Biden officials in Illinois this week: Labor Sec. Walsh, Ag Sec. Vilsack, UN Amb. Thomas-Greenfield

Biden administration officials are crisscrossing the nation in August — with three in Illinois this week — to highlight President Joe Biden’s accomplishments in advance of the November mid-term elections.

In a memo about the “Building a Better America Tour,” White House advisers Jen O’Malley Dillon and Anita Dunn said the administration is using August to throw a spotlight on Biden’s actions to, among other things, deal with climate change and clean energy; inflation, with gas prices declining; jobs, with unemployment low; signing a law designed to curb gun violence; and moves to decrease prescription drug costs.

Here’s who is here:

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh. Walsh on Thursday stops at the Laborers Training Center, 5700 W. Homer St., to discuss how the American Rescue Plan bolsters failing pension plans and threatened benefits. With Walsh will be Democratic Reps. Jan Schakowsky, Bill Foster, Sean Casten and Danny Davis. Among those at the session will be Bob Reiter, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor.

On Wednesday, Walsh was with Rep. Lauren Underwood, D-Ill., at a meeting with northern Illinois labor leaders at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union hall in Batavia. The event highlighted the funding for clean energy production included in the new Inflation Reduction Act.

Later, in Chicago, Walsh announced a $713,785 grant to Chicago Women in Trades as part of the latest $3.4 million round of the Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations grants.

“We’ve made historic progress since the outset of the pandemic, but we still need to bring 1.2 million women back into our workforce,” Walsh said in his Twitter post about the Chicago event.

U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield. Thomas-Greenfield on Thursday will tour an urban farm in Chicago run by the Urban Growers Collective.

After visiting the farm, Thomas-Greenfield will headline a Chicago Council on Global Affairs event where she will speak on “Tackling the Global Food Security Crisis” with Ertharin Cousin, the former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Agencies for Food and Agriculture in Rome.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. Vilsack and Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., made several Downstate Illinois stops earlier this week to announce new Agriculture Department funding “to bolster and expand the availability of homegrown biofuels across the country” provided in the Inflation Reduction Act.