Letters from an American - February 18, 2026

Episode Date: February 19, 2026

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February 18, 26. Today, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker delivered the state of the state address. The underlying purpose of the address is to explain the state budget, but Pritzker, a Democrat, used the occasion to talk far more broadly about the state of Illinois and the nation. Pritzker anchored his speech by reaching back to the days of John Peter Altgeld, a German-born American who helped to lead the progressive movement and served as governor of Illinois from 1893 to 1897. Altgeld oversaw passage of some of the strongest laws in the country for workplace safety and protection of child workers,

invested heavily in education, and appointed women to important positions in state government despite the fact that women could not yet vote. Pritzker noted that in his state of the state speech in January 1895, Altgeld talked about the need to ensure that science would govern the practice of medicine in Illinois, the high cost of insurance, the condition of Illinois prisons, the funding of state universities, a needed revision of election laws, the concentration of wealth in large businesses. Altgeld expressed pride for appointing women to office and stated that justice requires that the same rewards and honors

that encourage and incite men, should be equally in reach of women in every field and activity. Prisker said he brought up Altgeld's defense of equal rights to highlight one enduring human truth. Injustice can become a genetic condition we bequeath on future generations if we fail to face it forthrightly. Prisker then turned to the year that has passed since Donald J. Trump took office. To be perfectly candid, Prisker said, as Illinois is one of the states whose taxpayers send more dollars to the federal government than we receive back in services, I was hoping that his threats to gut programs that support working families were the kind of unrealistic hyperbole that fuels a presidential campaign, but then is abandoned when cooler heads

prevail. But, he said, unfortunately, there, There are no cooler heads at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue these days. The Trump administration has cost Illinois $8.4 billion, Pritzker said, illegally confiscating money that has already been promised and appropriated by the Congress to the people of Illinois. Pritzker was clear that this money is not handouts, but dollars that real Illinoisians paid in federal taxes. and that have been constitutionally approved by our elected Democratic and Republican representatives in Washington. Unlike the federal government, states must balance their budgets every year. Trump's billions in illegally withheld funds inflict a cost on the state's residence,

while Illinois has been forced to spend enormous time and taxpayer money going to court and fighting to get what is rightfully hours. Prisker said, it is impossible to tally the hours, days and weeks our state government has spent chasing news of presidential executive orders, letters, and edicts that read like proclamations from the Lollipop Guild. Prisker noted that Trump is making life harder for everyday Americans with tariffs that raise costs for working families and small businesses. trade wars that are devastating farmers, cuts to health care, nutritional assistance, and education, increased bureaucratic demands on states, and low job creation. The good news, Pritzker said, is that Illinois had managed such crises before and had found a way forward.

He noted the growth of the state's economy and economic stability over the past eight years, even as the state had balanced its budget every year and made historic investments in education, child welfare, disability services, and job creation in the private sector. In the past year, Illinois' gross domestic product was more than $1.2 trillion, up from $881 billion when Pritzker took office.

Looking forward, Prisker outlined plans to address the top three economic issues on the mind of most Americans, the cost of housing, electricity, and health care. He promised to reduce the cost of housing by cutting local regulations and providing more options for financing. He promised to address the skyrocketing cost of electricity, first by pausing the authorization of new data center tax credits, and then by investing in renewable energy and nuclear power. Finally, he announced that, as of this week, the state had eliminated a billion dollars in medical debt for more than 500,000 people in the state by purchasing and erasing it for pennies on the dollar.

Pritzker warned that the benefits of our changing world are increasingly reaped by a smaller and smaller group of people, while middle and working class Americans pay for it. Special interests and large corporations seem to delight in finding ever more insidious ways to extract money from everyday people. Those same companies then react with a mixture of surprise and outrage when they're asked to rein in their worst abuses. I'm committed to doing everything government can to rein in the worst of the price gouging and profiteering we're seeing, Prisker said. But I implore the Titans of Industry who regularly ask government to make their lives easier? What are you doing to make your employees and your customers' lives easier?

Then Pritzker turned to the crisis federal agents created on the streets of Chicago. A year ago, I stood before you and asked a provocative question. After we have discriminated against, disparaged, and deported, all our immigrant neighbors, and the problems we started with still remained, what comes next? Pritzker said. He recalled that when he asked that question, some people walked out. But a year later we have an answer, don't we? He said. Masked unaccountable federal agents with little training, occupied our streets, brutalized our people, tear-gast kids and cops, kidnapped parents in front of their children, detained and arrested and at times attempted to deport U.S. citizens and killed innocent Americans on the streets. Pritzker identified Trump and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller as the architects of that plan to drip authoritarianism into our veins.

But, he noted, people in Illinois did not accept that authoritarianism. Prisker reminded the audience that President Grover Cleveland had similarly tried to subdue the Illinois population with hired thugs during the 1894 Pullman strike after the Pullman Company, which made railroad cars, cut workers' wages by about 25%. When workers struck, Cleveland deputized U.S. Marshals to end the strike. They fired into crowds of bystanders, and, according to a Chicago paper, seen. to be hunting trouble. Twenty-five people died and more were wounded before the strike ended. Altgeld had opposed the arrival of federal troops and his fury at their intrusion still smoldered when he gave his State of the state speech almost six months later. If the president can, at his pleasure, send troops into any city, town, or hamlet whenever and wherever he please,

under pretense of enforcing some law, Altgeld wrote. His judgment, which means his pleasure being the sole criterion, then there can be no difference whatever in this respect between the powers of the president and those of the Tsar of Russia. Prisker joked that he wished he could spend just one year of my governorship presiding over-precedented times. I yearn for normal problems, he said. But these are not normal times. I've been thinking a lot lately about love, about loving people and loving your country and the power involved in both, the governor said. I know right now there are a lot of people out there who love their country and feel like their country is not loving them back. I know that. But he told those people that your country is loving you back, just not in the way

you're used to hearing. It's not speaking in anthems or flags or ostentatious displays of patriotism. It will never come from the people who say the only way to love America is to hate Americans. Love is found in every act of courage, large and small, taken to preserve the country we once knew. You will find it in homes and schools and churches and art. It is there. It has not been squashed. Prisker called out the love shown by the bicyclers who showed up in Little Village every day during Operation Midway Blitz to buy out to Mali carts so the vendors could return to the safety of their homes, the parishioners who form human chains around churches so that immigrants could worship, and the moms in the school pickup line who whipped out their cameras and their whistles,

and in the face of every Midwesterner who put on their heaviest coat and protested outside on the coldest day. That love for one's neighbor, he suggested, is the country's most powerful tool against the rise of authoritarianism. I am begging my fellow politicians, my fellow Illinoisans, my fellow Americans, to realize that right now in this country, we are not fighting over policy or political party, Pritzker said.

We are fighting over whether we are going to be a civilization rooted in empathy and kindness, or one rooted in cruelty and rage. I love my country, Prisker said. I refuse to stop. The hope I have found in a very difficult year is that love is the light that gets you through a long night. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson.

It was produced at Soundscape Productions. dead in Massachusetts recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.