Bullies can only bully people who are afraid of them. That’s why J.D. Pritzker is driving Donald Trump crazy (er) because he’s not afraid of Trump. He sees him for what he is and makes no pretense about anything else. Trump was spouting off earlier today, as is his wont to do, posting that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Pritzker “should be in jail” for failing to protect federal immigration officers. Here’s what the governor replied.
I love this Governor – unafraid, honest, standing up for his state despite the risks.
Also, where are the other governors to back this man up? Only ones Ive been seeing are Newsom and Tina Kotek.
— Blank (@14_Blank_Spaces) October 8, 2025
Right now Pritzker is leading the charge to rally Democrats to stand up to Trump.
Aside from instructing his attorney general to file a lawsuit to block troops from other states coming to Illinois, Mr. Pritzker has few formal options to resist what he described this week as an “unconstitutional invasion of Illinois by the federal government.”
Instead, he is using his city to issue a call to action for the nation, positioning Chicago as a harbinger of the threat that he believes Mr. Trump poses and himself as a chief antagonist to a president who has already threatened to jail him.
At a time when Democrats are searching for leadership, Mr. Pritzker is trying to seize the moment to demonstrate it — to fuel opposition to Mr. Trump across the nation, and, perhaps, his future presidential ambitions.
“This is exactly the moment for people to stand up. And do I see enough people doing it? No, I don’t,” Mr. Pritzker said at a forum in Minnesota on Tuesday, as national guardsmen from Texas awaited deployment in Chicago. “It shouldn’t be that there are Democrats that are afraid, because you know what? We’re the targets. We need to be strong, we need to fight back.”
Eight months into the second Trump administration, various Democratic playbooks are emerging on how to handle unwanted federal troops and agents who descend on America’s blue cities.
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California acted with righteous anger, filing lawsuits and appearing on as many media platforms as would have him.
Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington, D.C., who had fewer options in the federal city, welcomed federal efforts to help combat crime, despite outrage from other elected officials in the city. It is now commonplace in the nation’s capital to see troops from Ohio or Georgia performing gardening tasks or, in one instance last week, collecting foul balls from a youth baseball practice.
Mr. Pritzker is taking the path of fierce, uncompromising resistance. At the forum on Tuesday, the Minnesota Star Tribune’s North Star Summit, he said Mr. Trump was “out of his mind and has dementia.”
That is the plain truth of the matter. And Trump is not likely to become less out of his mind or less demented. He’s likely to just get worse. But Pritzker is right about one key thing: unity on the part of Democrats is the first thing to secure. United we stand against the tyrant.
