Politics
‘JB wants to fight’: Illinois governor embraces role as one of Trump’s fiercest foes
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — JB Pritzker is at a political crossroads.
The popular, two-term Illinois governor would be a prohibitive favorite if he runs again in 2026.
But the fiery progressive Democrat is also increasingly burnishing his national political credentials, making high profile appearances across the country, using his vast personal wealth to bankroll Democratic causes and pillorying the divisive policies of President Donald Trump.
Pritzker has strong views about what Democrats need to do to claw their way back from the wilderness after the drubbing they took in November.
“Democrats shouldn’t fall into the trap that they fell into in 2024 of responding to everything that the Republicans say, given the way they twist things,” Pritzker said in a wide-ranging interview in his Capitol office where he signs bills. “Republicans keep asking the question, ‘Have you stopped beating your wife?’ There is no good answer to that.”
But at the same time, Pritzker stresses, Democrats need to vigorously defend core principles, saying it was a “mistake” that Kamala Harris’ campaign never came up with an effective answer to Trump’s attacks for her support of transgender rights.
Asked how he would have responded, Pritzker said: “First of all, stop picking on the smallest minority of people whose civil rights are just as important as yours. … Trans children are most likely of any group to commit suicide. Why do Republicans have no sympathy for that at all?”
Pritzker is looking to execute a political balancing act when it comes to bolstering his political prospects both in Illinois and nationwide. That means speaking out forcefully on the most hot-button issues – immigration, tariffs, DOGE – while also taking steps to boost home-state constituencies like Illinois farmers and veterans.
His full-throated attacks on Trump are drawing attention from prominent national Democrats. It’s a tactic that more party leaders should emulate, says David Hogg, a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee who ignited a firestorm in the party in recent days with his pledge to fund primary challenges against some “asleep-at-the-wheel” Democrats in safe-blue seats.
“We’re in a moment … where some people are saying, ‘We need to roll over and die’ and other people want to fight,” Hogg said about Democratic messaging. “JB wants to fight.”
Outspoken on immigration
The governor and his staff spent months preparing for a November loss, even though they were hopeful that Harris would triumph, said Anne Caprara, who ran Pritzker’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign and is now his chief of staff.
“JB is just a person who hopes for the best and prepares for the worst,” Caprara said.
Pritzker’s immediate post-election message was a warning to Trump and an assurance to the state’s Democratic voters that he would stand up for abortion rights, immigration and LGBTQ+ protections if they came under attack.
“You come for my people, you come through me,” he said just two days after the election.
On immigration, in particular, Pritzker has been among the loudest voices attacking the Trump administration’s policies. It’s a contrast from many other ambitious Democrats who have looked for ways to show voters that they support tougher enforcement efforts targeting undocumented immigrants in the wake of the election drubbing.
“Why is Donald Trump kicking out law-abiding, tax-paying people who have been here 10 and 20 years and raised a family here?” Pritzker asked. “Why are they picking on those people and kicking them out? If you had proper immigration laws, you would want them to come to this country. We need them to fill jobs.”
Though Pritzker also has repeatedly said he supports kicking out criminals, his views on immigration have put him in the sights of Republican Rep. James Comer’s Oversight Committee, which has called him to testify next month on Illinois’ sanctuary status rules that forbid local authorities from helping with federal immigration enforcement efforts.
“Sanctuary jurisdictions and their obstructionist policies hinder the ability of federal law enforcement officers to effectuate safe arrests and remove dangerous criminals from American communities,” Comer, of Kentucky, said in a statement announcing the hearing.
The Illinois governor has yet to say whether he will agree to testify before the committee. His team has called it a “partisan dog and pony show.”
As Pritzker ticked off his concerns about Trump’s policies, he sat in the shadow of a wall-size portrait of one of the storied debates between Republican Abraham Lincoln and Democrat Stephen Douglas.
His attacks on Trump have seldom risen to those rhetorical heights. The Illinois governor has described the president as “a narcissist,” “rich in stupidity” and someone who “behaves like a fifth-grader.” He’s even invoked Hitler in describing the Trump administration’s actions.
How he talks to the public, Caprara said, has been shaped in large part by what he learned during the pandemic, when he gave at least 85 televised press conferences on the spread of the disease and how to stay safe.
“What we learned was that in times of really great uncertainty people value clear communication from their leaders,” said Caprara. “And they value communication that is not mealy mouthed or wishy-washy or obfuscating what actually is happening in the world. And so that is the world in which we’ve operated since November.”
Pritzker is now taking that message across the country.
Since March, he has headlined the Jim Owles Winter Pride Gala in New York City and the Human Rights Campaign’s annual dinner in Los Angeles. Pritzker has also taken center stage at Democratic Party events in Florida and Texas.
Next week, he’s the featured speaker at New Hampshire Democrats’ iconic McIntyre-Shaheen 100 Club dinner, a major fundraiser known for drawing big names ahead of presidential elections. And in June, Pritzker headlines the Michigan Democratic Party Legacy Dinner.
In addition, Pritzker’s Think Big America has pumped in money to support progressive legislation and candidates across the country, including in red states. The nonprofit has so far put money into supporting abortion rights initiatives in nine states and saw seven of them pass in the past two cycles, including in Ohio and Montana.
“Abortion rights are broadly popular, and there are plenty of Republicans and independents who came out to vote for that issue and came to our side,” said Mike Ollen, who heads the organization and is in Pritzker’s inner circle, having served as campaign manager for his 2022 gubernatorial run.
Pritzker, whose family built the Hyatt Hotel empire, has also donated millions of dollars to races across the country, including $1.5 million to the winning Democrat-aligned candidate in last month’s high-profile Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
The governor’s rising national profile has hit a nerve with Illinois Republicans who see it as political “grandstanding” and “a distraction” from “the mess” in Illinois, according to state party Chair Kathy Salvi, referring to the state’s projected $3 billion-plus budget deficit. She uses Pritzker’s speaking engagements as a foil to rally members in her weekly email.
Pritzker’s “largesse at the taxpayer’s trough drives the good people, families and business out of our beloved Illinois,” Salvi added in a statement to Blue Light News. “He is crushing us. Save America from JB Pritzker.”
Pritzker says his speaking engagements shouldn’t be read as a lead-up to a presidential campaign. All those national TV hits attacking Trump, he insists, are really an effort to bring attention to his state, highlighting the negative impact of Trump’s tariffs and federal government cuts on his constituents.
“The more that I can help stoke that, the better it is for farmers here in Illinois,” he said.
Touting Illinois accomplishments
Pritzker and his team like to remind critics of the economic chaos they inherited when he took office. A nearly two-year budget standoff between his predecessor and the Legislature sent bond ratings careening toward junk level.
Pritzker ran on an ambitious agenda and accomplished much of what he wanted in his first term, including raising the minimum wage, further protecting reproductive rights, legalizing cannabis — and getting the state’s finances back in order.
In his office across from the Lincoln portrait is a sign that Pritzker likes to highlight to visitors. It’s a headline: “Illinois credit rating upgraded: Moody’s upgrade is state’s first in two decades.”
But he seldom speaks in public without criticizing the White House. In Springfield last week, Pritzker poked at the Trump administration on economic issues even while speaking to a few hundred high school members of the Future Farmers of America.
“The harsh cuts to USDA programs proposed by DOGE and the tariffs that the president put in place are already taking their toll on our rural communities,” Pritzker said.
He went on to take questions from the statehouse press corps and then joined some Republican state lawmakers to reveal the winner of the “Coolest Thing Made in Illinois.” It was the Aerial Firefighting Helicopter Refill Pump that was actually used to help fight the recent Los Angeles wildfires. In the evening, Pritzker hosted state lawmakers and rabbis for a Passover Seder.
The Pritzker-Trump tension goes back to the 1990s, when the Pritzker family battled Trump in court over New York hotel properties. It festered through the 2016 election when Trump defeated Hillary Clinton and then metastasized during Covid.
Illinois hospitals were full and people were dying, so the Democratic governor swallowed his pride and got on the line with Trump — billionaire to billionaire — to ask for help in securing N95 masks and ventilators, he tells audiences, most recently on “The View.”
Trump agreed, but only if Pritzker would go on the national Sunday talk shows and praise him. It was a vain request, but Pritzker, who purses his lips when he retells the story, acquiesced, saying he was “desperate.” When only loose-fitting masks and broken BiPAP breathing machines arrived, Pritzker fumed about being short-changed.
“He never delivered for us, Pritzker said. “He never delivered for the American people.”
Politics
It might take ‘a lightning bolt from God’ to get these Senate Democratic hopefuls to bow for independents
Democrats vying for a pair of deep-red Senate seats are facing increasingly desperate calls from within their party to step aside for more promising independent candidates.
But they say they won’t drop out — unless there’s divine intervention.
Democrats Alani Bankhead of Montana and Julian Beaudion of South Dakota both told Blue Light News they have no plans to exit the race, despite pressure from national — and even some state — Democrats to step aside. Numerouspolls, coupled with strongerfundraising and campaign operations, show independents Seth Bodnar and Brian Bengs have a stronger — if still muddied — path to victory in November.
If the Democrats stay on the ballot, it will be almost impossible to claw these seats away from Republicans in Mountain West states that President Donald Trump dominated in 2024.
“I’m a person of faith. If a lightning bolt from God struck me and was like, ‘Alani, get out of the race,’ sure,” Bankhead told Blue Light News when asked if anything would change her mind. Otherwise, she said there’s “absolutely nothing.”
Beaudion has a similar resolve: “To be clear, we are not considering dropping out of the race,” he told Blue Light News.
By digging in, the Democrats could imperil their party’s hopes of regaining Senate control in an already uphill cycle. There’s broad agreement across the many factions of the Democratic Party that a crowded race relinquishes any hope of victory. Bengs has argued that Beaudion remaining on the ballot jeopardizes his chance of winning this fall against GOP Sen. Mike Rounds. Bodnar has maintained he has a viable path either way, and he could be helped out if the Libertarian candidate in the race pulls votes from Republican Kurt Alme.
The deadline to withdraw in South Dakota is Tuesday, and Montana’s is shortly after, on Aug. 10. Democrats across the ideological spectrum in Washington and their home states are calling on Bankhead and Beaudion to step down to help their party bank-shot a Senate majority, with the idea that a victorious independent candidate could caucus with a future Democratic majority — or at least not party up with Republicans.
“The math is inescapable. If it’s impossible for a Democrat to win, it is vital that the Democrats step aside and give the independent at least a shot of beating the Republican,” said Matt Bennett, a co-founder of the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way. “Beating the MAGA Republicans is priorities one, two and three. Who we beat them with is pretty far down the list.”
Democrats have already had some luck setting up one-on-one independent vs. Republican matchups in other Trump-won states. The Democratic candidate in Nebraska withdrew to pave the way for independent Dan Osborn — though an ongoing court case from a Democratic anti-abortion pastor could complicate things. And Idaho’s Democratic nominee recently dropped out in favor of independent Todd Achilles.
“Knowing that your campaign is not gonna break through, and just being able to recognize that is probably the hardest thing of all,” Achilles said of Democrat David Roth’s decision to step down. “I do appreciate what David did in Idaho.”
Bankhead and Beaudion insist they can win, even despite the headwinds. Bankhead expects to ride the anti-incumbency and pro-outsider wave into office, and Beaudion credits his relationships with voters throughout the state.
“Nobody ever knows what’s actually going to happen in an election,” Bankhead said. “The people decide on November 3.”
But Idaho and Nebraska Democrats reached a conclusion that Bankhead and Beaudion did not: The party’s brand is so tarnished in their states that the “D” label on the ballot line provides no viable path to victory.
“I am a professional partisan Democrat, and I have every incentive to be on the Democrat’s side here,” said Pat Dennis, president of American Bridge 21st Century, an opposition-research firm. “But ultimately, the priority is to take the Senate majority away from Republicans. In some states, that path is very difficult to impossible for a Democrat. In those cases, it is both strategically and morally correct to take the path that is most likely to achieve the goal we’re going for.”
Faiz Shakir, a longtime adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), did not go as far as to call for Bankhead and Beaudion to step aside. But he agreed that there’s real opportunity for independents who aren’t stuck with the Democratic brand’s baggage.
“Being someone who’s not associated with the two-party system right now helps you greatly in many parts of this country, particularly those that have much more rural and conservative tendencies,” said Shakir. “There’s frustration and anger with Trump, and there’s not as much of a love and appreciation for the Democratic Party.”
Shakir also said that competitive races in these red areas — even if the independents can’t pull off a win — could force Republicans to pull much-needed resources out of battleground races in order to defend their turf.
But he also offered a warning to his party: Talking too much about the independents’ strong fundraising and establishment backing risks tying them to the “donor class” and turning them “into a worse version of what people assumed of a Democrat.”
“You gotta give them the space to be both independent in mind and in spirit,” he said. “The argument for them is truly that they are building a movement in the state that people are hungry for, and that in the support of those people, they’re finding resonance. And that would be the argument for a Democrat to step aside.”
Republicans, meanwhile, are working to paint the independents and Democrats as one and the same. They’re also trying to elevate the Democrats in an attempt to stop the independents from gaining more traction: Trump on social media attacked Bankhead in July, ignoring Bodnar entirely.
“Democrat-backed independents all support the same socialist policies and middle-class tax hikes that made Democrats toxic across the country,” Joanna Rodriguez, the communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a statement. “Republicans will defeat them in November.”
The inside calls for Beaudion and Bankhead to step aside aren’t just coming from Washington. Many local Democrats in Montana and South Dakota have said publicly they should not continue their campaigns. Nancy Keenan, the former executive director of the Montana Democratic Party who has endorsed Bodnar, wrote in a June op-ed that “there is not a viable path for a Democratic victory in this race.”
Bennett, the Third Way co-founder, went further, saying if Democrats fail to flip the Senate in November, the blame would lie at the hands of Bankhead and Beaudion.
“If we fumble away a majority because these no hope candidates are too vain to get out of the race, that’ll be a political calamity,” he said. “These people need to understand that they will become pariahs.”
Bankhead doesn’t see it that way.
“I’m not swayed by it because I’m not here for power and money,” she said. “It’s still the old, rich D.C. powerful political circles that are trying to keep more progressive candidates out of the fight so they can maintain the status quo.”
FCC chair Brendan Carr on Trump, free speech and his threats against broadcasters
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Former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and his team are discussing dropping out of the crowded Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.
The conversations come as Democratic officials in the state brace for damaging media reports about Barnes expected to hit in the coming hours. Barnes and his team have been on calls Thursday to discuss how to proceed, according to the people, granted anonymity to share private details.
The primary had become increasingly messy as more moderate leaning Democrats like Barnes have tried to stave off Democratic socialist Francesca Hong’s rise, worried her victory could boost presumed Republican nominee Tom Tiffany. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ endorsement of David Crowley — who reentered the race in the final stretch — further complicated the moderate coalition.
A spokesperson for Barnes’ campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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