President Biden met with Chicago’s mayor on Wednesday, in the wake of an extremely violent holiday weekend in the nation’s third most populous city.
The president, on his way to an event in McHenry County, Illinois – where he’s making the case for the infrastructure deal reached by a bipartisan group of senators and the White House – was greeted by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, both Democrats, as he deplaned Air Force One at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.
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The meeting came after more than 100 people were shot and 19 killed over the Fourth of July weekend in Chicago, the city’s most violent weekend this year. And LIghtfoot has come under increasing pressure to take action.
President Joe Biden greets Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, as he arrives at O’Hare International Airport, Wednesday, July 7, 2021, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
The president last month rolled out a package of crime-fighting proposals that included cracking down on illegal guns, which has long been a major contributing factor to Chicago’s violence.
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Ahead of the meeting, White House press secretary Jen Psaki pointed to Biden’s anti-crime efforts, telling reporters that Chicago’s one of the five cities they recently announced where “we’re going to be working with the Department of Justice, going to be working with and launching a gun trafficking strike force.”
Ahead of next year’s midterm elections, when the Republicans aim to win back majorities in both the House and Senate, the GOP’s been targeting Biden for the rise in crime and gun violence in cities across the country. And they’ve been trying to tie the president and congressional Democrats to the calls by some on the far left of the Democratic Party to defund the police in the wake of last year’s protests from coast to coast over racial inequity.
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National polling indicates that crime is rising as a top issue on the minds of American voters.
The president’s overall approval rating stood at 50% approval and 42% disapproval in an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted June 27-30. But his approval on dealing with crime was underwater, at 38%-48%.