Congress
Pritzker: ‘You come for my people, you come through me’
Gov. JB Pritzker spoke to reporters Thursday for the first time since Donald Trump’s victory, saying he expects to work with the next administration, but he issued a warning.
“You come for my people, you come through me,” Pritzker said, referring to the minority and underserved communities of Illinois who remember the “chaos, retribution and disarray radiated from the White House the last time Donald Trump occupied.”
Pritzker, who served as a surrogate to Kamala Harris’ campaign, said his administration “was not unprepared” for a Trump win.
Pritzker said his administration has worked with the Democratic-led General Assembly to take “proactive steps” to shore up abortion rights and other laws that could draw scrutiny under a Trump White House. And he said Illinois would take action if the Trump administration were to circumvent government grants that were headed to Illinois. The governor said he’s had similar conversations with fellow Democratic governors around the country.
“We have like minds about protecting certain rights and making sure that we’re going to be able to withstand four years of a Donald Trump presidency and also the areas where we might work with the administration, whatever those may be,” he said.
Pritzker’s comments weren’t as inflammatory as they were on the campaign trail, when he was known to refer to Trump as racist, homophobic and xenophobic, but they were just as pointed.
The Illinois governor who is also seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2028 said Americans should be “focused on a peaceful transition of power, even if Donald Trump didn’t afford that to his successor.”
Pritzker told reporters it was too early to offer an explanation as to why Democrats failed to win over swing-state voters, including in neighboring Wisconsin, where thousands of Illinois Democrats canvassed over the past two months on behalf of Harris’ campaign.
“I haven’t seen anybody show up with an analysis of the data. There are a lot of people with opinions, and certainly Republicans are spouting off their opinions about what Democrats have done wrong in order to lose an election,” Pritzker said. “But the reality is, it’s going to take a little while, I think, before we have real answers.”
Illinois remained a blue state after the election, but Trump even made inroads here, including in the Democratic enclave of Chicago.
Congress
Progress made on House budget, key holdout says
A key ultraconservative holdout said Wednesday that enough progress has been made in stalled House budget talks that a blueprint needed to unlock President Donald Trump domestic policy plans could be released by the end of the week.
Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina is one of several Freedom Caucus members who sit on the House Budget Committee and have so far rejected Speaker Mike Johnson’s initial budget plan last week — causing GOP leaders to scramble for hundreds of billions more in spending cuts.
“We’re working on full text,” Norman said in a brief interview Wednesday. “But I will tell you, it’s promising, what we’re doing.”
Republicans are still working through deeply complex policy questions — including weighing how much in costly tax cuts the hard-liners will support. GOP leaders are acknowledging they may need to dial back some of the tax provisions to get the resolution through the Budget Committee, with senior House Republicans privately skeptical a final budget resolution can come together by Friday. They’re hopeful, instead, for next week.
Johnson’s entire timeline for passage of the Trump agenda faced near-collapse earlier this week due to the right-wing backlash. But Norman signaled he’s so far inclined to support the reworked budget resolution if “Trump’s on board with it” and if it accomplishes “what Trump wants to do” on border security, deportation operations and other measures.
Amid the House infighting, Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he would move forward with his own, competing blueprint next week.
Johnson said Wednesday he was “hoping” to present a revised budget plan to his conference by the end of this week. He also urged Graham to “understand the reality of the house” as “a very different chamber with very different dynamics.”
“The House needs to lead this if we’re going to have success,” he said. “We feel very optimistic we’re getting there, and we’re going to find that equilibrium point and get this done.”
Congress
Hispanic Democrats privately strategize how to counter Trump with immigration groups
Congressional Hispanic Caucus members met privately with immigration advocacy groups Tuesday night to strategize how to counter President Donald Trump’s executive actions that have already altered the immigration system.
The goals of the meeting, which were outlined in a document obtained by POLITICO, include increasing immigration legal defense, fundraising for the influx of legal needs and messaging efforts to counter anti-immigrant rhetoric from Republicans. It’s the latest sign that Democrats are scrambling over a strategy to fight Trump as they look on from the congressional minority.
Lawmakers and immigration groups want to focus on “families, farmworkers and Dreamers,” something Democrats on Capitol Hill have been reiterating since Trump took office last month. Trump has signed multiple executive actions concerning immigration and the House GOP has been working to tee up a tough-on-migrants legislative agenda.
Recent executive orders include undoing Biden-era border policies, drastically changing the asylum system and targeting existing legal pathways. Democrats continue to reckon with their 2024 loss, after Republicans aggressively attacked them over immigration and border policies and Democrats struggled to mount an effective response. Trump has continued that messaging strategy from the White House, blitzing the airwaves and social media feeds with immigration enforcement actions.
Congress
Senate panel will advance budget next week, Graham says
The Senate will move forward with a budget blueprint next week setting out a two-track approach to enacting President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda, key senators said Wednesday.
The announcement, made by Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham inside a closed-door Senate GOP lunch, comes after a competing framework from Speaker Mike Johnson and other House Republican leaders has stalled in recent days due to internal conflicts in that chamber.
Graham (R-S.C.) made a presentation on the blueprint he plans to advance, which will tee-up the Senate’s two-part reconciliation strategy — starting with a border, energy and defense bill. A tax-focused package would follow.
“I wouldn’t faint with surprise if we marked up next week,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a Budget Committee member said coming out of the lunch. A person in the meeting confirmed the Budget Committee plans to vote next week.
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