Illinois’ Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker has asked officials in his state to take steps to implement a boycott against El Salvador in response to President Nayib Bukele’s cooperation with the Trump administration in denying a Maryland resident, deported and detained in one of his infamously hellish detention camps, his due process rights.
Pritzker has asked Illinois’ pension funds and procurement agencies to look into whether the state has any investments in El Salvador or contracts with El Salvadorian businesses that have headquarters in the country. The idea is to identify if any relationships exist so that the state of Illinois can divest from El Salvador to place some punishing pressure on Bukele for his decision (if we can call it that) to cooperate with the Trump administration as his executive branch throws down the gauntlet on the judiciary.
“The United States Constitution guarantees due process. We are witnessing Donald Trump erode our fundamental Constitutional rights in real time, and we must fight to restore the balance of power,” Pritzker said. “The State of Illinois will stand up for the Rule of Law and do everything in our power stop the Trump Administration from ripping apart our most basic rights.”
Illinois’ procurement agency will also reportedly look into any trade that might be taking place between the state and El Salvador so that those supply chains can, potentially, be shutdown as Illinois moves forward with the threatened boycott. A source close to Pritzker’s office told HuffPost that the governor is hoping other Democratic governors in the U.S. will follow his lead and join Illinois “in pushing Trump and El Salvador to follow the law.”
Democrats have been seizing this moment to show their teeth as the opposition party. Some of those efforts — like Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) traveling to El Salvador and successfully demanding a wellness-check meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) issuing a warning to Bukele that Trump’s presidency won’t last forever — have resonated better than others.
While Pritzker’s move adds to the chorus of Democratic uproar over the Trump administration’s handling of the Abrego Garcia case — denying due process and unconstitutionally ignoring court orders — the White House remains the entity controlling the situation. The Trump administration could almost certainly demand that Bukele release Abrego Garcia tomorrow, and the Central American president would do so. The administration has sought, in court and on right-wing media, to obscure this reality.
In Other Illinois News …
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), minority whip and top Dem on the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced his retirement Wednesday.
While there had been rumblings that he’d bow out, it still shook a political world accustomed to watching senators slowly decline in office. Durbin, 80, seemed to reference the party’s clamoring for young and energetic leadership in his brief announcement video, citing a “strong Democratic bench” that’s “ready to serve.”
Durbin hails from the party’s institutionalist wing, and never seemed comfortable abandoning bipartisan comity in exchange for wielding the Judiciary Committee gavel aggressively. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) fought hard for the job when the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) was shouted out of it for her (sometimes literal) embrace of Republicans. He’ll likely aggressively campaign for it again.
In a lengthy press release, the top achievement Durbin cited from his 29 years in the Senate was the lifetime confirmation of 235 federal judges, including Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. “Of the confirmations, two-thirds were women, two-thirds were people of color, and two-fifths were women of color,” the press release said.
— Kate Riga
Trump Still Innovating On Ways To Punish Critics
Trump and officials in his administration keep hinting at their strong desire to find a way to give U.S. citizens the same treatment they have given to immigrant detainees. Axios this morning pulled together various recent statements in which administration officials detailed these yearnings.
In the now-infamous Oval Office meeting with the president of El Salvador Nayib Bukele last week, Trump made clear these sentiments, saying “homegrowns are next.”
“We always have to obey the laws, but we also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways, that hit elderly ladies over the head with a baseball bat when they’re not looking, that are absolute monsters. I’d like to include them in the group of people to get them out of the country,” added Trump.
During an interview on Newsmax, Seb Gorka, (who has apparently made his debut in Trump II as the senior director for counterterrorism), echoed these sentiments, saying that critics of the administration’s deportation agenda could be “aiding and abetting terrorism.”
“You have to ask yourself, are they technically aiding and abetting them, because aiding and abetting criminals and terrorists is a crime,” he told Newsmax.
Intimidating critics in various ways is, of course, not a new concept for this administration. Trump’s appointee to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. has already taken steps to threaten elected Democrats who criticize Elon Musk.
This escalation in the administration’s crackdown on immigration to potentially include U.S. citizens will likely face legal hurdles.
— Khaya Himmelman
Eric Adams Embraces Role As Trump Mouthpiece
The NYC mayor’s remarks on Tuesday about Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s (D-MD) trip to El Salvador are really something (as is most things he says).
From Gothamist:
“It’s time for all of us to ask the question, particularly those who are in government who find it more convenient to have a tequila drink with someone who’s a gang member: Which side are you on?” Adams said.
…
“Let me tell you something, I won’t have a tequila drink with a gang member. I won’t be hanging out with them and hugging them,” Adams said Tuesday.
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JB Pritzker is playing it right and Eric Adams needs to be careful because he’s getting perilous close to step-and-fetchit territory.
Tequila drink? It sounds like Adams has been spending too much time with Dr. Oz. What a very strange thing to say.
Kafka basking next to the river rock he defeated.
So! Now all one needs to do is Xit out that someone you dislike has “hit an old lady over the head with a baseball bat” and they’re gone, disappeared, no due process or anything? Sound right?
Also, at one point I had some sympathy for Mayor Eric Adams. But not after his brain dead “tequila drink” blathering. Was that him, or did the commissars of the Maladministration have a kalashnikov to his head?
That poor thing is simply exhausted.