Daniella Gibbs Léger: Hey everyone, welcome back to “The Tent,” your place for politics, policy, and progress. I’m Daniella Gibbs Léger.
This week, we’ve got something special for you: two conversations with governors who are not only leading the fight against the Trump administration’s harmful policies, but formulating the center-left’s alternative vision of how government can solve problems for everyday Americans.
Today, I sat down with Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL) to discuss how he’s executing that vision in Illinois. Stay tuned for our conversation in just a beat.
Gibbs Léger: JB Pritzker is Illinois’ 43rd governor, elected in 2018 and reelected in 2022 with the highest vote share for any Democratic governor in over 60 years.
Since taking office, he has accomplished one of the most ambitious policy agendas in the nation, including raising the minimum wage and making historic infrastructure investments. Before becoming governor, Pritzker founded 1871, a nonprofit small-business incubator in Chicago.
Gov. Pritzker, thank you so much for joining us on “The Tent.”
Gov. JB Pritzker: Thanks for having me, Daniella.
Gibbs Léger: So you have been outspoken about the harms that DOGE [the Department of Government Efficiency] is causing the American people by firing workers who do things like ensure food safety, administer veterans’ health care, keep airline passengers safe, respond to pandemics, and more. And while there is an important conversation we should be having—a conversation that seems to resonate with the American people about how we make government more efficient, effective, and accountable—it’s clear that Trump and Musk aren’t actually interested in doing so.
So what do you think it would look like to actually tackle inefficiency, fraud, and waste in our government? And how are you doing that in Illinois?
Pritzker: Well let me start by saying that Donald Trump and Elon Musk, I think, don’t really understand that there are people who truly depend upon those services. And that’s why they don’t care. That’s why the cruelty comes through every time because, honestly, they look at it like it’s something on a sheet of paper they could just cross out. And that’s fine with them.
I think that delivering those services is hyper important, frankly, for people to be able to survive. Talk about the Medicare, Medicaid, your ability to get health care—those are things that are fundamental to what I believe and, I think, what Democrats believe. But we are living in a world where we’ve got to push back not only on what they’re trying to do, but also on the idea that Democrats don’t have that at the very front focus of what we’re all about. So to my mind, that’s a hugely important thing.
I think Democrats also—as a governor, we have to deliver. We have to actually provide people the health care that they need on the ground. Medicaid is paid for half by the federal government—depends on which piece of it—but half by the federal government, half by the states.
But we’re the ones who deliver and work with our health care providers in our states and decide what it is we’re going to cover. And so if we don’t deliver, people will lose their lives. But if half of the funding gets taken away, which it appears that that may happen, then this could be devastating for Americans.
Gibbs Léger: You’ve also been one of the most consistent critics of the president’s tariff policies, calling them a tax on working families. So how are these tariffs already affecting residents and businesses in Illinois?
Pritzker: Well I just left, maybe a week ago, a discussion with a craft brewer in Illinois, startup craft brewer. These are four Black guys from the South Side of Chicago who started something called Funkytown Brewery. And it’s great beer, if anybody wants it, a great new beer, and they’ve won awards for it. And they partnered with large companies to create some of it.
I mention this because when I was talking to them two months ago, we talked about the tariffs and what the impact would be. And they say, “Well, gosh, if they put a tariff on aluminum, the cost of a can is going to go up by an awful lot, and we’re scraping because we’re a small craft brewer. We only make certain amounts, so we don’t have the scale and able to bring costs down that way.” So the cost of aluminum is going to make a big difference and make it unprofitable.
The second is that they use Canadian barley. Now, aluminum comes from Canada, and barley comes from Canada, and they use both of those. And he said to me, just a week ago when I spoke with him, the leader of the four said to me, “We may not make it. I mean, we’re not sure we’re going to. If they don’t drop these tariffs, we definitely aren’t going to make it.”
And so I’m very concerned. That’s a small business, a startup business that could be a real job creator. But because of Donald Trump’s tariffs, they may go out of business. And think about the myriad, the thousands and thousands of small businesses that depend on imports in order to create something in the United States that would make a real business and employ people.
Gibbs Léger: Yeah, I think it’s a really good point because people don’t really understand how much we rely on Canada for goods that go into the things that people enjoy every single day.
Pritzker: And you’re talking about just Canada, but remember when you go to the grocery store, your tomatoes, your lettuce—I just mentioned beer and the effect on beer—but, I mean, those are things that people buy maybe every week when they go to the grocery store. And now, with a 25 percent tariff on goods from Mexico, you’re not going to be able to buy the tomatoes, the lettuce, and, because they’ve laid people off from the departments that oversee our health and in particular wildlife health, the fact that avian flu is affecting egg prices is going to affect Americans much more than it will affect other countries who are monitoring and managing that problem.
So the idea that Donald Trump is going to lower prices on groceries Day 1—we’re on day 60, prices have gone way up.
Gibbs Léger: As governor, you’ve passed a number of bills to help working class Illinoisans, like raising the minimum wage, ensuring paid leave, and eliminating medical debt. Can you talk about some of these policies, and how you think the left’s economic vision should contrast with Donald Trump’s vision?
Pritzker: Yeah, so remember that what Democrats stand for is: Earn a better wage, right? Make sure we protect workers, right? So they have at least some ability to bargain with their employers. Make sure that you have the ability to get affordable health care, a rent or a mortgage that can put a roof over your family’s heads. These are all things that Democrats believe in and fight for.
Republicans, A) don’t understand it, seemingly—or at least, Elon Musk and Donald Trump don’t. And perhaps that’s because they’ve never had to fight for those things. And I think it’s ironic that Elon Musk is an illegal immigrant to this country and yet he now thinks that illegal immigrants or undocumented immigrants should be thrown out.
But the fact is that we have contrasting visions, I believe, about what it means to be an American. We have contrasting visions about how it is that we should support the American people with our government. What is it that we ought to be about?
And their view is if they lower taxes on the wealthiest people in this country, that that’s somehow good for everybody else.
Pritzker: And the fact is that, yeah, you’ve got to have good tax policy that encourages people to start and build businesses and grow businesses. That’s all true.
But remember that you need to make sure that you’re providing services for developmentally disabled children. You need to make sure that people who are veterans and need health care can get it in a timely fashion. Homeless veterans not being able to get guidance and help from the Veterans Administration to just get a roof over their heads or find shelter and food—those are things Donald Trump and Elon Musk don’t care a whit about. But Democrats, we’re the ones who created those programs. We’re the ones who will fight for those programs.
So I think our visions are quite obvious. And in the state of Illinois, we raised the minimum wage from $8.25, which is what it was in the state of Illinois, to $15. The federal minimum wage is $7.25. Republicans don’t even want to raise that, and some of them want it to go away altogether.
So again, the contrasting vision is that we believe that a country that supports all of its people is a strong, healthy country, that people who stand up for that are patriotic Americans. They believe that patriotic Americans are those who stand up for the wealthiest Americans and really don’t give a whit about those who are most vulnerable and need our help.
Gibbs Léger: So Illinois has a large Ukrainian American population. What are you hearing from this community as Trump is sucking up to [President Vladimir] Putin and throwing Ukraine under the bus? And based on your conversations with your Ukrainian American constituents, what would you want to see the president do instead of just bowing down to Putin?
Pritzker: Well I can speak to this from personal experience because I am Ukrainian American. My family emigrated here from Ukraine several generations ago. And by the way, we’re refugees to this country. The Ukrainian American community, and many Eastern European communities in Illinois, will tell you that they believe it’s the obligation of the United States to stand up for those countries that are put upon and over which there is hegemony from countries like Russia or China.
I mean, they understand when we abandon allies like Ukraine—who got invaded by Russia, who have had their children literally kidnapped and killed by Russian soldiers—that the United States needs to be standing up for them, that the United States is supposed to be the good guy in the world, and we should be standing up for other good guys.
[President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy is a good guy. You know who’s not a good guy and who’s a villain in the world? It’s Vladimir Putin.
Pritzker: And so I wonder, why is Donald Trump literally switching sides? The United States and all of our moral authority is being switched from being an ally to the people who are on our side and democracy, to being an ally to the villains in the world who don’t believe in democracy. So I’m deeply concerned, and the Eastern European countries represented in my state understand that the United States is going the wrong direction.
I’ll tell you one quick story. I had a tailor that I went to see. I needed to have something altered, and I was sitting with the man. And he said—he’s from Romania. He left Romania, I think, when he was 15 years old, and it was an authoritarian dictatorship when he left. And he came to the United States to escape that, to build a better life. He’s now, I think, in his 70s, and he said he feels now like based on what Donald Trump believes and what he’s demonstrated with Ukraine and what he’s demonstrating in the United States, that he may have to get up and leave and be an immigrant to another country before he does.
Now, can you imagine that is the country we now live in? Where people are afraid that if they stay in this country, that they may be victims, just like he’s making Ukrainians victims?
Gibbs Léger: Wow. That is definitely a depressing note to end this interview on. But I will say this: that I want to thank you for taking the time to talk to us, but I want to thank you for standing up and fighting for what you believe is right, and standing up to autocracy, and giving people out there some hope and knowledge that there are people who are standing up to Donald Trump and what he’s doing.
Pritzker: Thank you, Daniella. I think everybody needs to stand up, speak up, speak out, show up. That’s where we are in this country, and no matter who you are, you have that obligation.
Gibbs Léger: Thank you so much, governor.
Gibbs Léger: “The Tent” is a podcast from the Center for American Progress Action Fund. It’s hosted by me, Daniela Gibbs Léger, and co-hosted by Colin Seeberger. Erin Phillips is our lead producer, Kelly McCoy is our supervising producer, Mishka Espey is our booking producer, and Muggs Leone is our digital producer. Hai Phan, Olivia Mowry, and Toni Pandolfo are our video team.
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