SPRINGFIELD — Gov. JB Pritzker has never been subtle about the threat he believes President Donald Trump poses to American democracy.

While delivering his combined State of the State and budget address in 2025, Illinois’ two-term Democratic governor likened some early actions of Trump’s second administration, from the aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration to the dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, to the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany.

“The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems,” Pritzker said at the time.

“I just have one question: What comes next?” Pritzker said, adding seconds later: “When a five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.”

On Wednesday, Pritzker returned to that last question and subsequent clarion call during his 2026 address to members of the Illinois General Assembly at the state Capitol.

The 48-minute speech mostly dealt with the contours of his status-quo FY27 spending plan while laying out election-year legislative priorities that focused largely on addressing affordability concerns. And even Pritzker’s Republican critics said rhetorical flourishes found in last year’s address were toned down in this year’s.

Still, the governor, a student of history and possible 2028 candidate for president, did not shy away from the moment the country finds itself in. Especially Illinois, a large blue state that’s been a particular focus of a hostile Republican White House.

Of course, there’s the money: Pritzker claims the Trump administration has cost Illinois $8.4 billion over the past year. And there’s the mountains of litigation. The state has filed or joined in more than 50 lawsuits against the administration. Much of that is to pry back those federal funds, which have increasingly been tied to states’ compliance with the administration’s policy objectives on immigration, DEI and gender identity.

But then there’s the actions the federal agents have taken on the streets of Chicago and the surrounding suburbs. And therein laid the answer to that provocative question Pritzker posed just last year.

“Masked, unaccountable federal agents — with little training — occupied our streets, brutalized our people, tear gassed kids and cops, kidnapped parents in front of their children, detained and arrested and at times attempted to deport U.S. citizens and killed innocent Americans in the streets,” Pritzker said, arguing that the conduct of federal agents during Operation Midway Blitz was the type of authoritarianism he warned of.

“Illinois was the canary in the coal mine for what we saw happen in Minnesota,” he said, referring to an immigration enforcement campaign that resulted in agents shooting and killing two American citizens in separate incidents in Minneapolis.

“It’s a playbook as old as the game — overwhelm communities, provoke fear, suggest that

those tasked with enforcing the law are also above it, and drip authoritarianism bit by

bit into our veins in the hopes that we won’t notice we are being poisoned by it,” Pritzker told legislators.

But if that was the five-alarm fire, Illinois answered the bell, the governor said.

He noted “every act of courage, large and small” over the past 12 months, from “the parishioners who formed human chains around churches so that immigrants could worship” to “the moms in the school pick up line who whipped out their cameras and their whistles” and “every Midwesterner who put on their heaviest coat and protested outside on the coldest day.”

And though many of the state’s lawsuits are ongoing, it’s received some form of relief in more than half of the cases while less than a handful have been dismissed outright.

In Pritzker’s eyes, Illinois created the blueprint for resisting Trump 2.0. It goes like this: make sure people know their rights, encourage peaceful protest, urge citizens to record all interactions with federal agents and create a public record of alleged abuses. And use that information to win in both the court of public opinion and the court of law.

This “Illinois playbook” fits with the image Pritzker’s cultivated as an anti-Trump crusader. It’s had mixed results. Yes, the threat of National Guard troops in Chicago has subsided; and immigration enforcement tactics noticeably dialed down over the past few weeks. But the state faces the specter of federal cuts, whether through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act or the programs that remain tied up in litigation.

Illinois Republicans have suggested that cooperation with the Trump administration would have led to less chaos on the streets of Chicago last year and would free up some of the federal money that’s been frozen.

But don’t expect Pritzker, who’s running for reelection in November, to change his tune.

He’s made clear on several occasions his view that appeasement is an ineffective strategy in dealing with Trump and his administration. But, always looking back to Illinois’ place in history, Pritzker in his speech rooted his resistance in the tradition of one of his predecessors: Gov. John Peter Altgeld.

A Democrat who served from 1893 to 1897, Altgeld opposed President Grover Cleveland sending federal troops to Chicago in 1894 to quell what’s now known as the Pullman strike. Contemporary accounts cited by Pritzker referred to federal agents as dangerous for “their careless use of pistols” and seemingly “hunting trouble all the time.”

“Sound familiar?” Pritzker asked, alluding to the conduct of federal agents.

“If the President can, at his pleasure, send troops into any city, town, or hamlet…whenever and wherever he pleases, under pretense of enforcing some law — his judgment, which means his pleasure being the sole criterion — then there can be no difference whatever in this respect between the powers of the President and those of…the Czar of Russia,” Pritzker quoted Altgeld as saying of Cleveland, also serving a non-consecutive second term.

“If we have the courage to confront all of our past, it will inform a better future,” Pritzker said.

He closed his remarks talking about kindness and empathy. It had a Fred Rogers “look for the helpers” quality to it — and painted those folks who’ve resisted the Trump administration as patriots and protest itself is a form of patriotism.

“I love my country,” Pritzker said in his closed remarks. “I refuse to stop. The hope I have found in a very difficult year is that love is the light that gets you through a long night.”

Last year, Pritzker raised an alarm rooted in a dark history. This year, he declared that Illinois answered history’s call.

 

Brenden Moore is a politics and government reporter for Capitol News Illinois, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. Moore in Springfield is his regular analysis column.