The following is a lightly edited transcript of the October 10 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
(After we recorded, a judge temporarily blocked National Guard deployments in Illinois.)
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
President Trump’s invasion of Chicago has really gone off the rails. The imagery is jarring: hyper-militarized raids of apartment buildings, children getting pulled out into the streets and potentially traumatized, a priest being shot by a smoke pellet. And Stephen Miller is boasting about it all over right-wing media, relishing every minute of these horrors. He and Trump plainly want to incite violence to justify further authoritarian crackdowns. In response to all this, Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois has taken a lead role in denouncing Trump’s abuses of power and warning that our ongoing slide into authoritarianism could end in true catastrophe. We think Democrats as a party could be doing a lot more of what Pritzker is doing. So today we’re fortunate to be talking to Governor Pritzker about all this and where it’s all going. Governor, thank you so much for joining us today.
Governor JB Pritzker: Great to be with you, Greg.
Sargent: So, Governor, can you just bring us up to date on what’s going on in Chicago with the National Guard and ICE right now at this moment?
Governor Pritzker: Sure. Well, I think I’m making news if I tell you this, but we have seen in addition to the Texas National Guard, which have not been deployed but they are on the ground, we now have seen that there are 14 so far California National Guard on the ground. And then, of course, they’re federalizing our Illinois National Guard. So, none of them have been deployed. Again, we don’t get direct information from the feds, but we do get reports from folks. That’s how we know anything, really, is that sometimes it’s people who work for me, sometimes it’s other law enforcement around the state, or just bystanders. So we know that they’re on the ground but not deployed.
Sargent: Well, I want to get your response to something Stephen Miller said on Fox News about the raid on Chicago’s South Side. He called it one of the most successful law enforcement operations that we’ve ever seen in this country. He said it targeted an apartment complex full of Tren de Aragua terrorists and that this operation saves many lives. Is any of that true? What’s your response?
Governor Pritzker: Well, I mean, if you—if this was Pinochet’s Chile, if this was Argentina under authoritarian rule, maybe you’d call it successful, meaning that they went after a few people in a building by absolutely terrorizing everybody in the building. There are about 130 people living there, a few of them being targeted, and everybody else—U.S. citizens, people with documentation who may not be U.S. citizens, and even undocumented people, who are not Tren de Aragua—were held for hours and zip-tied. This is middle of the night: troops dropping—not really troops; they were agents—dropping from Black Hawk military helicopters onto the building, ransacking the place, breaking down doors and windows and so on.
And they arrested a few gang members. And by the way, I’m for—let’s go get the bad guys. Let’s get the bad guys. That’s why we have police. That’s why we have FBI and DEA. Let’s get gang members who are selling drugs or killing people. But that’s not how you do it. That’s not how we do it in the United States. You don’t round up the usual suspects—all the brown people who live in a building—and then ask everybody for their proof of citizenship before you’ll let them go while you’re arresting the people you actually were aiming at.
Sargent: So he said the building was full of Tren de Aragua terrorists. False?
Governor Pritzker: Absolutely false. Although I must say, you know, whenever the ICE and CBP agents say something—they put out a release or, you know, now you’ve got Stephen Miller talking about it—they are lying.
I mean, there are several times now where it’s just obvious they’re lying. You know the story of the man, Silverio, who was shot and killed on a street in Chicago. They claimed that he had dragged an officer and that the officer was seriously injured. Look, we don’t know all the details. They don’t wear body cams and share any of the information with us. They just sort of put a release out later about what happened.
But now the news media has reported, the Sun-Times, that actually that’s not what happened—that the officer stepped in front of the guy’s vehicle, that the officer was, in fact, hit at the corner of the vehicle, but he was not severely injured, seriously injured, as they first said. And yet these officers opened fire and killed the guy who was driving it. And this is a guy who was dropping off his kids at daycare. I just—that plus, you know, the recent shooting. So this is two shootings.
We have one dead person, somebody else who went to the hospital. It turns out, you know, that they were saying that ICE was saying that there were 10 vehicles that surrounded the ICE agents. But apparently, according to her attorney, there is body cam footage that shows something different, and that in fact this one ICE agent rammed her and got out of his vehicle, was yelling things—including the b-word—at her, and that she ended up being shot at because she has a gun in her car. So I’m just saying that you can’t believe anything that they say. We now have to investigate all of it. I’ve called on DCFS, for example, our Department of Children and Family Services, to investigate what happened to the children at that South Shore building that they attacked.
Sargent: I did want to ask you about that, Governor. I understand that that’s what you’re doing now. Several state agencies are looking into what happened at this raid. Any information back yet?
Governor Pritzker: No, they’re still doing their work. It’s going to take a few days for sure. The first thing we wanted them to do was less of an investigation, more just support for the families and the children. You can imagine, these children are totally traumatized. Right? Some of them are very young children, totally traumatized, and they’ve been attacked like they were in Fallujah.
Sargent: Is that what you’re hearing—that they are—that you’re getting back, that they are traumatized, the children?
Governor Pritzker: That’s what I—well, first of all, we start out imagining that that is what happened because we look at the building, look at any of the video that Kristi Noem now posted. If you were a young child in that building sleeping, and all of a sudden agents are coming through your door—they’ve got big weapons, they’re grabbing people and taking them out—and you get zip-tied, and maybe your grandfather gets zip-tied too. You know, this is … you can imagine what that would do to a young child.
Sargent: Well, so clearly Stephen Miller is using footage from Chicago as part of a vast national propaganda campaign. I wonder, though, are you or Illinois law enforcement getting any briefings at all from the Department of Homeland Security or anyone else in the federal government about what they’re actually finding in raids like this one? It seems to me you’d want to be able to coordinate with them, in some sense? Do they talk to you at all before they do these things?
Governor Pritzker: Greg, they have not called me once. Not once. I mean, we literally have almost no information. When they called out the National Guard—when they federalized our National Guard—they told me that I was going to get a call. This is the first time, by the way—no calls from the president of the United States, no calls from Kristi Noem about any of this, no calls from Greg Bovino, who’s the officer on the ground with CBP who’s in charge of all these agents, who just seems to be a terrible human being. And on the day that they were going to call in the National Guard and federalize them—the Illinois National Guard—I was told and informed by someone from the Department of Defense that the Defense Secretary [Pete] Hegseth, was going to call me at a specific time. I said, I’d cleared my calendar to make sure that I would have time to call him, that I would not miss the call, and waited. Two and a half hours I waited for the phone to ring. Never called. I obviously kept my phone on me the entire rest of the day. They never called. Never called the next day. Still have never called. And it turns out that Secretary Hegseth was actually at a football game, taking part in a pushup contest. And this is all while he’s calling out the National Guard on my state and unwilling to call me to even let me know that that was going to happen.
Sargent: Well, you know, pushups are important. It’s important to do that to keep in good health, Governor. But I do want to ask you, though, have you been trying to reach out to them in any sense, like very recently, and just to get a sense of what’s coming next? And are they answering your calls? What’s the state of the communication?
Governor Pritzker: So, unfortunately, they don’t seem to want to respond to my entreaties. And I have said, you know, many times in public, on television, clearly the president is listening to what I’m saying on television about what it is that we want. What we’re getting, the way we’re getting any information from them has been either by people in their departments leaking things—maybe they’re people from Illinois or maybe they’re people who care about Illinois, but they’ve been leaking things. That’s one way.
A second is that we have some staff or people in our departments who regularly work with people in other departments in the federal government who just, knowing those people, have called to say, what do you know? And can you give us any information? So I think that the combination of that has given us a little bit, but you’re, what you said is a hundred percent accurate, Greg. If they would let us know, we’re not looking to impede. I mean, I want to impede some of the things they’re doing that are breaking the law. But we’re not going to stand in the way of them executing federal law. We can’t, we literally are prohibited by law and we follow the law here.
But what we could do is make sure that the neighborhoods are safer and that the officers themselves might be safer if they weren’t just surprising people in a neighborhood and showing up with these unmarked vehicles, wearing masks, banging on doors, disrupting people. Because you know what’s happening? Spontaneous protests. It’s not, you know, we have a couple of, we have a couple of blocks, two blocks across from an ICE facility in Broadview where people are showing up to protest every day. But in a neighborhood when these cars descend on and these people in masks; people in the neighborhoods are, first of all, they’re naturally freaked out.
And second, they have an extremely negative reaction to it. They love their neighbors, you know, they love their community. And so they’re yelling things at the officers like, “What are you doing? Why are you doing this? I know those people!” That kind of thing. And some of that could end up with something terrible happening, violence or otherwise. We would like to be able to prevent some of that just by our local law enforcement knowing what they’re doing. They don’t do any communication with us. It is truly an invasion of the city of Chicago, even without the troops being called up. And now potentially those troops will be showing up shortly if we don’t win in court.
Sargent: Well, Governor, the president has called for your arrest. I just want to ask you this pretty bluntly. Do you expect to be arrested soon?
Governor Pritzker: I do not expect to be arrested. And the president of the United States says a lot of crazy things. I genuinely think there is something wrong with him. I wish that his family would intervene because I do think he needs mental health help. And I don’t think anybody around him that works for him is going to do that because they’re benefiting from his failure of mental health, his dementia. I wish somebody would help out the president of the United States.
Meanwhile, you know, he says a lot of crazy things. He doesn’t have authority to arrest elected officials or really anybody where you don’t have any example of a crime being committed. And I find it ironic that this guy who’s a 34-time convicted felon is saying that I should be jailed. I’ve never been accused of, or convicted of, or, you know, gone on trial for anything. He’s the guy who’s done that so many times, and cheated, by the way, in civil court. And I don’t take it seriously other than I think the man has so much power at his fingertips because he’s president of the United States that the people around him might try to take it upon themselves to just make something up and come after me, or Gavin Newsom, I know they’ve mentioned that they might jail him, or the mayor of the city of Chicago.
Sargent: Well, let’s talk about that. Do you think Stephen Miller is whispering in Trump’s ear that he should start arresting Democrats like you?
Governor Pritzker: Well, he’s saying it out loud. I don’t know why he isn’t whispering in the president’s ear. I mean, he’s basically claiming—and the president repeats these things—but Stephen Miller is claiming that, you know, antifa is involved somehow. Believe me, come to Broadview, would you, to these protests—there’s no antifa there. I mean, nobody’s revealed themselves to be antifa. I’m not even sure what antifa would look like, but they haven’t revealed themselves or caused any mayhem there. There are people who’ve broken the law, by the way, in those places, but it’s usually like their refusal to step out of the street, you know, when they should be. But Stephen Miller has essentially demonized any opposition, any opponent of the president of the United States, and made them seem like they’re terrorists. He’s used that word. And he’s called Democrats part of that sort of terrorist network. It’s ridiculous. Stephen Miller is a dangerous individual on his own. He’s very dangerous when he’s got the power of the president backing him up.
Sargent: Well, I wonder if Democrats as a party could be doing more to raise alarms along the lines of what you’re talking about—about Trump’s escalating authoritarianism. When Trump calls for the arrest or the prosecution of this or that Democrat, couldn’t the party leadership all stand up as one and warn that this is an emergency—that Trump is threatening to arrest and prosecute members of the opposition, and this is the onset of authoritarian rule? Couldn’t Democrats do more of that kind of thing in unison? Would you like to see more?
Governor Pritzker: Yeah, don’t you think? [Laughs] And I mean, look, I understand there are people who’ve stood up, I want to say, and we should give kudos to those people. I think Cory Booker has been terrific. I think that we’ve seen people standing up—Chris Murphy, Gavin Newsom—you know, there are people who are regularly calling it out. Right. But I wonder about lots of other folks.
And it’s not something that’s like, well, maybe, you know, if something happens this month, I’ll say something. No, it’s happening every single day. I mean, I’m living it here in Chicago and in Illinois that it’s happening, but it’s happening in Portland. It’s happened in L.A. It’s happening in Washington, D.C. And those are just the troop movements. We’re also seeing ICE in places that, you know, nobody expected them to be—in suburbs and rural areas of my state and elsewhere. So I am surprised that more leaders have not stood up. I don’t think we should just say Democrats—like, “Why haven’t Democrats”—because that sounds political. And to be frank with you, this isn’t about politics. This is genuinely about the future of our country. Do we believe in a constitutional republic, or do we think that it’s OK if this becomes the law of one—the president of the United States, the law of Donald Trump—that that is what we’re going to go by and not the law that is set out in the Constitution of the United States.
Sargent: Well, Mike Johnson was just asked about the threat to arrest you. And he basically said, I don’t really follow that stuff too closely. Go ask the attorney general. So it seems to me the Republican Party is mostly a lost cause. Assuming that, yes, it would be better if Republicans join Democrats. Doesn’t the party, just the Democratic Party, really does have to step up a little bit here, doesn’t it? It seems like what we need is a party that’s sending signals loud and clear that we’re in the middle of an emergency. Would you like to see that?
Governor Pritzker: Yeah, Greg, I guess what I’m really trying to say when I say don’t just say Democrats is, there are business leaders—yeah, they might be a Democrat, a Republican, or an independent. You know, there are university leaders—again, what party they belong to doesn’t matter. What matters here is that people speak out. Look, I’ll give a little bit of credit today to Governor—I don’t know if you saw that Governor Stitt, Kevin Stitt in Oklahoma, finally said he doesn’t agree with the president, doesn’t think that, you know, the National Guard of one state should be sent into another state. I don’t think he’s doing anything about it as chairman of the National Governors Association, which he should. But the fact that he spoke out about it is at least evidence that there are some people that have rational thoughts about what the future could hold if we let Donald Trump do the things he’s doing now. Because think about if the situation were reversed and there was some other party—the Democratic Party, there’s a Democratic president—who was calling the National Guard into a state to confiscate guns. I mean, everything I just said is against the law, unconstitutional. And yet the reverse of that is essentially happening right now. So people have to project forward: What does this country look like if we allow this to happen now?
So I think that’s the reason that I’m not focused just on Democrats. I do think there are good Republicans out there. I know it feels few and far between—people who are Republicans and speaking out—but we’ve seen some of them, Bill Kristol and others, over the last few years. I think more and more we’re seeing Republicans now saying, “Wow, there are limits to what I think Donald Trump should be able to do.” I wish more people in Congress, though, would do it. They are genuinely afraid in their Republican primaries that they will lose. The people who’ve been willing to stand up and speak out—Don Bacon, others, right—have to leave office because they know they’re going to get defeated in the next election.
Sargent: Well, I think a lot of members of Congress are frankly afraid of getting killed, aren’t they?
Governor Pritzker: I mean, look, this is the world that we’re living in, for sure. I mean, if they’re afraid, you can imagine that there are Democrats ... I have threats now happening at a much higher pace than ever before.
Sargent: Is that right? Can you talk about that?
Governor Pritzker: I just—to say that, you know, when I ask our state police who protect me—because they don’t tell me about every threat that comes in—but when I ask them just, you know, what’s the level of threats, what are the numbers, they say there are more—a lot more—now. And it’s really been since before Charlie Kirk. And you saw that. I mean, look at the speaker of the House of Minnesota and what happened to her and her husband. It’s been going on for a long time now.
I find it abhorrent that this is now part of our world—our political world. But this is, I think, it’s a dangerous world. Republicans are getting threats; Democrats are getting threats. But I think there is a tone that gets set at the top. From my perspective, this wasn’t happening the way it is now under Obama, or before Obama under George W. Bush, or before that under President Clinton. But now we’re seeing it, and I think it happened sometime during Trump’s first term. I think there was a lot of rhetoric that he put forward that, I think, enticed—incited people, rather. And I think it’s being amplified now.
Sargent: So what more are Illinois state officials going to do to protect Chicagoans and Illinois residents from ICE? What’s in the pipeline? What are you going to do?
Governor Pritzker: So I think there are probably two levels of things that we look at doing. One is what we’re doing in the courts focused on Illinois specifically and Chicago specifically. And what can be allowed. We’ve seen a federal judge now expand a court order that limits what ICE can do in enforcement. That happened before today.
Sargent: But law enforcement on your side, what can be done?
Governor Pritzker: Well, again, what we are doing is protecting the protesters. We’ve got Illinois State Police out there with protesters. Protecting them, meaning they’re standing in between ICE and the protesters in order to—because you saw that ICE was firing pellets and you know gas pellets and rubber bullets and so on. That’s rarely happening now at the Broadview facility. So that’s an example of of our local law enforcement protecting our people.
Sargent: Will there be more of that?
Governor Pritzker: We’re continuing to do that. We want to make sure that—look, if you want to protest peacefully, we are going to protect that right. If you’re not protesting peacefully, then we are not protecting you from potentially arrest if you’re going to be aggressive and violent. But I want to just say what the other level of fight that we’re putting up is: This is a national fight.
And what’s good, if we can fight this on a national level, too—if we can get people incited to protest peacefully across the country, like, for example, at the No King’s rally that will happen on October 18. If we can have that happen, and we’ve seen a lot of spontaneous peaceful protests across the United States, I think that’s a really good thing. I think it sends a signal to the rest of the public—the folks who are just trying to get to work and pay the bills—that something’s going on here that they better pay attention to. That’s a very important thing for us to have happen because if we don’t win the 2026 elections—those of us who want to preserve democracy ... if Democrats don’t win that election: Katy bar the doors. We don’t know what’s going to happen in the future and whether we’re actually going to have elections.
Sargent: Governor Pritzker, thank you so much for coming on with us. We really appreciate it.
Governor Pritzker: Thanks, Greg. Great to see you.