We need to stop calling these radicals “conservative.” Just read what Project 2025 author and Director of the Office of Management and Budget under Donald Trump, Russell Vought, recently told the magazine, IM1776: “I am neither conservative by temperament nor by political ambition: I want to destroy the status quo rather than preserve it.” He is promoting Christian nationalism, which has about as much in common with Christianity as Tiffany’s has with The Dollar Store.
IM1776 goes on to chastise Ruffo for not being radical enough, saying he’s just pruning the forest when it needs to be burned down. Substitute “the forest” for America, and you’ll understand.
Chaos is their brand. Destruction is their purpose, and they’re no longer afraid to say the quiet thing out loud. That’s why they feel good about decimating EPA, USAID, VOA, and FEMA. They feel no need to help their fellow citizens.
Time Magazine, along with every news source (except MAGA media) quote the president saying, “‘Maybe We Like a Dictator’: Trump Suggests Many Americans Would Prefer Autocracy.” Talking about the cities he’s militarizing, “Many people want us to come stop crime. Some call me a dictator, and many people say they’d rather have a dictator who stops crime.”
He's threatening Illinois, but its governor, JB Pritzker is not cowering. He’s “hired more police and given them more funding. We banned assault weapons, ghost guns, bump stops, and high-capacity magazines” and “invested historic amounts into community violence intervention programs…thirteen of the top twenty cities in homicide rates have Republican governors. None of these cities is Chicago. Eight of the top ten states with the highest homicide rates are led by Republicans. None of those states is Illinois.”
Pritzker notes that Trump and Congressional Republicans, cut three-quarters of a billion dollars in public safety and crime prevention grants. “Trump,” Pritzker said, “is defunding the police.
He went on to say, “To the members of the press who are assembled here today and listening across the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is. This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story. This is not a time to fall back into the reflexive crouch that I so often see where the authoritarian creep by this administration is ignored in favor of some horse race piece on who will be helped politically by the president's actions. Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish his dissidents, and score political points. If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is: a dangerous power grab.
“Earlier today,” he continued, “in the Oval Office, Donald Trump looked at the assembled cameras and asked for me personally to say, ‘Mr. President, can you do us the honor of protecting our city?’ Instead, I say, ‘Mr. President, do not come to Chicago. You are neither wanted here nor needed here. Your remarks about this effort over the last several weeks have betrayed a continuing slip in your mental faculties and are not fit for the auspicious office that you occupy.’”
Concerning the National Guard, he said, “It is insulting to their integrity and to the extraordinary sacrifices that they make to serve in the guard, to use them as a political prop, where they could be put in situations where they will be at odds with their local communities, the ones that they seek to serve.
“To my fellow governors across the nation who would consider pulling your national guards from their duties at home to come into my state against the wishes of its elected representatives and its people,” he said, “cooperation and coordination between our states is vital to the fabric of our nation, and it benefits us all. Any action undercutting that and violating the sacred sovereignty of our state to cater to the ego of a dictator will be responded to.”
He wrapped up this pugnacious stance with, “The state of Illinois is ready to stand against this military deployment with every peaceful tool we have. We will see the Trump administration in court. We will use every lever in our disposal to protect the people of Illinois and their rights.
“If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law. As Dr. King once said, the arc of the moral Universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Humbly, I would add, it doesn't bend on its own. History tells us we often have to apply force needed to make sure that the arc gets where it needs to go. This is one of those times.”
©2025 Jon Sinton
This is in pontificating. Pritzker is simply telling it like it is in the simplest most honest way. It’s definitely not about the billionaire class versus the rest of us. Not at this point anyway. Hell, Pritzker is one of those billionaires that still has a heart and a voice to speak out against things that are simply cruel and sadistic. Not everything has to have an economic or political divide in order to be taken seriously in a social discussion. Maybe it’s because he has nothing to lose, but then again, maybe it’s because he’s using the soap box as a platform and not as a container for a white wash.
Like-minded, brother Jon.