Gov. Pritzker Joins National Leaders for Democracy Forward Conference

CHICAGO- Today, Governor JB Pritzker delivered remarks on day one of the 2025 Together for Democracy conference, hosted by Democracy Forward. The Together for Democracy Conference audience included around 250 lawyers, advocates, and organizational leaders working to navigate and counteract the unlawful actions of the Trump administration.

The Governor’s full remarks are included below.

2025 Together for Democracy Conference

Tuesday, February 25, 2025

*Remarks as Prepared for Delivery*

Good afternoon, everyone! I am honored to be here at the 2025 Democracy Forward Conference.

I want to begin with a thank you. Thank you to the lawyers, activists, advocates, and thought leaders assembled here today. Thank you for your late nights, for your early mornings, thank you for leaving family functions to formulate legal strategy over zoom calls, and thank you for cancelling Friday night drinks with friends so you could file briefs and battle executive orders.

I know what the last six weeks have asked of you. ​

You’ve had to be hopeful doom scrollers. ​

You’ve had to wake up every single day and be your smartest and sharpest — because you live with the worry that anything less will mean the constitutional republic you love so much will slip away.

You’ve been stepping up when it seems like everyone else is stepping back.

Every single generation of Americans has had to fight for our democracy. ​ Not one set of our ancestors has ever been spared. ​ It was hubris to think that we would be the first.

But here’s what I know – we’ve always won those battles, and we are still here to fight.

Now – I want to start with some positivity. ​ I don’t know if you feel it too, but something has shifted in the last week or so.

The first few weeks of the Trump administration were like that episode of “Battlestar Galactica” where the cylons were attacking every 33 minutes (bear with me everyone – I’m a sci-fi nerd.) ​ It was hard to get our bearings. ​ And a certain depression set in. ​ We FELT like there was nothing we could do to fight back – and so a lot of people did nothing to fight back.

This was by design of course. ​ It was the Trump administration’s own perverted version of “fake it until you make it.”

But you all helped puncture the balloon by taking the administration to court – over and over and over again. ​ And we watched judge after judge after judge say with conviction – just because the President and Elon Musk write something on a piece of paper doesn’t mean it magically becomes the law in a constitutional republic.

Those early court room wins showed people that we were not fighting some brilliant colossus but instead a blundering blowhard and his weird, unlikeable sidekick.

And THAT has given people courage. ​ Over the last few days, I’ve watched Americans start to wake up and remember – Donald Trump cannot take anything from us that we don’t choose to give him. ​ And if the videos of town halls across the country this past weekend are any indication – every day citizens are starting to realize they don’t want to give him much.

Now look – I’m not naïve about this fight. ​ We are in the thick of it right now. ​ Things are bad. ​ But there is hope — and we need to inject it into the bloodstream — because hopelessness is a debilitating drug. ​ 

Trump and Musk could have done what they are doing much more quietly. ​ They could have cloaked it in the polished veneer of false civility. ​ But they had to boast. ​ They had to be loud. ​ They had to wave a chainsaw in the air. ​ They had to make sure everyone knew they considered themselves kings.

They are giving us the time and impetus we need to wake people up. ​ And now we must make the most of it.

I’ve been in rooms a lot like this one over the past few weeks – full of folks who are ready to turn the fear and the anger and the anxiety into action. Too many leaders, some in my own party, think if we just keep our heads down and appease Donald Trump, somehow, the country can emerge unscathed. But let me tell you — I was governor during Donald Trump’s first term when COVID ran rampant and we begged him to help. ​ So many of us Governors were willing to do virtually anything to get the White House to help us save lives during that time. ​ I offered to publicly praise him on TV if he would send masks and ventilators for my people. ​ He agreed. And then never delivered.

Here's what I learned – fealty to Trump will not spare you his cruelty. ​ It’s strength, not weakness, that curbs his baser instincts.

And so now is a time for us to be strong.

Too often, our discussion of democracy gets bogged down in the academic and the abstract. The truth is unless you’re entrenched in this work, it’s hard to visualize what the death of democracy looks like. What people can visualize is what’s affecting them right now that’s a direct result of their usurping power: The loss of healthcare. ​ Higher grocery prices. Tariffs that tax people’s basic necessities. ​ Air crashes because Musk wants to control the FAA.

The last month has laid bare – beyond any doubt – that Trump’s authoritarian megalomania is taking away things everyday Americans have fought for and have come to rely on. The purpose of government is to improve our lives – and when the separation of powers is ignored, when the will of the people is set aside, when the constitution is turned into a tool to benefit only the wealthiest or most powerful, everyday American feel the pain.

When people with disabilities and hardworking families lose access to Medicaid, it will be because Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Republicans stripped away their healthcare.

When price fixing and collusion cause consumers to pay higher prices and there’s no one in the FTC or the FDA to stop it, it will be because Donald Trump and Elon Musk and the Republicans put the oligarchs in charge of the federal government.

When working families pay 25% tariffs on their eggs, beer, or other groceries so that the wealthiest Americans get the biggest tax cut in US history, it will be because Donald Trump and Elon Musk and the Republicans puts their interests over yours.

When our children are breathing polluted air or drinking contaminated water because environmental regulations are rolled back, it will be because Donald Trump and Elon Musk and Republicans cared more about profits for polluters than about our kids.

But let me be clear – when WE fail to speak up, when WE fail to fight, when WE stay silent because we’ve become so captive to institutional norms and rules of engagement that only ever apply to one side of the aisle – well that’s not on them – that’s on us.

I’m going to say something that might be difficult to hear right now. ​ We’ve become too rigid on this side of the democracy divide. ​ We don’t adapt our thinking or our creativity or our imagination to meet the moment as well as they do. ​ It seems like every time we start to fight hard for a value we really care about – we back down when we get criticized. ​

I think part of our shock with Donald Trump is that we are watching someone old – do something completely new. ​ And we have a hard time adjusting our old way of thinking.

So part of my mission right now is to wake us from the deep slumber of institutional mediocrity. ​

It’s time to write a new playbook.

How many of you may have seen my State of the state address last week?

Now, I’ve given seven state of the state addresses so far and I’m pretty sure none of you watched the other six.

I felt like it was time to wake people up. ​ I love this country too much not to fight for it. And you do too.

We have our work cut out for us. There are fires to be put out everywhere – from the Oval Office down to the County Courthouse.

Thank God here today we have a room full of people who take that responsibility seriously. You’ve been out furiously filing lawsuits, securing restraining orders, distributing information, marching in the streets, providing legal support, and more. Whatever hope and optimism I have is embodied in you and those across the nation who are awakening to the danger and adversity of what lies ahead.

In Illinois, we’ve spent time preparing for this possibility, too. I have spent six years as Governor passing meaningful legislation – removing trigger laws on reproductive rights two years before Dobbs, banning book bans, requiring that LGBTQ history and Black history and Asian history are taught in our schools.

We have been focused on protecting our freedoms and securing our institutions as best we can from illegal power grabs or cruel maneuvers. We’ve also joined with other states and with many of you to file lawsuit after lawsuit, blocking all this administration’s attempts to overreach. I’ve stood up in front of anyone who will listen to raise the alarm bells. Every leader in the nation – Republican or Democrat – has an obligation to do the same.

I know that amidst the ongoing assault on our institutions, it is easy for people to fall into despair about our democratic system. What Elon Musk and Donald Trump are doing isn’t about efficiencies or cost-savings – it is about cruelty. They are intentionally breaking the system and giving themselves the authority to build it in their own interest. Their mission is to make people cynical and hopeless about government so they can consolidate power – at the expense of people, especially the most vulnerable.

Going to court to preserve democratic institutions is vitally important. But we also have to re-instill faith in those institutions by delivering on promises politicians make. Only then will people feel that the system is working for them.

That isn’t always easy. Trust me, I’m from Illinois. A decade ago, corruption and inaction were the norm in our politics. I saw exactly what can happen when that pessimism starts to take hold. It has taken years of hard work and foundation building to begin to counteract the cynicism people in my state were feeling. ​ But I know from firsthand experience that it can be done.

Almost three hundred years ago, there was a woman by the name of Elizabeth Willing Powel who lived in Philadelphia. ​ She was married to the mayor of the city. ​ Elizabeth had a quick mind and a sharp wit but, like all women of the time, she was excluded from official roles in politics.

So she did the one thing a lady of her role and station could do – she hosted dinner parties for all the political luminaries of the day where she would take the opportunity to opine on matters of state. ​ The historical accounts of those gatherings all note her intelligence and command of the issues – and the way she used those dinners to influence the course of a fledgling United States during the days of the Constitutional Convention.

Which is probably how Elizabeth Powel found herself talking to Benjamin Franklin on September 18, 1787. ​ In the many accounts of that particular exchange that came in the years that followed, Powel’s name and identity is almost always ignored. ​ One prominent historian even referred to her only as an “anxious lady” – even though there is nothing in the records we have of Powel to suggest she was ever prone to anxiety in her political conversations.

You may not have known her name, but it was Elizabeth Powel who looked at Benjamin Franklin on September 18, 1787 and asked him, not with timid anxiousness but with the command of someone who expects something of her elected representative, “Well, Doctor, what have we got?”

And Franklin famously replied, “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”

I mention all of this because history matters – how we remember it, who we include in it, and what we make of it in our present day. ​ History often only holds on to the answers – but someone had to be brave enough to ask the right questions along the way.

I thank you all, today and every day, for asking the right questions and demanding good answers. ​ Because that’s how we are going to keep our republic.

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