The Scene
The spotlight keeps falling on Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker — not that he minds. This week, he and two other Democratic governors accepted invitations from House Republicans to testify on “sanctuary” immigration policies in their states in June. They accepted right before Chicago-born Robert Prevost was elected as Pope Leo XIV, the first American to lead the church, a moment of non-partisan pride for Pritzker’s biggest city.
Pritzker talked with Semafor before his recent speech to New Hampshire Democrats in Manchester, where he condemned both “do-nothing Democrats” and the “tyrants and traitors” of the GOP. He had more to say than that, some of it on topics that will be fought over in next month’s high-profile hearing — some of it, about the meaning of “oligarchy,” being fought over every day. This is an edited transcript of the conversation.
The View From JB Pritzker
David Weigel: Do you want to see New Hampshire vote first in 2024?
JB Pritzker: To be clear, I’m not here about any of that. We just finished a presidential election. Could we take a breath and talk about the congressional elections coming up in 2026? We need Chris Pappas to win for the United States Senate.
I think New Hampshire is a good early primary state — just as an observer of presidential elections, for a lot of years. I think it needs to be paired with other states, with other demographics. That’s absolutely possible now that we’ve got South Carolina, Nevada on the calendar. But New Hampshire is a really fascinating place, it’s a small place, and it allows people to come, when they run for president, and not need a lot of money, and be able to meet a lot of voters.
What role are you taking to help Democrats in 2026? How much of it is financial support?
I’ve traveled around the country to try to help Democrats everywhere. It’s been a personal endeavor, not so much about the financing of campaigns as it is about making sure that we’re pressing forward on the message of what we stand for. Right? We’re a party that stands up for working families, and the candidates that we support are the quality candidates that people want to serve in Congress.
I’ve also supported candidates financially wherever I could, and the Wisconsin race is a great example of that. Compared to Elon Musk, you might say that I got an awfully great return on investment. I think it’s $30-$40 million that he spent, not to mention offering, what, a million dollars a piece to a few people to get them to vote Republican? That seems illegal to me. But yes, I put my money where my mouth is. I happen to have the ability to support people financially.
One reason I ask is that, in Wisconsin, when Republicans were asked about Elon Musk’s spending, they’d point to you and say, Democrats have out-of-state billionaires too.
(Pritzker holds one hand high and one hand low, to illustrate the gap in their spending.) Elon Musk is one of the — well, the wealthiest person in the world, right? That was a very important race, and it’s going to make an enormous difference. The Republicans have been manipulating politics in Wisconsin, and I wanted to make sure that it was a fair fight.
Bernie Sanders has been rallying around the country, talking about the threat of an oligarchy. Do you think you’re included in that?
Well, would you put me in the same category politically as Elon Musk? I would not. I think what people talk about, when they talk about an oligarchy, is the group of the most powerful people in the society who are trying to impose their will on everyone else and make them pay for what the oligarchs are unwilling to pay for. That is clearly the opposite of what I believe in, right? I am a Democrat. I’m someone who believes in little D democracy, and someone who believes that the very people who ought to be in charge are the working families of our country, the working families of the state of Illinois, and not the wealthiest people in our state or in the country. You can use whatever word you like, but I’m saying, there’s a big difference between the people that Bernie Sanders is talking about and what I believe in.
Two questions about Congress. The House Education Oversight Committee is investigating whether the clinic at Northwestern’s Law School, which now obviously is the Pritzker law school, endorsed antisemitism by representing people in Gaza protests. Was that antisemitic, to defend those protesters?
I’m not getting involved in what they’re attacking universities about, except to say this: The attack seems to use antisemitism to actually go after what they believe are liberal institutions. The reality is that universities are places that house free speech, that give an opportunity to young people to exercise their academic capability. When there was a Muslim ban imposed in Trump’s first presidency, his first term, I went to O’Hare and there was a table of lawyers there to make sure that the law was being followed for people who were legal residents returning to the United States. I met the folks at that table, and some of them were from, guess what, the Pritzker School of Law at Northwestern.
I was very proud of that fact, right? These are young people who believe in something, they’re out there standing up for it. I don’t think the universities should be under attack by the federal government. So many of the great developments that exist in our society, our universities developed. So to have the federal government decide that they’re just going to pull away from universities and use antisemitism as an excuse seems un-American to me.
You’re also being invited to the House Oversight Committee to talk about “sanctuary cities.” What’s going to be your defense, if you go?
Yeah, they have about 800 different ways of defining a sanctuary state or sanctuary city. We have a law on the books that was signed by my Republican predecessor called the Trust Act. All it does is it says that our local officials, local law enforcement, can’t be sequestered by the federal government to do the federal government’s job — that what we need is for our police to be stopping violent crime on the streets of Chicago or across the state of Illinois. It lets police do their job.
By the way: I want every violent criminal who’s undocumented, a violent criminal who is convicted, removed from my state and the country. And I think every Democrat should be saying that from the rafters. What we also want is comprehensive immigration reform. What does that mean? It means that people who are law-abiding, hard working, tax paying people who happen to be undocumented and have been in this country for some years — that we ought to find some path for them, right? These are the very people that, if you had a good immigration system, you’d want to have come into the country.
My family came here as refugees. My family would not have survived if this country hadn’t let them in. So, I’m a believer that immigration is not just good because we’re saving lives, but also because it’s good for our economy. And let me add one other thing: We need to secure the border. This all goes together, securing the border and having comprehensive immigration reform and finding a path for people to stay legally in this country who are law-abiding, tax paying people. Right now, we’ve got a policy that’s ruining the country, taking up citizens and disappearing them from the streets and ignoring habeas corpus.