisan gain, but he’s doing so with shoddy numbers, creating doubt that Illinoisans will be accurately represented in the Democrats’ partisan redistricting effort. Legal challenges to this legislation have already ensued on this very basis.” Full piece here.

The maps have drawn multiple legal challenges, including a lawsuit filed by the Illinois Republican legislative leaders.

U.S. reps Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mary Miller join forces for downstate fundraiser tonight

Tonight’s private fundraiser hosted by Miller and Greene includes a reception and dinner at the Effingham Performing Arts Center in the downstate Illinois city, the Belleville News Democrat’s Kelsey Landis wrote last month.

The event is about an hour from Miller’s hometown of Oakland.

Landis reminds: “Both first-term representatives continue to vocally support Trump, and have also both been criticized for alluding to Nazi Germany in separate statements this year. Miller said ‘Hitler was right’ about youth indoctrination the day before the Jan. 6 riot in Washington, D.C., and Greene compared mask mandates to prevent the spread of COVID-19 to the Holocaust.

“Both later apologized for their comments.” Full story here.

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