Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker has said that he lives “rent-free” in Donald Trump’s head. He also lives part-time in the official governor’s mansion in Springfield.
“It’s the largest governor’s mansion in the country,” Pritzker told me when I met him in Chicago late Friday afternoon. His wife, M. K. Pritzker, oversaw a major redecoration of the 16-room, Italian-style manor after her husband was first elected, in 2018. The governor raves about the job she did.
But does it have a ballroom? I asked.
Pritzker declared this to be a “funny question.” No, he told me, although there is a “large gathering place.”
“Do we call it the ballroom?” he wondered, in the general direction of an aide. She shrugged. (They do.)
Pritzker and I were tucked away in a hybrid conference/break room that was definitely not a ballroom. My opening question felt timely, given that Pritzker’s main political nemesis of late has embarked on building a ballroom at his own official residence, a process that began with the shocking demolition of the White House’s East Wing.
In the scheme of things, this landmark leveling was a small, if highly symbolic, step on the path of havoc that Trump has blazed across much of the federal government and blue America. Chicago and Pritzker have figured prominently as targets. Last month, ICE and Customs and Border Protection officers surged into the greater metropolitan area, engaging in conspicuous raids and stopping people “because of their brown skin,” in the governor’s words. The agents were acting at the behest of Trump, who is also trying to send National Guard troops into what he has called the “most dangerous city in the world.” A judge has blocked the deployment until the legality of Trump’s order is settled in court.
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Pritzker is currently a focal-point Democratic leader against the activist aggressions of the White House. One could make a case that a state-versus-federal discord of this magnitude has not existed since the civil-rights movement, or even the Civil War era. Throughout our conversation, the governor seemed to project disbelief, bewilderment, a sense of Are you kidding me? over what have now become commonplace parts of his job—asking citizens to film federal officers acting improperly, volleying daily insults with the president, even suggesting that the nation’s commander in chief is “suffering dementia.”
While the Guardsmen’s status remains in limbo, Pritzker has remained in constant action, and in constant demand. Events have been whipping fast around the chief executive, who has been popping up everywhere—in person and on TV screens, often in the midst of chaotic police or press scrums. Corralling the governor for an interview took me three weeks. He granted me 27 minutes of his time.
When we spoke, Pritzker had just finished a ceremony to mark the reopening of the Kennedy Expressway, which connects downtown Chicago and O’Hare International Airport, following the completion of a three-year, $169 million rehabilitation project. It was a gorgeous fall afternoon in the windy “war zone” (Trump’s words), with sun sparkling off of the skyscrapers and Lake Michigan packed with sailboats. The only real hazard I encountered during my day in the city involved dodging bikes, scooters, and jogger-strollers on Michigan Avenue and Lake Shore Drive. I witnessed none of the “ongoing violent riots and lawlessness” (the White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson’s words) that the president apparently believes to be the defining characteristics of America’s third-most-populous city.
I suggested to Pritzker that these must be unprecedented times for him. He disputed this, and said that he has become well accustomed to unprecedented times. In fact, he maintained that since he was elected governor, he has enjoyed only about eight months of “precedented times”—a stretch in 2019 and early 2020, before COVID. “Then, the migrant crisis, which was started right, basically, as COVID was waning,” Pritzker told me. “And then now we get the Trump crisis.”
This “Trump crisis,” I suggested, has ensured that Pritzker receives an overwhelming amount of national attention, perhaps more than he ever has. Winding up in a Chicago beef with Donald Trump might be welcome, of course, for a Democrat with possible presidential plans. Pritzker disputed this, too, or at least smirked at the idea that the intense spotlight is a big deal to him. “I think Gavin Newsom gets way more attention than I do,” he told me, referring to his counterpart in California, who has also been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2028—and who, like Pritzker, Trump has said should be arrested.
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At the Kennedy Expressway event, I watched Pritzker standing behind a podium, surrounded by a cluster of state and local politicians, members of his administration, business and labor leaders, and a few dozen people in hard hats and vests. The governor has a thick helmet of brown hair; a large, round, sculpted-looking face; and an overall bowling-ball bearing—something between Babe Ruth and Ralph Kramden. When it was Pritzker’s turn to speak at the ceremony, he seemed to relish the highway reopening as a tactile triumph, something that felt blissfully like normal governor’s stuff.
“It isn’t the flashiest project,” he said, after mentioning the 16 new overhead signs and 1,200 new LED fixtures that now adorn the revamped road, which carries 275,000 vehicles a day. He described the project as “gritty, foundational, and absolutely essential work.”
“At a time of historic division in our politics, there is one idea that we can all rally around,” Pritzker said. “And that’s ‘Traffic sucks.’”
This reprieve from the “Trump crisis” ended for Pritzker as soon as he commenced with questions from the press, about half of which involved ICE, CBP, or the president. The governor talked about a new “accountability commission” that he had introduced the day before, composed of a variety of community leaders. The commission’s charge will be to document any potentially illegal behavior that federal authorities engage in while they are in Illinois.
Pritzker explained his rationale to me. For as long as Trump is president, he said, no ICE or CBP agents, and no civilian managers loyal to the president, will be held accountable for improper or illegal actions. The commission’s objective is to preserve documents, citizen-provided videos, and testimonials that could come in handy during future congressional hearings (if Democrats win control of Congress) or legal actions (after Trump leaves office).
The governor told me that he also envisions a deterrent effect. “Someone who is acting improperly now, who’s acting abusively now,” he said, “will likely think twice if they think that there’s going to be a record of it and that eventually this will come back to haunt them.”
Among nationally known Democratic figures, Pritzker has offered decidedly dire admonitions. He asserted last week that these combative incursions by Trump-controlled security forces are likely a precursor to the White House trying to manipulate next year’s midterm elections. “Look, I’m not a conspiracy theorist,” Pritzker told me. But it’s impossible, he said, to ignore everything that Trump has done in the past, especially after the 2020 presidential election, and not conclude that something is afoot. Pritzker can easily foresee ICE, CBP, and other officers standing outside polling places in uniform, carrying automatic weapons.
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“I think that all the pieces of something nefarious seem to be occurring, and I’m just putting the pieces together,” Pritzker told me. “I’m hopeful I’m wrong, but I don’t think we can assume that I’m wrong.” He made the same basic point to me that he does in pretty much every context of his job these days: Authoritarianism comes fast. “And if you’re not willing to stand up and push back while it’s happening in the early days,” he added, “it gets a lot harder later.”
Pritzker told me that he is running for his third term as governor next year and isn’t focused on the 2028 presidential campaign. He keeps getting asked about the latter, which he says is “flattering” but probably annoying, more than anything. He complained to me about how, at an off-the-record media briefing the night before, one reporter had kept trying to steer the discussion to 2028. “I’m like, ‘Dude, you know, there’s a whole lot going on right now,’” Pritzker said, clapping twice for emphasis.
Yes, there’s a lot going on right now. I wished the governor “precedented times.”
