Snapshot: "You Are Neither Wanted Here Nor Needed Here"
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker starkly warns Donald Trump not to send military troops to Chicago
I want to share with you comments from Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker yesterday in Chicago (my hometown). They highlight the rising response—by him and other Democratic governors, including Gavin Newsom in California and Rob Ferguson in Washington State—toward the authoritarian Trump regime and its hostility to our Constitution and rule of law. Pritzker’s remarks can be encapsulated by the famous call to arms from the 1976 film, Network, fiercely delivered by Oscar-winning actor Peter Finch: “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”
In his press conference yesterday—here’s the video—Gov. Pritzker addressed Trump’s threat to send military troops to Chicago in response to a “manufactured” crisis. He said that he is “ringing an alarm, one that I hope every person listening will heed, both here in Illinois and across the country.” He went on (and permit me to quote him at length):
Over the weekend, we learned from the media that Donald Trump has been planning, for quite a while now, to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago. This is exactly the type of overreach that our country's founders warned against, and it's the reason that they established a federal system with a separation of powers built on checks and balances.
What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American.
The governor explained that he only heard about this plan from news reports.
If this was really about fighting crime and making the streets safe, what possible justification could the White House have for planning such an exceptional action without any conversations or consultations with the governor, the mayor or the police?
Let me answer that question: This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city, in a blue state, to try and intimidate his political rivals.
This is about the president of the United States and his complicit lackey, Stephen Miller, searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities and end elections.
There is no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed military intervention. There is no insurrection. Like every major American city in both blue and red states, we deal with crime in Chicago. Indeed, the violent crime rate is worse in red states and red cities.
Here in Chicago, our civilian police force and elected leaders work every day to combat crime and to improve public safety, and it's working…
Eight of the top 10 states with the highest homicide rates are led by Republicans. None of those states is Illinois. Memphis, Tennessee; Hattiesburg, Mississippi have higher crime rates than Chicago, and yet Donald Trump is sending troops here and not there? Ask yourself why.
Pritzker also had an important message for the media, both those in Illinois and around the country.
I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is.
This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story. This is not a time to fall back into the reflexive crouch that I so often see, where the authoritarian creep by this administration is ignored in favor of some horse race piece on who will be helped politically by the president's actions.
Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish his dissidents and score political points. If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is: a dangerous power grab.
He also addressed the reality of a White House occupant in cognitive decline and his unfitness for office.
Earlier today in the Oval Office, Donald Trump looked at the assembled cameras and asked for me personally to say, ‘Mr. President, can you do us the honor of protecting our city?’ Instead, I say, ‘Mr. President, do not come to Chicago.’
You are neither wanted here nor needed here. Your remarks about this effort over the last several weeks have betrayed a continuing slip in your mental faculties and are not fit for the auspicious office that you occupy.
Most alarming, you seem to lack any appropriate concern as our commander-in-chief for the members of the military that you would so callously deploy as pawns in your ever-more-alarming grabs for power.
Finally, Pritzker noted his planned response which, in addition to urging nonviolent protest, includes holding those involved accountable for their criminal violations.
The State of Illinois is ready to stand against this military deployment with every peaceful tool we have. We will see the Trump administration in court. We will use every lever at our disposal to protect the people of Illinois and their rights.
Finally, to the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme, to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man, to any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous: We are watching and we are taking names.
This country has survived darker periods than the one that we are going through right now, and eventually the pendulum will swing back, maybe even next year. Donald Trump has already shown himself to have little regard for the many acolytes that he has encouraged to commit crimes on his behalf.
You can delay justice for a time, but history shows you cannot prevent it from finding you eventually. If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law.
In the last few days, I’ve been reading a narrative about the day guilty verdicts were announced during the Nuremberg Trials and the resulting preparations to execute the convicted Nazis by hanging. There are substantial insights from this to be shared at another time, but for now: We should remember that history has proven that the worst among us can be held accountable for their crimes. (Unfortunately, Adolf Hitler had already committed suicide, making it impossible to hold that monster accountable. This is a topic explored by George Steiner in his powerful novel, The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.)
JB Pritzker will not save us. A successful response to overcome this hateful regime will take all of us. But Illinois’ governor is one of 23 Democratic governors in America—and collectively, they can be crucial in resisting Trump’s defiance of our federal system and the independent power of states. The more Trump over-reaches in his deployment of military troops and other criminal violations, the more we should expect Democratic states to say no.
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What Prtizker said to the press should be on the front page of every newspaper in America. In fact, most of his speech should be. This is an important speech. This is what we need. Leadership, not accommodation. #NotOnOurWatch
Thank you, Governor Pritzker, for spelling out the dangers we face in clear, unambiguous terms.
Thank you, Steven, for highlighting his comments here.
Yes, let's encourage our Democratic Governors to unite in leading the charge against the fascist threat. But we're all in this together: we all have to rally behind them.