SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker used part of his State of the State address Wednesday to criticize federal immigration enforcement actions and contrast Illinois’ approach with federal policy.
The annual address largely centered on the governor’s proposed state budget and affordability agenda, but Pritzker devoted his last remarks to immigration, framing the issue as a broader test of national values.
“The problem for Donald Trump and Stephen Miller was that Illinoisans did notice,” Pritzker said. “Last year was not the first time a President has tried to subdue the Illinois population with hired thugs.”
Pritzker also referenced remarks from his address a year earlier, saying recent federal actions answered his warning about escalating enforcement tactics.
“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 US citizens, and killed innocent Americans in the streets,” Pritzker said.
The governor’s comments echoed historic tensions between Illinois leaders and federal intervention. He gave the example of the 1894 Pullman labor strike where workers walked off their railroad jobs to protest a percentage cut in their wages. At the time, President Grover Cleveland sent thousands of federal marshals and troops into the state to suppress unrest, an action condemned at the time by Illinois Gov. John Peter Altgeld as federal overreach.
“Illinois was the canary in the coal mine for what we saw happen in Minnesota,” Pritzker said. “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.”
According to Pritzker, federal policies have cost Illinois residents $8.4 billion through tariff taxes on working families and small businesses, trade wars devastating farmers, cuts to healthcare, food assistance and education, and increased bureaucracy on states such as Illinois.
Pritzker also described community responses across Illinois, pointing to residents supporting immigrant neighbors, including volunteers assisting families, parishioners protecting places of worship and residents demonstrating in public spaces.
He cited examples he said showed public reaction across the state, including bicyclists in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood buying food from street vendors so they could safely leave, parishioners forming human chains outside churches so immigrants could worship, and parents organizing outside schools during enforcement activity.
He concluded by urging residents to view the immigration debate beyond party politics, but rather about whether Illinois will be a state of empathy.
“Love is found in every act of courage – large and small – taken to preserve the country we once knew. You will find it in homes and schools and churches and art. It is there; it has not been squashed,” Pritzker said.
“What you choose to arm yourself with in this fight – love or hate – exposes which side you are fighting on. Only the weakest of people believe that love is the weakest of weapons. And it turns out that love actually is all around – and that those who think that cruelty can destroy it, are incapable of understanding the power of a nation moved by it.”
Lawmakers will continue budget negotiations in the spring legislative session.
Pritzker uses State of the State to defend immigrants, says Chicago targeted by federal actions was first published on Illinois Latino News and republished with permission.
Angeles Ponpa is a journalist based in Illinois.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.