As Donald Trump Takes Office, Chicago Officials Prepare to Push Back on His Agenda

Trump International Tower and Hotel on the Chicago River. (Alexandre Fagundes / iStock) Trump International Tower and Hotel on the Chicago River. (Alexandre Fagundes / iStock)

In the run-up to the presidential election, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson repeatedly warned that President Donald Trump would pose an existential threat to Chicago and its residents if voters returned him to the White House.

As Trump takes office Monday, Pritzker and Johnson have both said they are prepared to confront the threat posed by another Trump term head-on. But it is unclear how Trump will make good on his promises of retribution — and what power city and state officials will have to resist or thwart federal authorities.

“We will not bend or break,” Johnson said Nov. 12. “Our values will remain strong and firm. We will face likely hurdles in our work over the next four years, but we will not be stopped, and we will not go back.”

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Johnson called the threats issued by Trump “unconscionable and dangerous,” and called the president-elect a “tyrant.”

Trump’s promise to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education would destroy public education and poses a serious threat to Black Chicagoans, Johnson said.

“Whether it’s anti-Black or antisemitic, we’re going to protect people, and we’re going to invest in people,” Johnson said. “The city of Chicago will be better, stronger and safer despite who’s in the White House.”

Pritzker said he was ready to fight to protect LGBTQ+ Illinoisans, immigrants and people with disabilities while defending reproductive rights.

“To anyone who intends to come take away the freedom and opportunity and dignity of Illinoisans, I would remind you that a happy warrior is still a warrior,” Pritzker said Nov. 8. “You come for my people, you come through me.”

During the campaign, Pritzker said he was certain that Trump would use his power to inflict pain on Chicago and its people if he emerged victorious, noting that Trump did exactly that during his first term in office. Trump and his aides have promised to exercise nearly unchecked executive power during his second term.

“I think Donald Trump will use every tool in the toolbox to go after people all across the country and I’m talking about the people of Chicago who didn’t vote for him,” Pritzker said in July, calling Trump a “vindictive, selfish, narcissistic person.”

For his part, Trump has promised to take swift action on a host of issues on his first day in office, saying “your head will spin when you see what’s going to happen.”

Will Chicago Be Ground Zero for Mass Deportations?

The first clash between local and federal officials could come soon after Trump takes the oath of office for the second time.

Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar,” has vowed to launch the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history” in Chicago. In December, Homan told a crowd of Northwest Side Republicans that Johnson and Pritzker “suck” and called the mayor “not very bright.”

Johnson has repeatedly said he will not allow Chicago police officers to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents deport undocumented Chicagoans and called for Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

Johnson and his allies successfully defeated an effort to weaken the city’s Welcoming City Ordinance just before Trump was set to take office and issued new guidance to officials on what to do if federal agents attempt to conduct deportation operations at schools, parks and community centers.

“Families can be assured that today’s display of this broad coalition that beat back an ordinance that quite frankly was just stoking the flames of fear,” Johnson said Wednesday. “And so, we’re already off to a stronger start than where we were, you know, eight years ago.”

Despite the mayor’s promises, Trump’s reelection has already prompted many undocumented immigrants to return to life in the city’s shadows, unwilling to seek help from city officials for health care or protection from the Chicago Police Department for fear of exposing themselves or their families to deportation, immigrant advocates said.

One of the first things Trump did when he took office in January 2017 was to sign an executive order that sought to revoke millions of dollars in public safety grants to cities like Chicago, which has been a self-proclaimed sanctuary city since 1985.

Lawyers for Chicago defended the city’s status as a sanctuary city in court, ultimately winning a total victory that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020.

Despite that victory, Homan and other incoming Trump officials have promised to strip federal aid from states and cities who refuse to cooperate with mass deportation efforts.

Red Line Funding Secured

Those fears prompted Chicago officials to scramble after the election to secure $1.9 billion in federal transit grant money, the last piece of a decades-long effort to help fulfill a decades-old promise to extend the CTA Red Line past 95th Street to 130th Street.

Work is now on track to start in late 2025, with the first train getting signal clearance in 2030.

The total cost of the 5.6-mile extension is currently estimated at $5.75 billion. In addition to the federal grants, the rest of the funding is set to come from a mix of state and local funds.

With a signed agreement in place, Trump will not be able to scuttle the project, officials said.

But Trump’s inauguration means that city and state officials hoping for federal help as they confront an estimated $750 million shortfall facing Chicago’s transit agencies are out of luck.

In fact, Chicago’s transit agencies now face an uphill battle to keep the federal funding they now get, making a dire situation potentially significantly worse.

The Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Presidential Transition Project, more commonly known as Project 2025, a 900-page manifesto titled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” calls for the elimination of funding for the Federal Transportation Authority’s core programs, which provide critical funds to local transit authorities for essential maintenance work.

The plan also calls for efforts to combat climate change to be stopped, in part by eliminating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency because it is “responsible for driving climate change alarm.”

That could thwart efforts to beef up public transit with additional federal funding as part of an effort to reduce climate change, officials said.

Reproductive Rights

But Project 2025’s biggest impact on Illinois could be to reverse efforts to expand access to reproductive and gender-affirming health care in the state, which has become a magnet for people from states where abortion was banned after all of the justices Trump appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the constitution does not protect the right to end a pregnancy.

Project 2025 calls for a national abortion ban and calls for the FDA to reverse its approval of abortion pills and criminalize their distribution.

The official platform of the Republican Party does not call for a national abortion ban, which Trump has said he opposes. However, the platform invokes the 14th Amendment as part of its promise to “protect unborn life.”

That would require courts to treat fetuses as people endowed with rights under the U.S Constitution, which could open the door to a national abortion ban and an end to fertility treatments like in vitro fertilization.

Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]


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