The State of Illinois is Being Loud for America

A Year of Confronting Donald Trump

About this time last year, I was putting together my 2025 State of the State address. There was a lot I wanted to celebrate. Illinois had lowered taxes on working families with a new child tax credit. We were attracting businesses and jobs to the state. School test scores were up. Graduation rates were rising. And we were protecting women’s fundamental freedoms at a time when so much of the rest of the country was undermining them. In so many ways we’ve turned Illinois around, and it was tempting to just talk about these accomplishments and then present the new budget that would continue that progress.

But Donald Trump had become president again, and I knew that meant trouble ahead for families and workers in Illinois and across the nation. His first order of business was putting Elon Musk and his DOGE bros in charge of gutting the federal government – leaving kids, seniors, veterans, farmers and the most vulnerable to fend for themselves. His second order of business was to declare war on all the people and institutions that he viewed as political opponents. There was no talking about the “state of the state” without telling Illinoisans how we would survive the onslaught of Donald Trump.

I learned a lot of lessons during the first Trump administration. The most important one was that you can’t give Donald Trump an inch. I learned it the hard way. When the pandemic hit and Illinois hospitals were desperate for life-saving equipment, I called and asked the president to help the thousands of people who were getting sick from COVID-19. In return for ventilators and N95 masks, the president demanded that I appear on his favorite Sunday news shows to praise him. I agreed. Then he proceeded to break his promises. Then again that summer, when I asked the president to bring down the temperature in the wake of the George Floyd protests, he instead ratcheted up his rhetoric and even went into the streets of Washington with troops and tear gas in an unnecessary and offensive move against peaceful protesters.

When he was reelected in 2024, I knew who I was dealing with. He denied he was going to implement the Project 2025 attack on federal programs middle-class and working-class Americans rely on. His intentions became instantly clear when he demanded that every state drop our commitment to addressing social inequality, strip protections from our LGBTQ community, collaborate with ICE and its denial of due process, and hand over privacy-protected voter data. I know Donald Trump too well to think that any compromise could ever be enough – and I love the people of Illinois too much to trade away their dignity. I would not fold when it was time to fight. Approaching my 2025 State of the State address, I felt I needed to explain why.

It came down to the fact that Donald Trump is not an ordinary political adversary. He is an active threat to our constitutional republic. A threat that – and I did not say this lightly – has echoes of another dark chapter of history: early 1930s Germany. At a time when everyday Germans were struggling with inflation and economic hardship, their leaders responded by targeting and blaming others. I recognized Trump’s authoritarian playbook in part because I had worked with Holocaust survivors to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum. That life-changing experience taught me that the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

Donald Trump traffics exhaustively in distrust and hate and blame. He uses propaganda on social media to drown out the truth. We saw that in his first week in office when he sent ICE to Chicago to attack our law-abiding residents and embedded right-wing social media influencers like Dr. Phil in the unmarked cars with the masked agents. He and his MAGA cronies claimed that immigrants stand in the way of Americans obtaining affordable housing; diversity prevents white people from getting jobs; trans kids stand in the way of a good education for everyone else. These lies are intended to get “everyday Americans” to look the other way when those populations are denied their civil rights, subjugated, jailed, deported, or worse. The way I saw it, the future of our nation hinged on whether we would let Donald Trump get away with it.

Ultimately, I decided my 2025 State of the State address needed to lay out the potential dangers ahead, so this is what I said:

It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the 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... Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.

After I delivered the speech, some people said I was being unfair or alarmist. One year later, it’s clear it really is a five-alarm fire. I still stand by every word. Donald Trump deals in intimidation, but we aren’t afraid. The antidote to his authoritarianism is courage, and that is what Illinoisans have had on full display.

I said from the beginning that if Donald Trump came for my people, he would have to come through me. We took him to court and got the armed soldiers out of our state. We set up a commission to gather evidence so we can hold Trump and his cohort accountable for their attacks on our people. We passed a law to protect daycares, schools, and hospitals from ICE and CBP invasions. And when federal agents wearing masks wielding semiautomatic rifles started rolling down our streets in unmarked vehicles, they were confronted by everyday people, moms and dads and young people carrying whistles who refused to stay silent as their neighbors were kidnapped. I encouraged everyone to pull out their phones and video everything. One dad, Silverio Villegas González, was killed after dropping off his two children at daycare. A woman, Marimar Martinez, was shot five times while she was watching ICE terrorize a neighborhood. When DHS tried to lie about the circumstances of these shootings, I called them out and pointed to the facts. This became the Illinois Playbook: be loud for our communities, be loud for freedom, be loud for America.

Minnesota has carried on that mantle. When ICE came to their cities and towns, they marched, they got whistles, they recorded everything, and they organized – seemingly overnight – to get groceries and diapers to Black and Brown neighbors who were afraid they could be targeted by ICE in public. When ICE killed two people, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, Minnesotans chose courage by defending their dead neighbors even as Donald Trump sought to defame them. They made sure the country knew the truth.

That is why, despite everything, I can’t help but feel hopeful. Because the horrors inflicted on our people aren’t embittering us, they’re infusing us with courage. And it is the choice to fight, not fold that is going to make sure our constitutional republic survives Donald Trump.

Illinois and Minnesota are standing up to the bullying. Other patriotic Americans are too. But it’s going to take more of us to emerge victorious.

Next week I will deliver my 2026 State of the State address. It’s still coming together, but I know one thing I’ll want to make known: Illinoisans love this nation too much to let MAGA tear down our constitutional republic. We’re standing up, speaking out, and showing up, and I could not be more proud.

I’m starting this page to talk about what all of us can do to stand up and be loud for America right now. I hope you’ll join me.