Mayor Johnson, Governor Pritzker externalize their failures by blaming President Trump
Chicago residents should not be deceived by the histrionics both Governor J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson are staging around President Donald Trump considering deploying the National Guard to Chicago to address the city’s violence. For those willing to see reality, Pritzker and Johnson actually welcome Trump’s attention. To Johnson, attacking Trump has become a strategy to ensure his political survival. For Pritzker, invoking Trump conveniently distracts from his own governance failures while positioning him as a leading figure for the “Trump resistance” ahead of a possible presidential run.
In 2021, then-President Joe Biden signed a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill, the American Rescue Plan Act, which was ostensibly conceived to accelerate economic recovery after the country was ravaged by the COVID pandemic. A masquerade, the stimulus package was actually a massive bailout to "blue" states. Under the bill’s relief formula, $1.9 trillion in COVID relief was distributed to states, much of it beyond real public health needs. Illinois’ take was $13.2 billion, of which $6 billion went to Chicago.
Now, President Trump is poised to serve as their political scapegoat, not their financial savior. For Democratic leaders faced with self-inflicted fiscal crises, blaming Trump is the strategy of choice. This is exactly what is playing out in Chicago and Illinois, where the governor and mayor are launching into long-winded anti-Trump tirades to deflect away from their managerial incompetence.
The anti-Trump rhetoric immediately followed the outcome of the 2024 election, with Governor Pritzker all but equating Trump and his supporters to Nazis. Mayor Johnson has been quick to assign every negative label to Trump, reportedly even calling him a “terrorist.” Trump’s consideration of federal intervention in cities like Chicago — mirroring measures taken in Washington, D.C. — has pushed both Johnson and Pritzker into a frenzy of rhetorical fear-mongering.
Take, for example, Mayor Johnson’s latest PR stunt: An expansive, largely symbolic Executive Order (EO) that, among other things, urges federal law enforcement not to wear masks in Chicago and instructs local police not to cooperate with federal agencies. Johnson’s escalation to claims of “military occupation,” joined by Pritzker’s charges of Trump “undermining democracy,” irresponsibly inflames public tensions and edges the situation toward confrontation.
An EO with no force of law behind it, it is especially ironic that Johnson performed this executive order signing on a weekend when Chicago suffered its nation-leading 50th mass shooting, and shootings and murders of school-age youth climbed to 131. Neither Johnson nor Pritzker issued meaningful executive actions or public statements addressing the carnage. Despite the grisly weekend death toll, Mayor Johnson turned out to a pro-labor rally downtown on Monday, where he spoke of defending humanity and democracy. Chicago was expected to return to pre-COVID crime levels after mitigation measures ended and schools reopened. Instead, it still leads the nation's large cities in murders, shootings, and mass shootings.
Johnson ignores the fact that, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab, Black residents are 22 times more likely than whites to be killed by gun violence and, overwhelmingly, are also the victims and perpetrators of these crimes. Meanwhile, every day, over 90 percent of violent offenders remain on the streets — protected by police shortages, lenient pretrial release policies, paralyzed detective work, and the absence of witness protection. Yet, neither mayoral executive order nor policy addresses these root problems.
For Pritzker, Johnson, and their progressive supporters, Trump is a political gift from heaven: A villain out of central casting to blame for inherited problems and policy failures. Pritzker’s supposed “profile in courage” appeared when he told the powerful Chicago Teachers Union it would not receive an additional $1.6 billion — then blamed Trump for the shortfall instead of acknowledging years of school district fiscal mismanagement.
Voters must look beyond Pritzker’s and Johnson’s empty rhetoric. Both Illinois and Chicago are in deep crisis, the product of decades of one-party Democratic rule sustained by gerrymandered political maps. Illinois has become essentially a one-party state, rendering GOP opposition toothless and eroding genuine democracy within the Democratic Party itself. As a result, Democrats have maintained virtually veto-proof majorities in the General Assembly for two decades.
Though Mayor Johnson and Governor Pritzker have developed the habit of making President Trump their bogeyman, the current disoriented state of affairs in Chicago and in Illinois cannot be blamed on the president.
Chicago and the state face financial crisis of their own making.
After squandering almost $14 billion in COVID funding and despite raising 55 taxes and fees that generate over $7 billion annually, Illinois projects a budget deficit next year of over $3 billion. Meanwhile, after squandering its COVID dollars, Chicago is staring down a $1.2 billion deficit.
Illinois residents pay burdensome state and local taxes.
Illinois Policy Institute reports that Illinois residents pay the highest state and local taxes while the Tax Foundation reported that Illinois homeowners paid the highest property taxes. A 2025 WalletHub study on "Taxpayer Friendliness," ranked Illinois last in the nation.
Illinois ranks third in business closures.
Over 14,700 jobs were lost due to mass layoffs in 2024 alone, and Chief Executive magazine puts Illinois as the third-worst state for business, behind only California and New York.
Commercial property taxes are second only to Detroit.
Chicago has the second-highest commercial property taxes in the nation – more than double the U.S. average for the largest cities. Commercial property taxes in Chicago have doubled during the past 10 years. Only Detroit has higher commercial property taxes.
Illinois and Chicago experience abysmal economic growth.
Illinois has seen the fourth slowest GDP growth since 2019 at 5.2 percent compared to 15.1 percent nationally and seen its GDP decline by 2.2 percent so far this year. Meanwhile, since 2019 Chicago has ranked dead last other major U.S. cities with growth of less than 1 percent.
Private-sector job loss persists.
Illinois is one of few states to have lost private-sector jobs between 2019–2024 with net employment gains being in government jobs. Illinois manufacturing has stagnated while surrounding states enjoy robust growth. Illinois lost over 14,700 private sector jobs from mass layoffs in 2024 alone.
Unsustainable city and state debt.
Illinois has the third-highest state debt per capita and the largest unfunded pension liability in the country, exceeding the combined pension debt of its neighbors. Chicago’s own pension burden now surpasses that of 43 states and was recently inflated by another $11 billion courtesy of Governor Pritzker’s policies.
Spending on migrants and neglect of low-income residents.
While low-income residents and the homeless continue to be ignored, Illinois has spent over $2.8 billion on benefits for illegal migrants including over $600 million in Chicago where Johnson and his far-left supporters view migrants as another aggrieved group to be subsidized.
Chicago numerically remains the nation's crime capital.
Despite the national decline in violent crime following the end of COVID protocols, particularly the reopening of schools, Chicago leads the nation in the number of murders, shootings, school age youth murders and shootings and mass shootings. Chicago leads among major cities in per-capita murders.
Illinois ranks dead last in economic equity.
According to WalletHub, Illinois places last on measures of prosperity and equity (poverty, labor force, home ownership, income, and unemployment). For Black residents, Illinois is the worst state in the country to live by those metrics.
Illinoisans are voting with their feet
Illinois residents are voting with their feet. Since 2000, 1.6 million residents have fled the state, with neighboring Indiana and Wisconsin being the most frequent destination. In a recent poll, half of those surveyed who left the state cite taxes as the first reason for their exit, with schools and crimes as ancillary factors in their decision to leave. Furthermore, approximately half of residents polled indicated they would leave if they could. To illustrate Chicago's population decline, until 2022, the city's population was at its lowest point in 100 years. Only the influx of illegal migrants reversed Chicago's population slide.
More troubling, outbound residents tend to have much higher incomes than those moving in — the average income gap for out-migrants grew from 30 percent in 2000 to almost 60 percent in 2020. Alarmingly, Illinois has lost a cumulative $535 billion in adjusted gross income (AGI) since 2000, outpacing AGI from new arrivals, with Wirepoints confirming that IRS data show this loss is persistently worsening.
Most concerning is the loss of young, affluent, upwardly mobile millennials. A Wirepoints analysis shows that in 2022, Illinois was the second-biggest loser nationally of households aged 26–35 earning above $200,000 annually. Similarly, Illinois lost four percent of its young, upper-income earners — second only to California — with zero-income-tax states Texas and Florida as the big beneficiaries.
Chicago has seen the largest exodus of Black residents of any city in the U.S. including Detroit, losing nearly 25 percent of the population between 2000 and 2020. The residents fleeing Chicago are overwhelmingly middle- and upper-income families with children. The Sun-Times reported in 2023 that the number of Black children age 17 and younger has fallen by a staggering 49 percent compared with 14 percent for adults. This has devastated predominantly Black communities, stripping the city of its Black middle class.
The toll of this flight from Chicago has been devastating. Illinois and its economic hub, Chicago, are in serious trouble — and it is unrelated to Trump. Illinois’ self-proclaimed “progressive” agenda has delivered mounting taxes, chronic deficits, stagnant growth, and accelerating out-migration. As middle- and upper-income residents leave, Illinois seems intent on replacing them with subsidized new migrant populations while clinging to gerrymandered one-party dominance.
The root of Chicago’s problems are progressive leadership over Chicago and the state. While there are many reasons to disagree with the Trump White House and its policies, no policy or program the Trump Administration has applied has brought about the problems Chicago or the State of Illinois currently face. Rather, Chicago and the state’s difficulties are the result of the failure progressive lawmakers and progressive policies.
As long as progressives remain in control of the levers of power in Chicago and across this state, residents can neither change nor solutions for the state’s deepest problems. Instead, residents can expect both Mayor Johnson and Governor Pritzker to continue to deflect from their errors, more anti-Trump bluster, and blame-shifting. Chicagoans and Illinois residents should also be prepared for more taxes.
