Cook County’s State’s Attorney Eileen O'Neill Burke understands that cooperation with federal law enforcement matters more than left-wing political theater
In today’s Chicago and Illinois, merely behaving like a grown-up counts as an act of rebellion.
That is the real lesson from the latest controversy surrounding Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke. According to a new Sun-Times report, Burke declined to sign onto a county statement denouncing President Donald Trump last August because, as her spokesman wrote at the time, her office needed to “maintain” its “excellent working relationships” with federal law enforcement partners while prioritizing the fight against illegal guns. The article presents this as suspicious, even damning. In the upside-down politics of Chicago, it is actually evidence of common sense.
Think about how low the bar has fallen. A prosecutor in one of the most violent urban counties in America is now being treated as though she has done something shameful because she did not rush to join a partisan, anti-Trump group statement. Her apparent offense was recognizing a truth that should be obvious to anyone not marinating in activist ideology: If you want to lock up gun offenders, dismantle trafficking pipelines, and keep repeat violent criminals off the street, you cannot afford to gratuitously torch your relationships with federal agencies. That is not corruption. That is called fulfilling your obligations to Chicago residents.
The Sun-Times story states coalition lawyers are now waving around that August 11 email as proof Burke has a “conflict of interest” serious enough to justify installing a special prosecutor to investigate federal agents involved in Operation Midway Blitz. The filing argues because Burke wanted to preserve working ties with federal officials, she cannot fairly assess allegations against them. That is a remarkable standard. By that logic, any prosecutor who values cooperation with police, federal agents, or neighboring jurisdictions is disqualified from making decisions that involve those institutions. In other words, professionalism itself becomes evidence of bias.
What Burke’s critics seem unable to grasp is that federal, state, and local cooperation is not some optional accessory in modern law enforcement. It is central to the job. Burke’s own office has touted collaboration with federal, state, and local partners as part of its strategy against illegal guns, including rejoining the Crime Gun Intelligence Center and forming a Regional Gun Crimes Task Force. Federal agencies such as ATF have likewise emphasized multilevel partnerships in Chicago gun enforcement efforts. In a city drowning in illegal firearms and machine-gun conversion devices, severing those ties to satisfy the emotional needs of anti-Trump activists would be reckless.
And let us be honest about the politics here. Much of Chicago’s Democratic establishment has become so toxically tribal that it can no longer distinguish between the federal government as such and Donald Trump as an individual political figure. That is a dangerous confusion. The United States government is not an enemy occupation force. Federal prosecutors, ATF agents, and other federal law enforcement personnel are not foreign invaders. They are part of our own government. Chicago and Cook County depend on federal money, federal law enforcement coordination, federal prosecutions, and federal logistical support in countless ways. Treating cooperation with Washington as a moral stain is infantile politics dressed up as principle.
The irony is that Burke has not exactly been some MAGA mascot. Her office has publicly said she was “horrified” by the “thuggish and inappropriate conduct” of ICE agents, called the special prosecutor petition “frivolous,” and pointed to an amicus brief her office filed to try to prevent National Guard deployment to Chicago. WTTW likewise reported earlier this year on Burke’s criticism of alleged unlawful federal conduct and on her office’s policy changes aimed at possible charges against federal agents who commit violent crimes. So the caricature of Burke as some secret ally of Trump collapses on contact with the facts. What really seems to bother her critics is not that she supports Trump, but that she refuses to make anti-Trump grandstanding the organizing principle of her office.
And that, apparently, is now intolerable in Chicago.
This city has spent years indulging political fantasies while ordinary residents pay the price in blood. Children get shot. Innocent pedestrians die. Gang members cycle through the system. Illegal guns pour into neighborhoods already under siege. The CTA becomes a rolling case study in urban disorder. Yet the political class remains mesmerized by performance activism. Too many local leaders would rather issue declarations, join coalitions, and denounce Trump than focus on the drab but essential work of keeping people alive.
Burke, to her credit, seems to understand the public prosecutor’s office is not a graduate seminar in resistance politics. It is supposed to be a law office. Its purpose is not to signal ideological purity to Toni Preckwinkle’s orbit, the Sun-Times' newsroom, or the usual coalition of activists, attorneys, and performative elected officials. Its purpose is to enforce the law in a county where lawlessness has too often been treated as just another social condition to be managed rather than defeated.
The coalition pushing for a special prosecutor includes more than 200 elected officials, clergy, journalists, and attorneys, according to the Sun-Times. That number is meant to impress. It should do the opposite. It is a reminder of how many people in this city have decided that politics comes first and public safety second. One especially telling detail is that the coalition includes the Chicago News Guild, which represents journalists at the Sun-Times itself. That does not automatically invalidate the legal argument, but it certainly captures the atmosphere: The political, legal, media, and activist classes all moving in lockstep, all insisting that refusing to denounce Trump loudly enough is practically a prosecutable offense.
That mentality is poison.
A sane political culture would applaud Burke for keeping one eye on the real world. It would recognize that Cook County cannot fight gun crime by cutting itself off from federal partners because progressive activists demand total political war against every arm of the Trump administration. It would understand that maintaining working relationships with ATF and other federal agencies is not some grubby compromise. It is a basic obligation of responsible governance when illegal guns are ruining lives on Chicago streets.
There is also something deeply revealing in the coalition’s theory of conflict. Burke’s critics seem to believe that any prosecutor who cooperates with law enforcement is inherently “beholden” to law enforcement. Nonetheless, prosecutors are supposed to work with law enforcement. That is how the system functions. The question is not whether a state’s attorney maintains institutional relationships. Of course she does. The question is whether she can still exercise independent judgment. Nothing in the Sun-Times report shows Burke surrendered her judgment. What it shows is that she possesses some. She made a distinction between a political statement and the practical needs of her office. In Chicago, that now passes for scandal.
Maybe that is because too many people in power no longer think in terms of citizens. They think in terms of factions. Their instinct is not to ask, “What helps the people of Cook County?” but “What hurts Trump?” If cooperating with federal authorities helps get guns off the street, too bad. If declining to sign a statement preserves a useful relationship, too bad. If maintaining some semblance of professional adulthood prevents one more act of pointless civic self-harm, too bad. The tribe must be fed.
Well, somebody has to say "no."
Burke did. And for that she deserves credit, not condemnation.
At a time when so many Democrats in this city and state seem determined to place partisan hostility above public order, Burke’s refusal to join the anti-Trump pile-on is a rare sign that not everyone has lost their mind. Chicago needs more officials willing to remember that we are still part of the United States, that federal partnerships are not treason, and that the first duty of government is not partisan theater but protecting its own people.
That used to be common sense. In Chicago, it now looks like courage.
