| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Darren Baxt of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Joe Bonfilio of the Environmental Defense Fund discuss the EPA's decision to roll back 31 climate health and environmental regulations. | |
| And Martin Mataschak, senior cybersecurity reporter for The Record, talks about his reporting on the Trump administration's suspension of U.S. offensive cyber operations against Russia. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal joined the conversation live at 7 Eastern this morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-span.org. | ||
| Here's a look at what's coming up live today on the C-SPAN Networks. | ||
| First, on C-SPAN at 10:30 a.m., the American Enterprise Institute will hold a discussion on artificial intelligence and its potential uses in the workplace. | ||
| And later, at 2.30 p.m., Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will hold a press conference and talk about inflation and announce the central bank's plans for interest rates. | ||
| And over on C-SPAN 2 at 8 a.m., British Prime Minister Kier Starmer will field questions from members of the House of Commons. | ||
| You can also catch live coverage of these events on the C-SPAN Now app or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker criticized the Trump administration's agenda, including cuts to the federal government and high prices for consumers. | ||
| He also considered what he and other Democrats could do in response. | ||
| From the Center for American Progress, this is about an hour. | ||
| Good morning, everyone. | ||
| Good morning, everyone. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| We have three rows here, three floors here. | ||
| Thank you so much for joining us. | ||
| I'm told actually this is one of our largest events with people here in the rooms as well as online. | ||
| I'm Neera Tandon. | ||
| I'm the president of the Center for American Progress. | ||
| And today we are launching CAP's new speaker series on the path forward for the country. | ||
| We will be hosting visionary leaders with different views and experiences who will offer new ideas on how to lead in this moment. | ||
| And I can think of no one better to kick off this series than Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois. | ||
| He is a doer and a fighter. | ||
| He's raised the minimum wage to put money directly in the pockets of working people and relieved medical debt for nearly 300,000 Illinoisans. | ||
| So I'm going to give an applause for that. | ||
| He also expanded access to college and today more students are attending public universities in Illinois than ever before. | ||
| He's also unafraid to call out the recklessness and assaults of Donald Trump and his administration. | ||
| And I can say, Governor Pritzker does not cower to bullies. | ||
| In the face of a president hell-bent on cutting services, stripping away rights, and consolidating power for the wealthy and well-connected, we at CAP are also ready to fight back and do it fiercely. | ||
| But opposition alone is not enough. | ||
| We cannot meet this moment by simply resisting bad ideas. | ||
| We must offer better ones. | ||
| We must demonstrate there's an alternative agenda out there that prioritizes solving the American people's problems so that people have a real choice between two visions of change rather than a choice between Trump's wrecking ball and the status quo. | ||
| Governor Pritzker is showing the way in Illinois and he's showing America as well what effective leadership looks like. | ||
| Leadership that solves people's problems while bringing folks together rather than tearing them apart. | ||
| Now, some people look at the current moment and think there's a conflict between fighting Trump's extremism and offering practical solutions, but I think that's a false choice. | ||
| In fact, the extremism of this administration allows us to build a resilient majority in the country that captures a broad spectrum. | ||
| And that is a model for Governor Pritzker's leadership as well. | ||
| That's why I really am so thrilled to have Governor Pritzker here because I do think in this moment, when people are scared and sometimes despairing, because we see so much, so many assaults all around us, it's important that we have leaders who demonstrate a fight, fighting for all of us. | ||
| And in the fight, there is hope, because only when you fight can you win. | ||
| And that is why I am so excited to have Governor Pritzker here, definitely a fighter. | ||
| Governor Pritzker well good day everyone It's great to see you. | ||
| And I have to say, I did not see that the title of my talk, apparently, is A Better Way Forward. | ||
| So I guess that's what I'll be talking about today. | ||
| Although I think about that, and I think the only way out is through. | ||
| And that is where we are. | ||
| So thank you very much, Neera. | ||
| Thank you for inviting me. | ||
| I want to say what an honor it is to be here at the Center for American Progress. | ||
| I admire this organization. | ||
| I've supported and followed some of the policy recommendations and implemented them. | ||
| In fact, in the state of Illinois, as Neera knows, I've been involved for many years in early childhood education, early childhood development, long before I was governor. | ||
| And it was CAP that was really writing policy that I was thinking I wanted to make sure that elected officials would implement. | ||
| Little did I know that I would end up being the elected official who would be doing it. | ||
| But I was reading the paper this morning. | ||
| I know people are concerned about the future of the Democratic Party and concerned about what direction we're going. | ||
| And I thought I wanted to share with all of you the headline that I read this morning, which is, Democratic leaders stand real still in hopes that no one will notice them. | ||
| That, of course, was a headline from The Onion. | ||
| Luckily, CAP has long been a bulwark developing better policies for working people. | ||
| And in these first two months of President Musk's administration, you've stepped up. | ||
| CAP has really done an amazing job of Building a reputation for many years, but putting it to good work and good use just over the last, well, 60 days. | ||
| So thank you. | ||
| Boy, oh boy, do we need you and keep going. | ||
| I got into this work for much the same reason that many of you probably did. | ||
| Policy at its core is the result of choices that we make about the kind of world that we want to live in. | ||
| What kind of future do we want? | ||
| In Deuteronomy chapter 16, verse 20, we're commanded: justice. | ||
| Justice shall you pursue. | ||
| Justice. | ||
| And I was taught by my parents that when you see injustice, you don't look the other way. | ||
| You do something to right the wrong. | ||
| But the meme lords and the minions in the White House conceive of themselves as kings and nobles who have the divine right to order the world in a way that best suits them and their fellow kleptocrats. | ||
| People's lives are a game to them. | ||
| I really think that's how they think. | ||
| During Donald Trump's first term, when COVID was running rampant, we governors begged him to help us. | ||
| Begged. | ||
| The President of the United States has the unique power to invoke the Defense Production Act. | ||
| It's a law designed to ensure the supply of materials and services for national defense during crises. | ||
| We needed masks and ventilators to save people's lives that were dying in our hospitals. | ||
| And U.S. companies were price gouging, and I called many of them myself and talked to the CEOs. | ||
| They were price-gouging state and local governments, police and firefighters, hospitals and clinics. | ||
| He could have fought for us. | ||
| He really could have. | ||
| Instead, he made self-serving deals. | ||
| He would send life-saving equipment if only we would agree to praise him on the Sunday talk shows. | ||
| That is literally a deal that he put in front of me. | ||
| I was desperate. | ||
| My hospitals were filling up, and time was of the essence. | ||
| So I agreed that I would do that if he sent me what we needed. | ||
| Because my job at the time was to do virtually anything to get the White House to help us save lives. | ||
| Needless to say, he never delivered for us. | ||
| He never delivered for the American people. | ||
| And Donald Trump proved who he really is in that critical moment. | ||
| Is it incompetence or is it treachery? | ||
| Which one? | ||
| In 2025, he's proving it's both. | ||
| Americans are experiencing the cruelty that comes with authoritarian rule. | ||
| Donald Trump has handed over the reins of power to Elon Musk and his fellow Dogebags so that they can find trillions of dollars that they need to give themselves a massive tax break. | ||
| Think about that. | ||
| What Musk and Trump are doing isn't about efficiencies or about cost savings. | ||
| It is about cruelty. | ||
| They're intentionally breaking the system and giving themselves the authority to rebuild it in their own interest. | ||
| They've shut down cancer research and investments in cures for diabetes and Alzheimer's. | ||
| They've eliminated safe drinking water regulations and allowed companies unfettered ability to pollute the air their employees and all of us breathe. | ||
| Homeless veterans have lost the support that they were getting to rebuild their lives. | ||
| Seeing a doctor at the VA hospital has now become a luxury for them. | ||
| Tariffs designed to help pay for tax breaks for the wealthy have now raised taxes on the middle class and working class. | ||
| The price of tomatoes and lettuce and beer at the grocery store is up. | ||
| And people are literally smuggling eggs across the border from Mexico because they can't find them or they're not affordable at their local grocery stores. | ||
| And congressional Republicans are aiming at eliminating health care coverage for working families. | ||
| It's a foregone conclusion unless the Senate Republicans defy Trump. | ||
| And there's a fat chance of that happening. | ||
| There's no grand master strategy to improve the lives of everyday Americans. | ||
| This is true, villainous cruelty by a few idiots who are trying to figure out how to pull off the scam of their lives. | ||
| They're armed with the power of the presidency, and their sights are aimed on working people, many of whom voted for them, never imagining what this would turn out to be. | ||
| Here we are. | ||
| Things are bad, and they're getting worse. | ||
| They're now openly acknowledging that there will be a recession or stagflation, and they think that's okay. | ||
| They're trying to sell it. | ||
| If you're living paycheck to paycheck and you can't pay your bills, a recession will be devastating for you and for your family. | ||
| But Elon Musk is okay with you experiencing economic pain. | ||
| This is all cruel, incompetent recklessness. | ||
| And 60 days in, the signs are there. | ||
| It's already pissing off everyday Americans. | ||
| And here's where Democrats have to be honest with ourselves. | ||
| Donald Trump didn't just ride into power on the backs of oligarchs who wanted tax cuts so badly that they were willing to throw a record stock market into the toilet for them. | ||
| No, a number of Americans, 49.8%, went to the ballot box agreeing with Democratic positions on the issues most important to their lives, and they picked the other guy. | ||
| Democrats are the party whose policies are all about working families. | ||
| We know this. | ||
| This is cap, after all. | ||
| You guys write white papers about this. | ||
| But when there's a disconnect between Democratic policies and people's recognition of those policies, we lose. | ||
| If we want to regain the trust of the voters that we stand for, Democrats have to deliver. | ||
| For sure, we have to call out the BS that Republicans have been selling. | ||
| But meanwhile, Democrats have to make people's lives better. | ||
| Now, I'm from Illinois, and when I won my first election, it was clear on day one that we had a government infrastructure that had withered from neglect and a lack of public trust. | ||
| The state of Illinois government had been withering away. | ||
| For decades, Illinois politicians underfunded schools and pensions and passed budgets with unsustainable deficits. | ||
| But over the past six years, we've focused on fiscal responsibility. | ||
| We've been lifting up working families and addressing social and economic justice. | ||
| Democrats in Illinois have been steadily delivering on making life easier and more affordable. | ||
| We've expanded child care and we've enacted a universal preschool program. | ||
| We've canceled $300 million of working class and middle-class families' medical debts. | ||
| And we've lowered the cost of prescription drugs. | ||
| We've made college more affordable, and we've expanded financial aid by more than 75%. | ||
| More kids are going to college tuition-free in Illinois than ever before. | ||
| We eliminated the state tax on groceries, we lowered taxes on 300,000 small businesses, and we enacted a child tax credit. | ||
| Now, I'm a businessman, and I'm the first one to tell you that government shouldn't be run like a business. | ||
| But one thing I'm pretty good at is attracting new investment and jobs to our state. | ||
| Illinois is now number two in the nation for corporate expansions and relocation destinations. | ||
| That wasn't the case 10 years ago or 20 years ago. | ||
| We enshrined protections for reproductive rights two years before Dobbs, and we banned book bans. | ||
| And we've made sure that the history taught in our schools is more honest and accurate, not less honest. | ||
| I believe that the only way to govern is by delivering the big things that help people. | ||
| And it's making it so that people who need to can afford a home and child care, making enough money so that they don't have to work their whole lives. | ||
| They can actually retire. | ||
| It means making it easier to get an education, to start a small business, become financially stable. | ||
| And yes, in this day and age, it means fighting for all of that while defending what it means to live in a constitutional republic. | ||
| This moment is hard. | ||
| I don't dispute that. | ||
| But there's clarity in being on the side of human decency and kindness. | ||
| It means that when challenges arise, you have something to hold on to, a vision to anchor to, a hope to fight for. | ||
| About 150 years ago, the great city of Chicago burned to the ground. | ||
| One in three residents was left without a home. | ||
| And facing that devastation, leaders might have been so paralyzed by the overwhelming task at hand that Chicago's story could have been left to the ash heap of history. | ||
| But the city wasn't just rebuilt. | ||
| It was reborn. | ||
| Chicago went from a small Midwest town to one of the biggest cities in the United States. | ||
| Entrepreneurs and innovators flocked in. | ||
| Residents buckled down. | ||
| Chicago rose from the ashes to demonstrate what American ingenuity looks like. | ||
| It would have been easy for our city leaders to throw in the towel, to string together a middling recovery in the face of enormous despair. | ||
| But when the cinders and the ash cleared, Chicagoans had built architectural wonders and literally went on to invent the first skyscrapers. | ||
| It seems wherever we look right now, there is fire. | ||
| There are embers. | ||
| Trump and his bootlickers designed it that way. | ||
| It should scare us, but it should not deter us. | ||
| So let it instead be a call to action to all of us. | ||
| Together we can build something bigger and better. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you so much for this remark. | ||
| Governor Pritzker, I'm going to ask a few questions and then we'll take audience questions. | ||
| So get your questions ready. | ||
| I think I wanted to just start where you ended, which is on the embers all around us and what the leaders in Chicago did to rebuild. | ||
| You talked a lot about your record and what you've done, but I just, I guess I'd ask you to just step back and discuss what you think we should be doing going forward. | ||
| Or how does your experience in Illinois? | ||
| What do those experiences tell us about how we can have a vision for the future? | ||
| Well, I think I mentioned to all of you, and I want to be clear, we were in pretty dire straits. | ||
| We had $17 billion of unpaid bills when I came into office. | ||
| We had had a Republican governor who essentially refused to sign a budget, so two years without a budget, longer than any state in the nation ever. | ||
| And we had no rainy day fund. | ||
| Think about the pandemic that was to come. | ||
| No rainy day fund. | ||
| We hadn't balanced the budget in years in Illinois. | ||
| And we had the lowest credit rating in the nation. | ||
| Pension challenges. | ||
| I mean, the list goes on. | ||
| So by the way, there were lots of people who said, you don't want to be governor of Illinois. | ||
| The problems are too great. | ||
| You're going to have to declare bankruptcy or something. | ||
| There isn't bankruptcy for a state, I might add. | ||
| But, you know, when I think about what we were facing, I mean, it was pretty daunting. | ||
| I think the thing that has gotten us through that is focusing on working families, focusing on lifting up what is it that people really want, the challenges that people are facing at the kitchen table are the very challenges that the Democratic Party is best at addressing. | ||
| And we have better ideas. | ||
| And I'll just throw just one. | ||
| And there are many that I'd love to talk about. | ||
| Maybe we'll get a chance. | ||
| But why are we not all screaming about the $7.25 minimum wage in this country? | ||
| No one can live on it. | ||
| We Democrats are the ones who, we believe in lifting up people, right? | ||
| $7.25, $14,000 a year, you can't raise a family on. | ||
| You can barely live on yourself. | ||
| In fact, I don't think you can on your own. | ||
| $7.25. | ||
| If you ask Republicans what their view on the minimum wage is, they'll give you one of two answers. | ||
| They don't want to raise it, or they wish there wasn't a minimum wage. | ||
| Now, what a contrast. | ||
| And we're a party that believes in a living wage for people. | ||
| And they're a party who believes in lowest cost labor is best. | ||
| What for them and for Elon Musk and the people they represent. | ||
| So I really believe that if we center ourselves, and we have in Illinois, on what's best for working families, what's best for the middle class, what's best for the most vulnerable people in our society, that that is where Democrats belong, right? | ||
| Guess what? | ||
| Elon Musk doesn't need a lot of help. | ||
| But that child who's been abandoned, the child who's in foster care, that family that lost their job or the family that's just challenged to make ends meet and living paycheck to paycheck. | ||
| That's who we represent. | ||
| And by the way, folks who just want to get ahead and they want success, they want opportunity. | ||
| We believe in that. | ||
| We ought to be, by the way, the party of small businesses. | ||
| Why are we not the party of small business? | ||
| We ought to be the party of small business, helping people. | ||
| This is the next Once you've got a job, you get a promotion, you're doing well at your, you know, at your work, the opportunity to get ahead by building some capital, some equity for yourself going forward is something there are a lot of people who want. | ||
| And we ought to be making that easier for people to get. | ||
| Instead, I think the Republicans try to convince people that they're the ones who stand up for job creation and economic growth. | ||
| We should be the party that stands up for job creation and economic growth and helping people get a better wage. | ||
| Great. | ||
| So I'd love to just follow up on that. | ||
| Because I think a lot of people might ask, you know, how do we differentiate from some of the things we've done in the past? | ||
| And you've talked about really tangible benefits to people, access to college, prescription drugs. | ||
| And maybe that's a way to differentiate from some of the efforts that we've made in the past in terms of trying to be, really communicate what we're doing for working class people. | ||
| So beyond the minimum wage, it'd be great if you could share tangible things you've done in Illinois to improve the lives of working class people. | ||
| Okay, so let's, I mean, talk about, I think, the three big things, and there probably each of us could add a fourth and a fifth big thing that really matters in people's lives, right? | ||
| I mean, being able to get a good education. | ||
| It's got to be, I mean, when you think about the future, your prospects for getting a good job and a better wage, right? | ||
| Having a good education for your kids, for yourself, the ability to improve your own standing, education. | ||
| We should be investing in education. | ||
| And in Illinois, since I've come into office, we put $2.5 billion more into public education. | ||
| And we've focused a lot on our community colleges. | ||
| We have the third largest community college system in the entire nation. | ||
| It's one of the best in the country. | ||
| And those community colleges are partnered with businesses in their regions. | ||
| Again, we have 48 of them across the state of Illinois. | ||
| In those regions, those businesses are asking community colleges to create the programs that will help them get the workforce that they need. | ||
| And then we're focused also on what's the future workforce need to look like. | ||
| In Illinois, for example, we're making big investments in quantum. | ||
| And that workforce, I mean, it's going to look different, but it needs to start in high school, in community college, in universities. | ||
| It's not about creating scientists who are inventing the next new quantum technology necessarily, but all the jobs that get created by the new world that we're going to live in by virtue of the investments that we're making. | ||
| So education is hugely important. | ||
| And we've made the investments in Illinois that will make a difference. | ||
| We have some of the best universities in the entire world. | ||
| Second, healthcare. | ||
| First of all, I hope that the message of the Democratic Party, and certainly my message is we're for universal health care. | ||
| everybody should have a doctor. | ||
| It's just like when I talk about early childhood, which I won't jump into now, but I mean, this is, you know, when you make investments in early childhood, you're actually saving money over the long haul. | ||
| The investments you make in those early years, the investment you make in people's health care and keeping people healthy. | ||
| It's one of the reasons the Affordable Care Act is so successful, right, that it focused on that kind of preventative care. | ||
| You know, making those investments has been hugely important. | ||
| In Illinois, when I showed up in office, there were 140,000 Medicaid applications that the prior governor had just let sit there, like unprocessed applications, people who really need health care, unable to get health care just because, well, if you slow it all down, it was almost like what Elon Musk is trying to get our government to do now, but we went through it, you know, seven years ago, eight years ago. | ||
| So health care to me is it's, you know, it's a right. | ||
| It's also good for our society and very importantly, I think good for our economy. | ||
| If you want to be fiscally responsible, keep people healthy that live in your state. | ||
| So healthcare, and we've made those investments. | ||
| Not only do we process those 140,000, but we've also changed the way we deal with health care. | ||
| For example, I don't know how many of you have had the experience of prior authorization, seeking prior authorization for some kind of insurance. | ||
| You know, you hope your insurance company will cover some kind of condition. | ||
| They demand prior authorization on so many important things, including emergency mental health. | ||
| Now think about this, and I have a friend who called me to tell me his personal story, that his daughter was having a mental health crisis. | ||
| She, in fact, one night tried to commit suicide. | ||
| And he obviously called an ambulance. | ||
| They were in an ambulance together on their way to a hospital that had a care unit for people who had mental health issues. | ||
| And he had to call his insurance company to get prior authorization to allow her to check into this hospital. | ||
| They rejected it. | ||
| Now, what are you going to do? | ||
| Your daughter just tried to commit suicide. | ||
| I mean, it really chokes me up. | ||
| What would you do if you couldn't afford otherwise? | ||
| He happened to know somebody at the hospital, and so he called and said, I am going to make sure that they cover me. | ||
| I promise you, I will write the check myself if I need to or work it off, but please let us come. | ||
| And they did. | ||
| Now, eventually he got the insurance company over the next 24 hours to do the right thing. | ||
| But we have now made it illegal in Illinois for insurance companies to deny emergency mental health care. | ||
| And then I'll just give a third one and we'll move on. | ||
| But I mean, so education, healthcare, look, job creation. | ||
| Let's talk, you know, you know where most of the jobs come from. | ||
| They don't come from large businesses. | ||
| We should be helping large businesses continue to be successful. | ||
| But most jobs that get created in our society get created by small businesses and startup businesses. | ||
| And there are a lot of people with really good creative ideas. | ||
| And some people will start businesses and fail. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| But there are also a lot of businesses that get started that succeed and wildly so. | ||
| I often remind people that the big-name companies in Illinois that you can think of, John Deere, for example, Navistar and others, those companies were small startup businesses at some point. | ||
| Now they're huge employers in the country and in the world, but they were just startup businesses at one time. | ||
| And especially our party, we ought to be helping people get started in business. | ||
| We ought to be helping because it creates jobs. | ||
| The idea that someone's going to build capital and plant it right here in the United States because they're a U.S. citizen, because they believe in wherever it is that they live, or that's where they're going to create the business. | ||
| We ought to be, I mean, that is, in my view, something that should be fundamental to our society. | ||
| Now, Donald Trump doesn't believe that. | ||
| Donald Trump is all about the largest business owners and the wealthiest people and doing what's easy and best for them and not thinking about the little guy, the small business that's just getting started and how are we going to make it easier for them. | ||
| So I just think, and when I think about these things, the philosophy difference between our parties is so great. | ||
| We need to present it properly to people. | ||
| We need to make sure people really understand what the Democratic Party is all about. | ||
| But it is about lifting up people who want to get ahead or standing up for people who are most vulnerable or who are being discriminated against. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Just a note on the tariffs when he excludes companies for the tariffs. | ||
| They're always the big companies, but the small business suppliers don't get the exemptions. | ||
| Can I give you an example of a business in Illinois? | ||
| I was just with a small business, startup business, a craft brewer. | ||
| We have a big craft brewery industry in Illinois. | ||
| It's not unique to the Midwest, but we have a lot of beer drinkers. | ||
| I think Wisconsin has more bars per capita than any other, which I admire. | ||
| But we have a lot of craft brewers. | ||
| We have a great industry there. | ||
| But there are four guys who come from the south side of Chicago who started a business, craft brewery business, and it's award-winning. | ||
| I tried all four of the beers they make. | ||
| I sat with these guys and talked to them about their business. | ||
| But this was before the tariffs, about two months ago. | ||
| And I asked them, what will happen to your business if the tariffs on Canada and Mexico go in place? | ||
| They told me that if the tariffs on Canada go in place, the cost of barley will go up by 25%, and that's a prime ingredient, and they buy it from Canada. | ||
| The cost of aluminum to make the cans that they put their beer in will go up enormously. | ||
| And to buy a can of their beer will go up at least 25%, partly because others will take advantage of the fact that the smaller startup business will struggle. | ||
| And so these guys said, if the tariffs go in place, we may have to go out of business. | ||
| Well, here we are. | ||
| Those tariffs are in place. | ||
| And unfortunately, that brewery is going to struggle. | ||
| Now, they're hoping and praying that these tariffs will end sometime soon so that they can continue on the path of building their business before they have to go out of business. | ||
| But this is the kind of example that, you know, the tariffs are having a terrible effect on, again, it's go to the grocery store, your tomatoes, your lettuce, your beer at the grocery store. | ||
| By the way, the big beer companies, they're going to absorb some of the costs for a little while. | ||
| They're going to suffer profitable profitability. | ||
| But they're going to be able to survive for some period of time, and also they're global. | ||
| The small beer companies and the startup craft brewer aren't going to make it if Donald Trump succeeds at what he's trying to do. | ||
| So I'm going to ask one more question, then we'll take questions from the audience. | ||
| And we'll take questions both our in-person audience and our online audience as well. | ||
| I think one, just to switch it up a little bit, you know, I think there's a big robust debate right now about how to fight, when to fight the Trump administration. | ||
| So I think it would just be great for you to tell us how you as a governor can fight, how your attorneys generals, the attorneys generals are fighting, your attorney generals fighting. | ||
| How are you engaged in pushing back? | ||
| So, you know, we have a terrific delegation that we sent to Washington from the state of Illinois. | ||
| Unfortunately, Congress is dysfunctional and so dysfunctional now because people are just cowed by this administration. | ||
| They're concerned about being primaried or they feel some threat and they're either laying low, they're certainly not taking up their responsibilities in Congress to, frankly, to do what Congress is supposed to do with regard to the other branches of government. | ||
| So this is for a governor, right? | ||
| We don't, I can't affect federal laws. | ||
| There's only so much that I can do to push back from a legal perspective. | ||
| We can go to court, and we are, and we have. | ||
| And I'm fortunate because I've got a terrific Attorney General, Kwame Raul, who's been part of many of the suits. | ||
| In fact, so many of these suits have been successful, and he's been a part of them. | ||
| And that's great, but we shouldn't have to rely upon that. | ||
| That's just where we are in this world. | ||
| The pushback that I can offer is first, do the best I can to run a state that is really all about working people and the most vulnerable. | ||
| But second, I've got a bully pulpit. | ||
| I'm the fifth largest state in the United States, the fifth largest economy, the 18th largest economy in the world if we were an independent country. | ||
| Sometimes I think maybe we should become an independent count. | ||
| No, I'm only kidding. | ||
| But the 18th largest economy in the world. | ||
| And so the bully pulpit that I get as governor gives me the opportunity at least to speak to what I think our common American values are. | ||
| And we are the center of the country, the heart of the country where we are in the state of Illinois. | ||
| We also have a state that is most reflective of the population of the entire United States. | ||
| If you look at the demographics of Illinois, it looks like the demographics of the country. | ||
| So it gives me the opportunity to talk about what I think is happening in the country and the dangers that I think we're facing. | ||
| And just as somebody who led the building of a Holocaust museum, whose family survived the pogroms in Ukraine by escaping to, at that time, the only place in the world that would really take them in, which is the United States, I cherish the freedom and the security that this country offers to people, and not just for immigrants, for all of us who live here. | ||
| I'm three generations away from the immigrants who came here not speaking English. | ||
| And I still believe that it's the greatest country in the world and that we have to protect the freedom, the security, the leadership that this country has established in the world. | ||
| And I see it all being taken away, little by little. | ||
| It feels like more and more every day. | ||
| And we're only 60, roughly 60 days into this administration. | ||
| So I worry terribly. | ||
| I have sounded the alarm. | ||
| I will continue to sound the alarm. | ||
| People are responding. | ||
| I think that's the, you know, it's happening. | ||
| It doesn't feel ever like enough yet, and I wish that there were more people, more elected leaders, more community leaders who will step up and speak up. | ||
| There are a lot of people who are afraid. | ||
|
unidentified
|
A lot. | |
| I sat in a room of CEOs of businesses, not Illinois businesses, but these were nationally known businesses and other senior leadership of those companies. | ||
| And they essentially said they're afraid to raise their heads, you know, that they'll get shot at, so to speak, by the Trump administration. | ||
| So they're kind of laying low, even as they see everything under attack. | ||
| And I mean, it's in some cases, you know, I think it's shameful. | ||
| They have power to push back. | ||
| And I actually think that Trump would listen to that power because those are people he listens to. | ||
| But they're afraid. | ||
| And so the rest of us, I mean, we can't be afraid. | ||
| If you're willing to stand up, to step up, to speak out, you have to do it. | ||
| And even if it means, you know, whether you're showing up at a town hall meeting or you have one in your district at all, you've got a telephone, you know, 202-224-3121. | ||
| That's Congress's number. | ||
| You can reach your congressman or senator. | ||
| And you can also gather people in your community and make sure that your voice is heard. | ||
| We need to do that. | ||
| That is what we have. | ||
| That is all Democrats have right now at the federal level is our ability to speak up and speak out. | ||
| So fear is immobilizing, but courage is contagious. | ||
| So we're so we'll move to questions. | ||
| Just raise your hand and say who you are and we'll try to get as many as possible right here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| I'm David Smith of The Guardian. | ||
| Thanks for doing this. | ||
| Just when you join the dots of the press under attack and the deportations, Trump effectively ignoring court orders, crackdowns on protests on university campuses and the fear being instilled, the obeying in advance. | ||
| I mean, how worried are you that this country is sliding towards authoritarianism? | ||
| Well, I would commend you to listen to the last 10 minutes of my state of the state speech because I talked about that very thing. | ||
| I am deeply concerned about the slide that we're in. | ||
| And I mentioned the pogroms and the Holocaust because those are personal experiences. | ||
| Not the Holocaust. | ||
| The pogroms are a family experience. | ||
| I built a Holocaust Museum. | ||
| I mean, I have grown up understanding that not just minorities, but large swaths of people can be under direct attack in an authoritarian regime. | ||
| And they will use the majority, lie to the majority, use propaganda in order to foment an attack. | ||
| And that is currently the case. | ||
| We're all seeing the well-orchestrated videos of the raids to Immigrants to this country, some of whom are legal immigrants to the United States, some of whom are U.S. citizens, to take them away and to justify it by saying, well, there are Venezuelan gang members, which I guarantee there are. | ||
| And for God's sakes, let's take people who are violent criminals, convicted violent criminals, and let's remove them from this country if they are here and undocumented. | ||
| Right? | ||
| But when you're doing a sweeping raid, and by the way, on day one, where did they come? | ||
| Chicago. | ||
| Who did they bring with them? | ||
| Dr. Phil. | ||
| I'm not exaggerating. | ||
| They brought Dr. Phil to Chicago with his new online TV channel. | ||
| And why did they do that? | ||
| Because they wanted to get the most amount of attention to what they were doing. | ||
| Not because they wanted to effectuate actually going after violent criminals who are undocumented, who should be deported, but rather they wanted people to see that they're doing something. | ||
| And so they'll just take sweeping hundreds of people and take them out of the country. | ||
| So, look, you mentioned a lot of things, and defying court orders is a whole other topic of conversation, hugely important. | ||
| Again, what authoritarian regimes do. | ||
| But here's the thing you all ought to do: if you don't already, if you haven't already read about Orban in Hungary, go read about what he did steadily, not that slowly, to put the noose around that country. | ||
| And Donald Trump admires Orban. | ||
| And I believe he and his team have learned from that and are replicating that. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Right here? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks. | |
| Joe Pertigone with the bulwark. | ||
| Given the dissatisfaction with how Democrats handled the funding fight last week, what did you think of that? | ||
| And how would you advise them to act for the next crisis, let's say the debt ceiling, which is expiring later this year? | ||
| Well, I put out a statement that morning before the vote encouraging the Senate to vote down the CR. | ||
| I mean, that's, we have to take any opportunity when we're not in the majority. | ||
| We have to take any opportunity where we have leverage in order to stand up and fight. | ||
| Now, it's not fight to no end. | ||
| What do you use that fight for? | ||
| It's to get compromise from this ridiculously quiet Congress that goes along with whatever Donald Trump and Elon Musk are telling them. | ||
| And so we've got to use those opportunities whenever they come about. | ||
| And there was a prime one. | ||
| It's probably the first that I can think of where there was a real opportunity for us to stand up and speak out and to protect the people who we stand up for. | ||
| I mean, I'm disappointed about what happened. | ||
| I want to commend one of my senators, Tammy Duckworth, who I called to ask her how she was going to vote. | ||
| And she said, my vote is hell no. | ||
| I love her. | ||
| Over here? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Here? | |
| Right here. | ||
| Yellow tie. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| No, it's definitely coming. | ||
| And then we'll do an online question, Billy. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| After that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Governor, my name is David Schiffman. | ||
| I teach ocean conservation here at Georgetown. | ||
| And my students are brilliant and passionate and amazing people. | ||
| They can do anything that they want to do. | ||
| And many of them went to college thinking they wanted to do public service. | ||
| They wanted to help make our fisheries sustainable for the future and save endangered species and fight climate change. | ||
| And they look at what's happening at NOAA and the EPA, and they're scared and they don't know what to do. | ||
| What should I tell my students? | ||
| First of all, we all ought to be listening to young people right now. | ||
| And they didn't expect that their public service was going to be what I'm about to say, but this is what the public services that we need them to do, which is get out there in the streets. | ||
| I mean, protest, show up, and make it clear, write letters, do anything that you can to be noticed. | ||
| And it isn't just on the subjects that they're studying and that they want to be expert at, but rather about the organization and delivery of services by this government. | ||
| And so that's the public service that they didn't expect they'd have to do to fight for democracy, but that is what they're going to have to do right now. | ||
| Now, eventually we're going to get, I mean, I'm an optimist, though this is a trying time for optimists. | ||
| But eventually we're going to get back to a world where what they were aiming to do will be a reality. | ||
| But, you know, when you talk about NOAA being, you know, halved, I can tell you, I'm in a state where we have tornadoes somewhat regularly, we have floods somewhat regularly, certainly more regularly than ever before. | ||
| And we need NOAA. | ||
| And now we've put millions of people in danger as a result of the cuts that you're referring to. | ||
| And so we need your students. | ||
| We still will need your students. | ||
| And I think that people are waking up to this idea that lives are threatened. | ||
| I mean, already, I guarantee you, people have lost their lives because of some of the cuts that have been made, certainly overseas. | ||
| And when they get to Medicaid, which they're coming for, people right here at home and in your own neighborhood, and it's not just poor people, it's your grandmother in her nursing home. | ||
| She's going to have to leave the nursing home and come home. | ||
| And you're going to have to take care of her. | ||
| And she's not going to get the kind of care that she deserves. | ||
| And she's just one example. | ||
| But I mean, this is what's happening in our country. | ||
| So people who thought they were, listen, do you think I thought when I ran for governor that we'd be faced with, I knew when I ran because Donald Trump was president that I'd be dealing with Donald Trump for those two years at least. | ||
| But I have to say, I did not expect what we are seeing right now in our country. | ||
| And it pisses me off. | ||
| And it makes me want to fight even harder. | ||
| And we're doing what online question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Governor, we have a question from Lisa Lara of the New York Times. | |
| Are there areas of common ground that Democrats should seek with the new administration, or should that not be the party's focus? | ||
| I love that of all the online questions you can take, the New York Times just happened to pop up. | ||
| I love Lisa. | ||
| Happy to answer that question. | ||
| Look, I think there's common ground, but I must say the common ground has to be found with rational Republicans who may disagree with us on policies, but who understand that, and I've talked to some of them in my own state, I might say, about the fact that, I mean, we have rural areas where critical access hospitals are going to be closed because Medicaid is going to get cut. | ||
| You lose a hospital in an area where it's already 45 minutes or an hour away to get to a hospital. | ||
| You lose that hospital. | ||
| Now you're two hours away. | ||
| And I mean, if you're looking for emergency care, you're not going to be able to find it fast enough, I mean. | ||
| And so, and the same thing in the city of Chicago Safety Net Hospitals, same thing. | ||
| So I think there is common understanding. | ||
| I mean, my father was a Navy veteran, my grandfather, a Navy veteran, my brother-in-law, my cousin. | ||
| I mean, my family has a number of Navy, one Army veteran. | ||
| We don't hold it against them. | ||
| But veteran services, I mean, I've already seen homeless veterans are being tossed aside. | ||
| And it's just cruel. | ||
| Look, you want efficiency in government. | ||
| You want to outsource things to private contractors. | ||
| I mean, I may not agree with some of that. | ||
| But if your goal is to serve the people that you represent or to have government serve vulnerable people or to recognize the service that people have already given and risking their lives for this country like veterans have, and you want to do it more efficiently in a different way, okay, but this is not about efficiency. | ||
| This is, they want to shut down departments. | ||
| They want to create havoc, and they already have, right? | ||
| They lay people off. | ||
| Oh, well, yeah, come back. | ||
| We need some of you to come back. | ||
| Nobody knows. | ||
| If you get told that you might lose your job, you're already looking for another job. | ||
| So the idea that expert at NOAA, just for an example, you know, wildlife and fisheries, an expert is like, you think that person isn't already got their resume out on the street somewhere else? | ||
| We need experts in government. | ||
| So, you know, my response is that there are a lot of Republicans who want to do the right thing. | ||
| They're afraid of Donald Trump. | ||
| I think we've all heard that from people we know. | ||
| And they're going to have to get to a place where services for people that they represent are threatened. | ||
| And those people are speaking up and speaking out, and they're hearing it, and they have to push back on Donald Trump. | ||
| So that, I think, is where we'll find common ground. | ||
| Okay, I think we have time. | ||
| For one more question, we'll go over Anna. | ||
| Anna. | ||
| Right there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks. | |
| Great to be here with you, Governor Prisker. | ||
| Anna Enricohan with House Natural Resources Democrats. | ||
| I think adding to your long list of accomplishments there in Illinois is your work on clean energy deployment and dealing with climate impacts. | ||
| And I wondered if you could talk about why that's important for working families and how you see that going forward given the attack from the Trump administration on all that work as well. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I am so glad you asked that question. | ||
| I really, I care. | ||
| It was not a plan. | ||
| Deeply, it was not. | ||
| I've never met Anna, Anna, Anna. | ||
| I've never met Anna. | ||
| I don't even know how to pronounce her name, apparently. | ||
| But Anna, so I'm lucky I live in a state where about 50% of our electricity is produced by nuclear power plants. | ||
| Now, there are people who don't like nuclear. | ||
| But I have to say, in a world where we need to move very quickly toward a renewable and clean energy-powered world, we're in decent shape. | ||
| The problem is we didn't have the policies in place to expand beyond where we were, which was about 51, 52 percent nuclear, about 7.5 percent renewables, and the rest was natural gas and coal. | ||
| That was when I came into office. | ||
| We've virtually tripled the amount of renewables in the state of Illinois now. | ||
| So we're approaching, you know, I would say we're around 70 percent now. | ||
| It's not enough. | ||
| But it's a pretty good direction. | ||
| Why does it matter to average working families? | ||
| It matters because if we produce energy at a reasonable cost and we're growing the amount of energy that's available, we're lowering the cost of electricity. | ||
| Now, that's hard in a world where we've had inflation and lots of other world disruption affecting lots of different kinds of fuels. | ||
| But it's ultimately it bears itself out that greater supply will lower the cost for existing demand. | ||
| The other thing, of course, is that, and I give Joe Biden a lot of credit for this because he didn't have to do this, but the IRA really has had an enormous impact on even just average working folks being able to get their energy from sources that are much lower cost than they were previously. | ||
| Now, many of those advantages have now gone away under this new administration. | ||
| You know, we've got to bring that back. | ||
| But having solar panels on your house, having community solar in your neighborhood, being able to bring windmills and, by the way, to make solar panels and those windmills and blades in the United States, which is also something that Joe Biden focused on. | ||
| And it's hard to do because we were behind. | ||
| We were behind. | ||
| And we, frankly, are going to fall behind once again as a result of the current administration's policies. | ||
| But working families, we need more electricity. | ||
| We need more electric production. | ||
| We need to reduce the focus on fossil fuels because your air, your water, everything is affected by whether we're effective at that. | ||
| And then finally, climate change. | ||
| I mean, you know, we are living in a world where if we don't get at this much faster, the 100-year floods, which now in Illinois seem like they're happening every couple of years, are going to be more and more often. | ||
| And we've already seen deadly storms, in some ways, worse than ever, ever, and more frequent. | ||
| Having said that, I also want to brag that Illinois is in a good place in some ways in a world moving forward where we're focused on clean energy, but in particular on the subject of fresh water. | ||
| We live on the shores of 20% of the world's freshwater. | ||
| About 80% of the United States is fresh water in the state. | ||
| And we also have rivers and aquifers and other things. | ||
| So I've been to Arizona, Colorado, and other places where they're suffering, California, where they're suffering not being able to access enough fresh water. | ||
| That's not going to be a problem for the state of Illinois. | ||
| But once again, advantages of living in Illinois. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So please move to Illinois, everybody. | |
| Thank you so much, Governor, for what you're doing and what you're fighting for. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thanks, everybody. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This week, tune in for C-SPAN's New Members of Congress series, where we talk to both Republicans and Democrats about their early lives, their previous careers, their families, and why they decided to run for office. | |
| Watch New Members of Congress all week beginning at 9:30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| Here's a preview. | ||
| So, my great-grandfather, a man named Louis Rabbo, served here in Congress, was first selected 90 years before I was, and was a Democrat represented part of Detroit and the Gross Point area of Michigan. | ||
| He's best remembered for adding the words under God to our Pledge of Allegiance. | ||
| He sponsored that bill in the 1950s. | ||
| It was signed into law by President Eisenhower on Flag Day in 1954. | ||
| And as I got elected to Congress, I kind of set out to see which office my great-grandfather had occupied while he was here. | ||
| And there was a freshman in there, Zach Nunn from Iowa, who was willing to relocate. | ||
| It went into the freshman office lottery, and I was able to convince my colleagues not to select that office so that I could get to, you know, now set my office where my great-grandfather once had his office about 75 years ago. | ||
| So it was something that my family was proud of and an exciting thing that we could carry on that legacy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would say my political interest really came from, you know, really was an offshoot of my dad's political interest. | |
| Now, he never ran for office, but he was always very politically astute, paid attention to federal legislation, state legislation as it applied to life as a business owner, and encouraged me from a very, I was went to work for our family business in 1988 and quickly learned the importance of paying attention to what's happened at the state and federal level. | ||
| Many times he encouraged me and my two brothers to write letters to our U.S. senators, U.S. congressmen, state reps, state senators on state and federal issues. | ||
| And I remember as a young child, dad being very, very attentive to presidential elections and presidential politics. | ||
| I can remember him talking about the first one that I really paid attention to was 1968, but learned early on the importance of being politically attentive and active. | ||
| I have five kids. | ||
| My wife, Barbara, is originally from Communist Czechoslovakia. | ||
| She's a naturalized citizen, and so she appreciates in a deeply personal way the blessings of living in our Republic and being an American citizen. | ||
| But she and I have five children. | ||
| Our oldest is a sophomore in high school, and our youngest is in the school of hard knocks. | ||
| He's three years old, still at home with mom. | ||
| But they're great. | ||
| They're a real joy to us. | ||
| They were an asset on the campaign trail. | ||
| They even made phone calls and were knocking doors and things like that. | ||
| And we try to get them out when I'm traveling the district now as a congressman to keep that family together. | ||
| They're awesome. | ||
| They're a great support. | ||
| My wife is amazing. | ||
| She's the one that holds our family together and I'm truly blessed. | ||
| You know, when I was 17, I became keenly aware as a young street outreach worker working in the crack epidemic as an organizer with girls who were deep in the underground street economy. | ||
| Times were tough then as they are now, but I learned that our voices weren't being heard by folks at City Hall. | ||
| And I was also a teen mom. | ||
| And I relied on some of the most basic of benefits to get me through college, to end the cycle of poverty for my family. | ||
| I worked for Kamala Harris when she was the district attorney. | ||
| We should talk more about that. | ||
| I got the inside what it takes as a woman, a woman of color, to lead a prosecutorial office. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I developed programs for her. | |
| And I saw what representation really could mean, how the women would line up in the morning who lost their kids to talk to this young DA hoping that they would get justice. | ||
| So as someone who had, you know, had been marching and had a bullhorn literally in my closet to see the power of government. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I then finished my education and got a degree in public policy. | |
| And I began my career leading large organizations. | ||
| I led the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area as a non-attorney and expanded asylum rights, an issue I had never worked on before. | ||
| But I really saw all of our families and all of our communities deserve some of the most basic and fundamental rights, representation, opportunities to receive justice, housing, child care. | ||
| So when Miss Lee decided to run for the United States Senate, she gave me a call and she was my professor at Mills College and she said, Letifa, there's going to be a lot of people who want to run for this seat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not going to endorse you yet, but you should think about running. | |
| And knowing what Miss Lee meant to our community as our congressperson, with my experience in government as a local elected at the time with the Barrier Rapid Transit District, as a legally blind person, again, as a mom, as someone who really supported my husband through his cancer journey and buried him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We ended up bankrupt. | |
| All these lived experiences, plus my work on the ground, I thought it was my responsibility to run. | ||
| This week, C-SPAN continues our new members of Congress series, where we speak with Republicans and Democrats about their early lives, previous careers, families, and why they ran for office. | ||
| Tonight, at 9.30 p.m. Eastern, our interviews include New York Democrat Josh Riley, an attorney who worked as an appeals court law clerk and on Capitol Hill. | ||
| It's his first time in elective office. | ||
| My very first vote on the rules package, I brought my four-year-old and my one-year-old to vote. | ||
| And as you know, the way you vote is you put a card in the machine and you push the button. | ||
| And so I let them do it. | ||
| And they were just, you know, smashing all the buttons and everything. | ||
| And I was caught up in the moment of seeing them do that and sharing that with them. | ||
| And I left the floor. | ||
| And when I did, my chief of staff said, did you vote the right way? | ||
| And I actually had no idea because the kids were doing the whole thing. | ||
| So I had to go back in and check their work. | ||
| They got it right. | ||
| Watch new members of Congress all this week, starting at 9.30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| And on Friday, starting at 8 a.m. Eastern, join us on C-SPAN 2 for a special 24-hour marathon featuring more than 60 of our exclusive interviews with the newest members of the 119th Congress. | ||
| Republican Congressman Mike Flood of Nebraska held a town hall and reviewed the priorities he's been working on for Columbus and Nebraska's first congressional district. | ||
| During frequent interruptions, he took questions on the national debt, funding cuts to USAID, and the influence of Doge and Elon Musk on the Trump administration. |