Illinoisans, this is my seventh state of the state address, and I've come before you to present a budget in good years and in bad, in years of crisis and years of relative stability. There's a whole industry of backseat bellyachers in the state and around the country who make a profession out of rhetorically tearing down Illinois and suggesting that if we would just enact one of their magic bean fixes, that we would never face another difficult budget year. But there's one thing that I've learned as governor: there are no magic bean fixes. And each year there's some difficulty that requires us to work hard to overcome it. This year, the surfacing difficulty is Donald Trump's and Elon Musk's plan to steal Illinois's tax dollars and deny our citizens the protection and the services that they need.
I want to offer you a few examples. 20 million Americans, 700,000 of them here in Illinois, will lose health care coverage if congressional Republicans are successful in their effort to cut the Affordable Care Act, and rural hospitals across Illinois will be shuttered. The Trump administration cut off funding for food safety inspectors for nearly a month, impacting more than 70 meat and poultry facilities in Illinois. Without these inspectors, the supply chain collapses. Prices go through the roof, from farmers to truckers to meatpackers to retailers. Jobs will be lost.
Meals on Wheels programs, which home deliver 12 million meals per year to 100,000 seniors and people with disabilities in Illinois, are on the federal chopping block. This is real. The new administration and the Republican Congress and Elon Musk intend to take these programs away. For all the Illinoisans watching at home, let me be clear: this is going to affect your daily lives. Our state budget can't make up for the damage that is done to people across our state.
If they succeed, there are people, some in my own party, who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything that he wants, he'll make an exception and he'll spare you some of the harm. I'll ignore the moral abdication of that position for just a second to say almost none of these people have had the experience with the president that I do. I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most: public praise on the Sunday news shows in return for ventilators and N95 masks during the worst of the pandemic. We made a deal, and it turns out his promises were as broken as the BiPAP machines he sent us. Instead of ventilators, going along to get along does not work. Just ask the Trump-fearing red state governors.
You can boo all you want until your constituents lose these services. Those Trump-state, red-state governors are dealing with the same cuts that we are. And I won't be fooled. Twice. Last week, our federal courts returned a verdict rightfully condemning the once unchecked power of a former speaker of this House. Now, if you applauded that decision like I did, then I expect you to defend and applaud those same federal courts as they check this president in his quest for unrestrained power.
I've been reflecting these last four weeks on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum, and the two times that I've had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois governor. As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided that they wanted to march there. The leaders of that march knew that the images of swastika-clad young men goosestepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population, so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.
The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis, contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the First Amendment. As an American and as a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case. But I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and build the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981, a small but important forerunner to the one I helped to build 30 years later.
Here I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly, but I know the history intimately and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here's what I've learned: the rot that tears apart your house's foundation begins as a seed, a seed of distrust and hate and blame. The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn't arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame. I'm watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now.
A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac and suggests, without facts or findings, that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri attorney general who just sued Starbucks, arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too female and nonwhite. The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here. They point to a group of people who don't look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems. I just have one question: what comes next?
After we've discriminated against, deported, or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities, once we've ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends, after that, when the problems we started with are still there, staring us in the face, what comes next? All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don't want to repeat history, then for God's sake, in this moment, we better be strong enough to learn from it.
I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln's Bible: I do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of governor according to the best of my ability. My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don't have kings in America, and I don't intend to bend the knee to one.
I'm not speaking up in service to my ambitions, but in deference to my obligations. If you think I'm overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this: it took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. And all I'm saying is that when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.
Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978, just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only 20 of them showed up, but 2,000 people came to counter-protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the rally sputtered to an unspectacular end. After ten minutes, it was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame. Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the tragic spirit of despair
