Ep 1005: Meanwhile, In Local News...

Episode 1005 of The Professional Left makes the case that if you really want to understand America — not a focus group of twelve Trump voters in Florida, not three congressional primaries in Brooklyn, not the punditocracy's endless parade of confident predictions about things they fundamentally don't understand — you should probably be paying attention to Illinois, the most statistically representative state in the country, which the elite media treats as flyover country and nothing more. Driftglass and Blue Gal dispatch the Maine Senate mess quickly and cleanly, remind everyone of the crucial difference between how Democrats handle scandal and how Republicans do, and then spend the bulk of the episode doing what almost no one else in political media bothers to do — reporting on what an actual Democratic majority government looks like when it's governing well. The episode also takes a long, hard look at the prediction industrial complex and why mistaking a focus group for a national trend, or a New York City primary for a Democratic Party revelation, is not journalism — it's just filling airtime between mattress ads. Illinois, it turns out, has all the answers. Too bad nobody's asking.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

You can listen to the professional left wherever you get your podcasts on Network's radio or at our website, proleftpod.com, where you can also contribute to this podcast. There's a PayPal button at our website, where you can mail us a letter and or a contribution at P.O. Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791.

SPEAKER_08 0:19

This is the podcast for July 7th, 2026. It's not safe for work.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

Recorded live from the Cornfield Resistance, where we'd like to remind you that our Cornfield Resistance moniker is not an accident. We live and work in Springfield, Illinois. This is corn country, tornado country, the land of Lincoln, and it's the Professional Left Podcast with Drift Class and Blue Gal.

SPEAKER_08 0:48

Today we're going to jump right into the headlines with this from disgraced former Republican Speaker of the House and shameless fascist collaborator Kevin McCarthy.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

No, not that Kevin McCarthy. This Kevin McCarthy.

SPEAKER_07 1:17

For better or for worse. When Matt Gates came forward, we got rid of him. Yeah. Kevin McCarthy, as always, great to see you.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Thank you. Great to see you. Words fail, don't they? This really is nothing but state TV. McCarthy lies through his teeth. Everyone on planet Earth knows he's lying through his teeth. And the Fox News haircut just nods and smiles.

SPEAKER_08 1:37

Well, since we were last together, the main Senate race has changed in tectonic ways. Turns out Platner has been charged credibly with rape. As of when we're recording this, people are withdrawing their endorsements faster than us getting to the basement when we hear the tornado sirens go off. While his biggest boosters in the media, Chris Hayes, Ryan Grimm, the Pod Save Lads, etc., are all trying to moonwalk away from this disaster.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

And here is Naomi Klein doing it right on Blue Sky today. Quote, I truly fucked up, not doing my due diligence on Platinum before offering high praise for his communication skills. Enough was out there at the time that I should have been more cautious, especially because I met adventurer dudes like him reporting in Iraq. Deep respect to all who got it right. I won't take down the bad post because that looks like hiding. But please know that I'm truly sorry. I disappointed folks who trusted me to be more careful. Most of all, I'm sorry to the women who came forward only to be disbelieved and smeared. You deserved better, and I feel absolutely gutted, unquote.

SPEAKER_08 2:49

And this was New York Mayor Zoran Mamdani, who never endorsed Platner today. Quote, I think the focus of today should be to respond to the gravity of what so many of us have read. And I think that the only appropriate response is for the campaign to come to an end, unquote.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

And for the record, and in the interest of full disclosure, we probably should remind anyone who cares about such things what we said a month ago. That since we are the Cornfield Resistance and we operate out of a P.O. box in Springfield, Illinois, when we got our Democratic primary ballots, mail-in ballots in March, we voted for Juliana Stratton for Senate. We did not and will not vote for Grant Platiner for Senate. And you know why? Because we do not live in Maine. Even though there is a town called Springfield in Penobscot County, Maine, we do not live there. We live in Springfield, Illinois, and Juliana Stratton will be our next senator.

SPEAKER_08 3:44

Yes, she will. And our next governor will be our current governor, J.B. Pritzker, for whom we also voted in the Democratic primary. And since our lieutenant governor, Juliana Stratton, is now running for the Senate, when we voted for Pritzker, we were voting for the Pritzker-Stratton ticket. After Stratton left the ticket to run for Senate, Pritzker selected Christian Mitchell as his running mate for 2026. Never heard of him. Did we know anything about Mitchell before we voted for the Pritzker-Michell ticket, Dricklass?

SPEAKER_02 4:17

No, we did not. But we did trust that whoever J.B. Pritzker picked would be a competent and scandal-free choice, since they vet candidates like that at that level very, very carefully. We also know that if JB steps down to run for president in 2028, which he might very well do, his team will have ensured that his lieutenant governor would be ready to step in and continue his policies. So more about Mitchell later, but for a second, let's go back to Maine. Now, a month ago, I talked about knowing my share of problematic young men when I was growing up, that I was, in fact, a reckless, problematic young man. Some of us turned out terribly, dead or in prison. Some joined the army, and some of those guys are doing great. They have four kids, they love Trump, and they vacation in the Bahamas every year. I also grew up with my share of reckless problematic young men who turned out great. Great. Some became terrific husbands and fathers, some found God, some were gangbangers who deeply regret that life and went on to become gang intervention counselors, pillars of the community. And the thing is, I never could have picked which was going to be which based on what I knew about them at the time.

SPEAKER_08 5:27

And you never raped anybody, Driftglass. I mean, come on, this is the thing.

SPEAKER_02 5:32

I was reckless in a whole different way.

SPEAKER_08 5:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:35

But I was I was, you know, lost and unsupervised in my teens and early 20s. And I was looking for all the things that young men in that age group usually are looking for. And I was dumb and reckless about a lot of it.

SPEAKER_08 5:49

Yeah. Now we said there was no way on earth for us to know in advance what's in Platiner's heart, but that didn't matter because it's not up to any one of us or the National Party or Fox News or the Pod Save Lads or the New York fucking Times. This was up to main voters who know the guy and can see him and talk to him face to face. We also said months ago that if we were Mainers and were faced with those choices, what we already knew about Plattner was problematic enough that we'd probably vote for David Costello. Based on his online bio, he seemed like a decent guy and conscientious public servant. He was born and raised in the state with a lot of government experience. Sending him to the Senate seemed like a safe and reasonable choice. And if he lost, we'd support Plattner because the alternative leaving the Senate in the hands of Donald Trump's minions is catastrophically worse. That was us a month ago.

SPEAKER_02 6:45

And now that Plattner has been credibly accused of rape, the only people who are going to place him on the ticket are Maine Democrats. And leaving the Senate in the hands of Donald Trump's minions would still be a catastrophe.

SPEAKER_08 6:58

Both those things can be true. And they should Democratic Party anywhere should not nominate a rapist any more than the Republican Party should nominate a rapist. Neither of us are experts in Maine election laws or main Democratic Party rules. So we looked up what happens next. If Plattiner doesn't drop out by this coming Monday, July 13th, then he's the candidate and Susan Collins goes back to the Senate. That's how it's going to work.

SPEAKER_02 7:25

If he does drop out, the party has until Monday, July 27th, to pick a new candidate. The statute doesn't require a second statewide primary. Instead, the main Democratic Party's governing bodies would select a new nominee using any process they wish. And as of this recording, we hear they're considering holding a new primary, which might seem like a logistical nightmare. But when you consider that the entire population of Maine is barely half the population of the city of Chicago, and that you could comfortably fit every registered Democrat in Maine into six out of Chicago's 50 wards, might maybe it'd work. It might work.

SPEAKER_08 8:03

And yes, we know that independence and independence are big in Maine. More of them than Republicans. But again, all of them could fit into about six other Chicago wards. So it is manageable.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

So four more things before we get on to the rest of the episode. First, a reminder: Democrats dumped Swalwell and are fleeing platinum. Republicans nominated Ken Paxton and voted for Donald Trump six fucking times.

SPEAKER_08 8:32

Second, uh, this is all we ever really want to hear about main politics ever again.

unknown 8:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:38

And third, we don't think podcasters at any level of popularity or advertising revenue should be handpicking U.S. Senate candidates. And yes, we're looking at you, PodSaved lads.

SPEAKER_08 8:48

We have no interest in picking U.S. Senate candidates ever. And fourth, it's going to be a long time before anyone says, as goes Maine, so goes the nation. Again, unironically.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

Yeah, a long, long time. And you know what, Bluegal? Speaking of how goes the nation, he said, transitioning smoothly. Today we're going to talk about whether any meaningful thing can be said about a nation which, for our entire adult lives, has whiplashed between a basically competent, capable, if sometimes flawed, democratic administration, administrations plural, that actually propose policies that help Americans and corrupt, criminally incompetent Republican administrations whose policies have been ruinous for the American people and who've been on an obvious downward trajectory for decades.

SPEAKER_08 9:43

How do you talk about a country where one of our two major political parties has gone mad? Where that party is propped up by crackpot billionaires and a propaganda machine pumping out ridiculous, slanderous poison 24-7, and where the elite media now treats that as a fact of nature.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

Yeah, just one of those things. A country where these massive swings between the Arson Party and the Fire Department Party are caused by a relatively small number of hapless idiots called centrists and independents who have no idea how anything works and just bounce back and forth endlessly like that little pixelated ball in a game of pong.

SPEAKER_08 10:22

How can you know a country like that well enough to talk about it without collapsing into cliche or hiding out in a both sides do-it-panic room? Well, we're guessing that most of you are familiar with the work of the late Jimmy Stewart. He was a gifted, versatile everyman actor who you've probably seen in fantasy dramas like It's a Wonderful Life or Harvey, or the political comedy drama Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. You may also know that he also excelled at serious roles in darker movies like Vertigo, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, and Anatomy of a Murder.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

And can I mention, just in passing, that before I was born, I discovered that my dad was a very different person than he was when I knew him. He was on the stage acting in community theater Harvey in Burlington, Iowa, which just knocked us kids out when we found out about it because that was not the guy we knew his dad.

SPEAKER_09 11:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:19

But you might not have caught, not my dad, but Jimmy Stewart's act in the 1947 romantic comedy drama Magic Town. And here is what that movie is about. It follows Lawrence Rip Smith, a struggling pollster who discovers that the opinions of the residents of a small town called Grandview, ironically, Grandview was where I spent a few years of my youth in Iowa. So I'm all over this story personally. This is not the same town, though. Grandview perfectly matches the results of nationwide surveys. Convinced he has found a statistical miracle, a town that is a microcosm of America. He moves his team there in secret, posing as an insurance salesman, so they can conduct inexpensive polls and sell the results to clients. Now, Rip's plans are complicated. When he clashes with Mary Peterson, a newspaper editor who wants to modernize and expand Grandview. Oh no. Rip on the wrong.

SPEAKER_08 12:13

I think it's Mary Peterman.

SPEAKER_02 12:15

Mary, I'm sorry, you're right. Mary Peterman. Played, I believe, by Jane Wyman.

SPEAKER_08 12:18

Oh, Jane Wyatt?

SPEAKER_02 12:20

Jane Jane Wyatt.

SPEAKER_08 12:21

Wyman. Oh, the former Mrs. Ronald Reagan?

SPEAKER_02 12:24

I believe so. I'm sure there's a number of people out there in the Jimmy Stewart fan club who will correct me if I'm wrong. But I think that is correct. And so she wants the town modernized and expanded. She has plans for this. She goes through a whole thing in the library or the or the city hall where she's laying out all these plans and he overhears this. And he busts into that meeting and says, you know, I just moved to this town and I love it so much. But you shouldn't change anything. It's perfect the way it is. I love this town. And the mayor, of course, loves him saying that he wants to keep the town exactly as we should listen to this guy. But he wants to preserve it exactly as it is, so it will remain his perfect sample of America.

SPEAKER_08 13:03

Now, you political history and technology nerds out there probably already know about the night in 1952 when the human race insulted one of the world's earliest electronic computers, and how computers have made us pay for it ever since. This was the 1952 presidential election between Republican candidate General Dwight Eisenhower and Democratic candidate Illinois Governor Adelaide Stevenson. CBS had bought time on the new technological marvel of the age, the Univac computer, which weighed about eight tons, was owned by the United States government, and was physically located at the Remington Rand Labs in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. However, this was still TV, so CBS rigged up a fake control panel of blinking lights and switches. And then they asked, quote unquote, Univac, live on the air, if it could predict the outcome of the election with less than 1% of the vote cast.

SPEAKER_05 14:20

This is not a joke or a trick. It's an experiment. We think it's going to work. And then we're in it for the left.

SPEAKER_03 14:28

At 8 o'clock.

SPEAKER_05 14:47

I think the Univenac is probably in a moment. And he doesn't think he's going to have enough to tell us anything about the end. But we'll be back with him later in the evening. Now the next to one of the things.

SPEAKER_03 14:59

What Collingwood didn't know was that Univac did have something to say, and this was it. Just before CBS went on the air, Univac predicted Eisenhower would beat Stevenson by a landslide. The problem was no one believed it.

SPEAKER_02 15:13

Now some of you OG science fiction fans out there know that Isaac Asimov took that event and ran with it in his excellent electoral satire, franchise, of 1955. It is the far future of 2008, the 21st century already. And a gigantic computer called Multivac has become so good at polling and statistical analysis that the United States no longer conducts national elections at all. Instead, Multivac identifies a single citizen, the most statistically representative person in the country, and asks him a series of questions. And from those answers, combined with its vast stores of demographic and political data, it determines the outcome of the election. That year's voter of the year is Norman Mueller of Bloomington, Indiana. He's not asked who he wants to vote for for president. In fact, he never casts a conventional vote at all. He merely answers various questions while Multivac records and analyzes his responses, and the machine then extrapolates the will of the entire electorate from this sample of one. And the story's bite is in its irony because at the end of the story, Mueller takes pride in having helped Americans exercise their quote free untrammeled franchise, unquote, even though no one, including him, ever actually voted in the traditional sense.

SPEAKER_08 16:34

The idea of the perfectly balanced data set through which one trained in the dark arts could peer beyond the veil and see the future has been the dream of polsters and predictors and pundits for as long as we can remember. And whether it was the Chicago Tribune's Dewey Defeats Truman headline from November 3rd, 1948, or CBS refusing to believe the UNIVAC prediction in 1952, or this particular idiot making his famous declaration in January of 2016.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

It's gonna be Rubio, I'm telling you, it's gonna be Rubio.

SPEAKER_08 17:12

The punditocracy has always been full of ambitious yappers trying to outpredict each other and either turning to what are necessarily uncertain trends into declarative statements or turning clear trends into uncertainties because they do not jibe with the dogmas of the media establishment.

SPEAKER_02 17:34

So over the weekend, we learned that Democrat Mallory McMorrow has dropped out of Michigan's Democratic Senate primary, leaving a two-way race between establishment favorite Haley Stevens and the Bernie Sanders-backed progressive Abdul El Said. And I spent way more time than is healthy listening to an A-list podcast host trying to prod an election reporter and Michigan politics expert into making definitive predictions about what all that meant. And to that reporter's uh credit, he heroically deflected those questions with a series of answers, like I don't know. And it's really not knowable. And the McMorrow votes could go to Stevens, or they could go to El Said, or those McMorrow voters might split.

SPEAKER_08 18:16

But you can't do you can't do bright yellow printout on your YouTube of Destroyed. It's over destroyed, smashed. Yeah. You know, Michigan reporter reacts.

SPEAKER_02 18:30

One weird trick about the Michigan election that you they don't want you to know.

SPEAKER_08 18:34

They don't want you to know, which is it's really not knowable.

SPEAKER_02 18:37

Yeah. So so I learned nothing at all about the likely outcome of the primary or the general election in Michigan. Nothing except, of course, that there are many possible scenarios and they're all mutually exclusive, except maybe they're not.

SPEAKER_08 18:49

It's gonna be Rubio Driftglass.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

It's gonna be Rubio, or maybe it won't be. Who knows? But let's fill the space. However, the podcaster, in fact, did manage to fill up 21 minutes of airtime that would otherwise have sounded a lot like this. Interspersed, of course, with ads for better health and bowling branch sheets.

SPEAKER_08 19:07

We do understand that the predic prediction industrial complex is a huge industry with the entire U.S. polling market. That'd be election polling, issue polling, media polls, academic polls, campaign polling, etc., grossing over a billion dollars every year. And that political campaigns, advertisers, focus groups, and every species of political prognosticators, editorial writers, and water cooler oracles all depend on a steady production of percentages and trend lines. I'd like to add here, Driftglass, that uh there's a lot of polls that we never we in the public never see.

SPEAKER_02 19:50

Right. Internally.

SPEAKER_08 19:51

And I always remember how Bob Dole was running against Bill Clinton and took the month of August off to relax. He just bailed for his campaign because he knew he was gonna lose. Because the polling numbers showed, look, you're not gonna win this race. You're you're taking one for the team here, Bob. And so there was no point in him killing himself with campaigning in August. So we didn't.

SPEAKER_02 20:15

Right.

SPEAKER_08 20:16

And and uh I think there's a lot of polling that we just don't ever see. And that's that's sad in some ways.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

And if you if you'd like to know more about how advertising companies pick the brains of mere humans to sell them things they don't need, uh, we would suggest um the Space Merchants, my Frederick poll from the 1950s, where the advertiser, our our our protagonist, who becomes a protagonist halfway through, wonders why everyone's so upset that America's IQ is dropping. Because stupider people are easy to sell to, and that's a good thing. Yeah. It's all about polling and numbers, et cetera. Um back when we watched MSNBC, back when it was called MSNBC, we used to joke around this house that half of their programming and literally all of Steve Kornacki's job was just reading numbers at you, just firing numbers at you as fast as possible. And the thing that completely glitched the legacy media's matrix was the brain-melting revelation that the Republican base was not at all as the legacy media or the conservative media had been describing it for decades. That instead, the GOP base was exactly the shit pile of bigots and imbeciles that liberals had been warning them about for decades.

SPEAKER_08 21:30

If you still have active memories of that time, you will remember that the media's collective reaction to the rise of Trump sounded something like this. They had no theory to fit the facts. And the explanation that we on the left were offering and had been offering for decades scared them at least as much as the implications of Trump himself. Turns out they didn't understand this country at all. And in the end, it turns out that. didn't matter at all. The institutional media just curled up into a both sides do it fetal position and waited and are still waiting for it to be all over so they can turn the page.

SPEAKER_02 22:12

Yeah, got to move on to the future, to the future where all the money is. Of course, we do understand that polling and sampling have their place in specific elections within specific boundaries. If your county or your township government is thinking about creating a TIFF district to fund road repairs or building a data center, then as a responsible public official, gauging what public opinion is about that subject is important. We have no problem with any of that kind of polling.

SPEAKER_08 22:39

What we have a big problem with are talking heads and editorial writers with large platforms who prattle on about voters and the public and the American people, as if those terms meant anything. At the national level, other than geographically, sure, uh, those words are as deliberately meaningless and misleading as are those elusive independent and centrist voters who obsessively blame the Congress and the politicians in Washington for explicitly Republican crimes against civility and the common good.

SPEAKER_02 23:21

For example, take this headline from a very large and very new media corporation that rhymes with full work.

SPEAKER_08 23:28

Full work?

SPEAKER_02 23:29

It sounds like full work. It sounds a little bit like full work. Uh quote, voters are sounding more and more like Trump on birthright citizenship.

SPEAKER_09 23:37

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 23:38

He lost in court, but he's bending reality to his warped point of view, unquote. And you skim past that and you think, holy shit, the toxic waste has breached containment. Republican racist garbage is now infecting the voters generally. Going on with this uh this article, quote, a majority of the Supreme Court decided last week to follow the obvious black letter text of the Constitution and uphold birthright citizenship. This should not have been a close call, but the ruling, a 5-4 decision that Donald Trump's executive order to end birthright citizenship was unconstitutional, showed that the justices were torn and they're hardly alone. When we conducted a focus group with Donald Trump voters on the eve of the decision, participants expressed an alarming degree of skepticism towards the nearly 160-year-old legal precedent, unquote.

SPEAKER_08 24:26

Yes, then comes the punchline. Quote, this was a group of Florida women who voted for Trump in 2024. Unquote. So they voted for Trump the sixth time.

SPEAKER_02 24:39

Yeah. Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_08 24:41

What the hell, Drift Glass? That's the big news. So they didn't really mean voters at all at the full work.

SPEAKER_02 24:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 24:50

You full work people meant a very specific, very small subset of the voters, specifically Florida women who voted for Trump in 2024, who turned out to be exactly who we always knew they were.

SPEAKER_02 25:08

Which is obviously not a very clickable headline, you know, to say Republican women voters are still exactly who we thought they were.

SPEAKER_08 25:15

But to us, it seems nobody's gonna click on that.

SPEAKER_02 25:18

Really? I must read more. The Lord knows I've tried. I gotta dig deeper into this. I gotta find out what's behind this mystery. Well, they're just who they always were. But to us, it seems insane that anyone would piss away their time and energy focused grouping this crowd. It's like, you know, testing to see if gravity is still working. On Monday, yes, it's still working. Tuesday, yep, still working. Stardate 5497 3.4, yep, still working.

SPEAKER_08 25:43

Yep. But hey, it's a free country, and these media conglomerates with googobs of money are free to spend it, putting any group of people under the microscope and finding out where, say, you know, lesbian nuns who are pro-abortion stand on campaign financing, or where farm stand produce shoppers stand on smooth versus crunchy peanut butter.

SPEAKER_02 26:04

That's right. It is a free country. But if you want to stand back and take a look at the country as a whole to figure out what America writ large hopes for or is mad about across the entire chorus of confusing and contradictory voices, well, what you need is a magic town, right? A grand view, a smaller sample size that reflects the country as a whole.

SPEAKER_08 26:27

If you want to know what America looks like, don't look for a focus group of 12 Trump voters in Florida. Look for a state where Chicago, small towns, suburbs, immigrants, farmers, union towns, evangelicals, and college towns all exist at once. This is from the Washington Post via NBC News, Channel 5 Chicago in 2024.

SPEAKER_06 26:57

This morning your viewers are waking up in the most normal state in the U.S. Okay with that. Congratulations. We did it. Washington Post did a data dive and says Illinois wins the title. Researchers looked at a variety of factors that include population, split between urban and rural residents.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

The land of Lincoln edge now, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut to win the most normal badge.

SPEAKER_02 27:31

Honestly, as much as we love our New York progressives, and as pleased as we are that progressive candidates are succeeding by responding to genuine voter outrage, it is madness to watch the national political press fall all over themselves trying to extrapolate some great big revelation about the future of American democracy and the Democratic Party based on the results of three congressional primaries in New York.

SPEAKER_08 27:54

In New York City. All three of these districts are entirely within New York City proper, concentrated in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, respectively. In other words, these are all deep blue urban districts. None of them are competitive general election districts, and none of them have anything to tell us about the future of American democracy and the Democratic Party. So instead of sifting Brooklyn coffeehouse grounds, trying to divine the future. That'll be $30.

SPEAKER_02 28:27

Just for pouring the cuff. You don't like it. You can pour it yourself at home.

SPEAKER_08 28:30

We're going to bring you up to date with what's happening here in the most representative state in America, where except for Chicago, for the opening of a presidential library and community center, yeah. The legacy media refuses to tread in Illinois.

SPEAKER_02 28:46

Right. Now, now we've talked about on this podcast recently about Illinois budgets, specifically about how budgets are moral documents that reflect the values of the people who create them. And in Illinois, new budgets uh this year impose a few new taxes on businesses and authorizes actually less spending than what Governor Pritzker proposed in February.

SPEAKER_08 29:08

Then there is this from the Senate Democrat budget leader L.G. Sims of Chicago, who framed the budget debate this way: quote, it's allowed us to be prepared for the great reality we face today, the reality of federal cuts, the reality of chaos coming from Washington. We are not placing blame. We are prepared. We are not acting on fear, we are acting responsibly, unquote.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

But there's also this from Capital News Illinois, July 2nd. Quote, Illinois closed fiscal year 2026, collecting $1 billion more in tax revenue than what lawmakers anticipated when they wrote the budget last May, unquote.

SPEAKER_08 29:51

And outside the budget process, the Pritzker administration has either proposed or passed a whole host of rules that reflect the values of the majority of Illinois residents.

SPEAKER_02 30:04

For example, this is from Pritzker's interview with WVIK's Robin Johnson on July 6th. Quote, we can't continue to have data centers coming here and using our water, using our power, and increasing people's utility rates. So my solution is that they should pay for it. They should bring their own power. They should have closed loop recycled water systems, and we should require that for new data centers. Now, the legislature didn't get to pass what's called the Power Act, where that would take place. And so just after the end of the legislative session, I suspended any tax credits that would otherwise go to a data center because we've got to take a pause here and make sure the legislature is going to pass something that's going to deal with the problems water, power, and noise, you know, that that's been a problem in some areas too. Unquote.

SPEAKER_08 30:53

That's just democratic governing. That is governing.

SPEAKER_02 30:57

I know.

SPEAKER_08 30:57

This is from Bloomberg, July 6th. Illinois governor signs nation's strongest frontier AI model law. Quote, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, D, signed into law new transparency and safety reporting obligations on companies developing the most advanced AI models on Monday. The Artificial Intelligence Safety Measures Act requires companies developing frontier AI models to evaluate and mitigate catastrophic risks, submit to independent third-party audits, report critical safety incidents within 72 hours, and ensure public disclosures are accurate. The law takes effect January 1st, 2027, unquote.

SPEAKER_02 31:44

And if you're behaving responsibly, none of that should bother you. Today, the Illinois Housing Development Authority announced the creation of a thousand units of affordable rental housing. Quote, new construction developments will bring much needed housing for seniors in Fox Lake, Rock Island, and Highland. Additional efforts include safe and stable housing for youths aging out of the foster care system in Urbana to a new development offering housing and supportive services for women experiencing chronic homelessness in Chicago's uptown neighborhood, unquote. This is not a magic bullet, obviously, but it is a big step in the right direction.

SPEAKER_08 32:21

And this is from a July 2nd J.B. Pritzker press release. Quote, today, Governor J.B. Pritzker led a coalition of nine state governors, I wonder which party drift class, in urging the U.S. Postmaster General to unequivocally reject Trump's proposed amendment to the mailing standards of the United States Postal Service, USPS, go postal unions, which would put an end to mail-in and absentee voting methods, in a joint comment issued by the governors of California, Connecticut, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Washington, Washington State, I should say, and Wisconsin. Governor Pritzer denounced this most recent unconstitutional attempt to disenfranchise voters and overstep state authority over elections. Unquote.

SPEAKER_02 33:18

Yeah. And as promised, here is a quick bio of our soon-to-be new Lieutenant Governor Christian Mitchell. He's a lawyer and a captain slash deputy staff judge advocate. He is a University of Chicago vice president for civic engagement. He was a senior advisor to the Pritzker Stratton Gubernatorial Transition Team. And after that, he was Pritzker's deputy governor for public safety, infrastructure, energy, and environment for four years. And before that, he was a state representative in the Illinois General Assembly for six years.

SPEAKER_08 33:50

Now all of that barely scratches the surface of the accomplishments of the Pritzker administration, including finding an incredibly qualified person to serve as Lieutenant Governor when Juliana Stratton went on to run for Senate.

SPEAKER_02 34:03

Exactly.

SPEAKER_08 34:04

He has all of the experience necessary to be lieutenant governor.

SPEAKER_02 34:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 34:09

So you get the gist. Um, but Driftglass, how are MAGA Republicans in Illinois reacting?

SPEAKER_02 34:16

Well, funny you should ask Bluegall. There's an article that explains the whole thing right here.

SPEAKER_08 34:20

Yeah, it's from NBR, July 5th, 2026. Quote, and I was the one that found this, and it broke my heart, and at the same time, I yelled out, Podcastable.

SPEAKER_02 34:30

I think it's weird because when your heart breaks Bluegill, sometimes you laugh hysterically.

SPEAKER_08 34:34

Uh I know. And NPR just does a garbage job of covering this story. You'll find out. Quote, the growing movement to secede from Illinois and become the 51st state. Guess which word is very, very wrong in that sentence. Okay. 250 years ago, the Declaration of Independence was signed, marking the birth of a new nation. But if you read the Declaration closely, it's not just about creating something new, it's about ridding itself of something unwanted. It's a breakup text announcing secession from the British crown. Today, that same spirit is fueling a modern day movement in Illinois. Was this written by the Illinois Freedom Caucus or Illinois, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 35:23

It was some right-wing chop shop. It was written by a 22-year-old.

SPEAKER_08 35:27

Yeah, it was.

SPEAKER_02 35:28

It was a breakup text. New country, who it is. You know, I mean, it's just it's so dumb. If you ever read the Declaration of Independence, I don't know if you have. It says some crazy stuff in there. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_08 35:39

All right. Second paragraph. A growing number of rural counties want to secede from Illinois and create a 51st state called New Illinois.

SPEAKER_02 35:48

New Iowa.

SPEAKER_08 35:50

Yeah, New Iowa, New Indiana. Yeah. Uh, driven by frustration over the dominance of Chicago politics. I wonder what word they really mean there, Driftglass.

SPEAKER_02 36:00

Good question, Blue Gal.

SPEAKER_08 36:02

They are organizing for a new future. This week on the Sunday story, reporter Connor Town O'Neill takes us inside the movement to split Illinois and the challenges facing a modern secessionist movement in the land of Lincoln. Unquote.

SPEAKER_02 36:21

So, you know, you can do reporting in Flyover Country, but it doesn't have to be this stupid because for the record, this new Illinois thing is not a movement. It's a joke. Or to be more specific, it's 30 or so largely downstate counties that are mostly farm fields and abandoned strip malls, which lead very heavily Republican and really, really hate living here. Because they hate Chicago. They hate Democrats.

SPEAKER_08 36:48

What do you mean by Chicago, Driftglass? What exactly does that mean?

SPEAKER_02 36:52

Bluegall, let's do a podcast on what words mean, shall we?

SPEAKER_08 36:56

Because Well, I can tell you what Chicago means downstate. Because that I can tell you.

SPEAKER_02 37:01

Did Ambrose Spearce write the devil's dictionary? You know, the actual definition of words? Yeah. We should really do something like that. Put a pin in it. Let's have the staff work that up.

SPEAKER_09 37:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:11

So they hate Democrats, they hate Chicago. They're scared of or resent all the same stupid shit that the rest of MAGA Republicans resent. You know, brown people, immigrants, people with college degrees, drag shows. I'm sure you all know the list. And this rancor between upstate and Chicago area and downstate has been here forever.

SPEAKER_08 37:31

Forever. And like most MAGA movements, they have no idea what governing is about.

SPEAKER_02 37:36

No, no.

SPEAKER_08 37:37

Like, oh, but we get to keep all the all the highway money, right?

SPEAKER_02 37:40

No, you don't.

SPEAKER_08 37:41

Yeah. We're going to secede and your roads are going to crumble.

SPEAKER_02 37:45

I look forward to the new Illinois Department of Transportation working within the budget of a budget that has no funding.

SPEAKER_08 37:52

Yeah. Yeah. Um, most of these counties that want to secede are small. Calhoun, the smallest, has a little over 4,000 residents. I've been in buildings that have more people than Calhoun County.

SPEAKER_02 38:05

I've been to ball games, so that would be considered bad attendance.

SPEAKER_08 38:08

Yeah, yeah. Most of the rest have 20,000 residents or so. Madison County is the biggie with over a quarter of a million residents. And it has the same urban, rural, ideological split as the state as a whole, but in miniature.

SPEAKER_02 38:24

Yeah. Yeah. Uh Middlechild lives in in Madison County. And there she's part of the uh the elite educated part of the country. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 38:34

She is.

SPEAKER_02 38:35

And that is not uh what others are in that county. But but see, none of this matters because all they've ever done is pass non-binding resolutions, which are just tantrums dressed up in parliamentary language. And none of this is ever going to make it anywhere close to the Illinois State Assembly for debate or a vote.

SPEAKER_08 38:53

So, since they're stuck here for the foreseeable future, what about getting back some of that sweet, sweet political power they had during the 26 years when Illinois had a Republican governor, despite Democrats often controlling one or both chambers of the legislature? Well, Driftglass, it's not off to a great start.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

No.

SPEAKER_08 39:12

As we've said before on this podcast, they're running Darren Bailey for governor again. The same slab of MAGA stupid Pritzker stomped the last time. And Bailey uh apparently has been MIA from press briefings for a month. He's taking the summer off from campaigning, it appears. Uh, you can't you can't turn on YouTube without seeing a Pritzker ad in Illinois, by the way. Uh now, Bailey will go on MAGA podcasts where they pitch him softballs, but that's the only place you see him.

SPEAKER_02 39:44

Why is why is Pritzker so bad? Why I say all the balls. Oh, yeah, it's uh yeah. Let me tell you. Uh then there's the fact that what really gets MAGA mouthbreakers out of their chairs and off to the poles are the sorts of things that alienate everybody else. For example, there was this from the Illinois Freedom Caucus on July 6th. That's the outfit fronted by Mary Nazi Miller's husband. Quote, Springfield, Illinois, the University of Chicago, I'm sorry, University of Illinois, hosted an all-ages drag show proving once again the sexualization of children is still front and center with the radical left's perverted ideology, according to the Illinois Freedom Caucus. The university described the event as an opportunity to enjoy tea, lemonade, sweet treats, British tea, culture, education, drag performances, and private guided museum tours, all celebrating LGBTQ pride. It encouraged participation by children and families, stating all ages are encouraged for this program. So bring the whole family for a fun, educational, and pride-filled afternoon. And the Illinois Freedom Caucus issued the following statement as a reaction. Despite tremendous public pressure against the sexualization of children, the far left simply refuses to stop targeting kids with their perverse agenda. They insist they're not targeting children, but why would they advertise a drag show as something for the whole family? The reason they continue to target children is because that is what radical trans ideology is all about. It's perverted and it needs to stop. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Unquote.

SPEAKER_08 41:20

I love Milton Burrow when he was in drag.

SPEAKER_02 41:23

You know who else went in drag?

SPEAKER_08 41:25

Who?

SPEAKER_02 41:25

Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

SPEAKER_08 41:27

Oh, yeah, he was in drag.

SPEAKER_02 41:29

And Trump, uh, Trump uh motorboated his fake tits. So, you know.

SPEAKER_08 41:33

He did. He did. Uh, yeah. Was it was that the sexualization of children being in Macy's drag?

SPEAKER_02 41:41

This is you know this is Mary Nazi Miller's husband and his henchmen, who are all Republicans and who are so like nuts that other Republicans don't really want to entertain their suggestions in the state assembly. Yeah, but this is this is pure distilled MAGA in Illinois that we can observe with our own eyes right down the block from us.

SPEAKER_08 41:59

So terrible candidates and ridiculous niche culture war fear-mongering.

SPEAKER_06 42:04

It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for them.

SPEAKER_08 42:08

But the Illinois GOP leadership does have a plan. Sort of. From NPR July 1st, quote, new Illinois Republican Party Chair hopes for JB fatigue in tough midterm. Bob Grogan has a challenge ahead of him. It's been more than a decade since Republicans won a statewide race, and the party has seen its representation in both the General Assembly and Illinois' congressional delegation shrink under unfavorable maps. Meanwhile, suburban voters have increasingly embraced Democrats, and weak fundraising has made it even harder for Republicans to compete against Democrats.

SPEAKER_02 42:49

Whoa-wah.

SPEAKER_08 42:51

The party has also seen its share of infighting, whether it's on the state central committee, inside the House Republican caucus, or generally among members about whether President Donald Trump helps or hurts the party in Illinois. We have to go back to the Reagan rule, where if somebody agrees with us 80% of the time, they're not a 20% traitor, Grogan said. You know, they are actually part of our team. And that our entire Republican team is better than the entire Democratic team, and we need to pull together. We can't purge our way to 51% of the vote.

SPEAKER_02 43:34

But do keep trying. Really? Do keep trying.

SPEAKER_08 43:36

He said his goal will be to build a party that can relate better to average voters and doesn't silo itself into litmus tests by longing for the perfect politician. I want you to hear this next sentence very carefully. We are pickier often about our elected officials than we are about our spouse, he said.

SPEAKER_02 43:58

Nailed it. Bagged the women's vote right there.

SPEAKER_08 44:02

Ugly wives out there is what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_02 44:04

You got the women's vote right there. I'm sure Julian and Stratton's like, man, I I never considered that.

SPEAKER_08 44:10

Why didn't I think of that?

SPEAKER_02 44:11

Jesus Christ. I'm a woman. I get it. Cool. So just keep digging, boys. Just keep fucking digging.

SPEAKER_08 44:21

Just keep digging. Previous, previous party leaders differed on how much to embrace Trump. Don Tracy, now the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, who's going to lose to Juliana Stratton, by the way, largely avoided tying Illinois Republicans to Trump during his tenure. Kathy Salvi, who Grogan defeated in May's party election, she was running for chairman of the Illinois GOP. She openly embraced Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, telling Capitol News Illinois last year that it would be a key part of Republicans' 2026 midterm message.

SPEAKER_02 45:03

Would you say, Blue Gal, is it fair to say that the Illinois Republican Party is a land of contrast?

SPEAKER_08 45:08

It's a land of contrast, Drift Glass. And Darren Bailey and Senate candidate Tracy are the headlining statewide Republicans on the ballot this fall, with little known hopeful seeking other statewide offices. Grogan said Bailey excites a lot of people, and we need that kind of energy. While Republicans face their own natural headwinds as the incumbent party in charge in Washington, Grogan is also betting many Illinois voters will lose interest in Pritzker. There is a lot of JB fatigue, Grogan said. J.B. fatigue sounds like Fred Mentum.

SPEAKER_02 45:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 45:45

It's something you just have to say.

SPEAKER_02 45:46

It's Bailey Mentum.

SPEAKER_08 45:48

Bailey mentum. I mean, he's also going for a third term. Third terms are not simple either. So it's not just about the White House. And I will tell you, just the average high school friend that's not involved in politics or the person in line at the Jewel, where the Jewel, by the way, is Jewel Asco. That's a grocery store in Illinois. If you're not from here, you would might not know the Jewel. Whereas they were giving Pritzker the benefit of the doubt four or six years ago. You mentioned his name, and there's a lot of grimaces. Pritzer's campaign brushed off the criticism. The only thing Illinois voters are fatigued by is Illinois Republicans who pretend to care about working families while acting against their interests with every opportunity. Pritzker spokesman Alex Goh said in a statement. The last time Republicans in the state had a chance to make life better for Illinois, they spent four years enabling an incompetent governor who shared their legacy of failure. Don Tracy and Cathy Salvey drove the Illinois GOP to the brink of irrelevance, the Democratic Party said in a statement when Grogan was elected. We expect Bob Grogan, a Republican who has not spoken out against his party's abuses, revoking healthcare access, taxing Illinoisans through tariffs, inhumane immigration enforcement actions, and more to finish the job.

SPEAKER_02 47:06

Unquote. And that, boys and girls, is how you message. Now, Lord knows we're not saints here. But you know, when push comes to shove, Democrats will remove one of their own. Remember, it was the Democrats who impeached Rod Lagoevich and then removed him from office and then sent his sorry ass to jail. And it was Republican Donald Trump who pardoned him.

SPEAKER_08 47:29

For selling Barack Obama, attempting to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat.

SPEAKER_02 47:33

Yep.

SPEAKER_08 47:34

Which he clearly did.

SPEAKER_02 47:35

Yep, he clearly did.

SPEAKER_08 47:37

And now there's this from Fox 32, July 3rd, quote, State Representative Harry Benton resigned from the Illinois House Effective Friday and said he will withdraw as the Democratic nominee for the 97th House District, according to Capitol News Illinois. Benton said the situation has placed tremendous strain on his family, and he asked for privacy as he steps down. The resignation follows an ethics investigation into sexual harassment allegations. House Speaker Emmanuel Chris Welch said the legislative inspector general found clear patterns of conduct that were outrageous, unethical, and unbecoming, and had demanded Benton's immediate resignation after threatening expulsion, unquote.

SPEAKER_02 48:23

Exactly. Exactly. Cleaning up their own house. And because we're a democratic state with a democratic-led government that has repeatedly stood firm against the Trump regime, we have frequently been the target of Trump fuckery. So this is from WGN and the Associated Press from July 2nd. Quote, top FBI agent in Chicago abruptly leaves post after being pushed to retire, AP sources say. The events leading up to his departure were not immediately clear, but Douglas D Podesta alluded in his farewell note to a conflict that he suggested had precipitated it. I've never backed down from a fight as long as it meant our personnel could continue serving the FBI's mission, D. Podesta wrote in his message. Unfortunately, that has proved unpopular over time, and my departure is a consequence of that. The move is part of a broader upheaval in the FBI workforce as Director Cash Patel has sought to force out line agents and supervisors alike who are perceived as not supporting the Trump administration agenda. The FBI declined to comment Thursday, but the Bureau's rapid response social media account on X responded to a separate post about Deep Adest's departure by saying it's simple. Anyone who's not on board with this FBI, under the leadership of President Trump, which has achieved the lowest murder rate ever, is free to leave. Unquote.

SPEAKER_08 49:44

They're doing this in the military, too, in the Pentagon.

SPEAKER_02 49:48

The purge. There's a massive purge. I mean, Doge just gutted federal agencies and tossed people to the curb and cut budgets. And now they're going after the cops in the military, the law enforcement agencies and the military, which are supposed to be way beyond politics. But this is part of what fascists do. You know what? If you walk down Devon Avenue in Chicago on any given day of the week, you'll find at least a dozen major ethnic and religious communities living side by side in relative peace. And this is right around where I used to live in Chicago. A big chunk of that walk would take you through West Rogers Park, which is a neighborhood of around 78,000 people or 22,000 people per square mile. That's the population density on West Rogers Park.

SPEAKER_08 50:36

Now head all the way down to Wayne County, Illinois, and you'll find an older and overwhelmingly white county, also rapidly aging county, 95.5% white with a population density, and we are not making this up, of 22 people per square mile. Not 22,000, like in Rogers Park, 22. And that county went 85% for Donald Trump in 2024. And all of that and more is in one state.

SPEAKER_02 51:08

In one state, in our state, which which looks more like America than any other state, where there are so many lessons about what's happening in our country and why it's happening, sitting right out in the open for anyone to see.

SPEAKER_08 51:21

And yet, as far as the elite media is concerned, Driftglass, we're just flyover country.

SPEAKER_02 51:25

Yep, just fly over country. Yep, go figure.

SPEAKER_08 51:28

So I have a question for you, Driftglass. Of course, bluegrass about Illinois politics.

SPEAKER_02 51:33

The answer is the answer, I'll give you the same answer that the Michigan election expert gave. I don't know. I don't know. No idea. Maybe, I don't know.

SPEAKER_08 51:40

Well, I just want to talk about how JB Pritzker cleaned up Illinois government after a Republican destroyed it.

SPEAKER_02 51:52

Yes, he did.

SPEAKER_08 51:54

And it was a repo uh a rich white male Republican who just came in and destroyed the government. He was uh billionaire.

SPEAKER_02 52:05

But well, just so you're clear, we're talking about Bruce Rouner.

SPEAKER_08 52:08

Bruce Rouner, uh a billi uh billionaire, very rich guy. Governor hedge fund, governor hedge fund, who uh decided he was gonna break the public sector unions by refusing to sign a budget. And so every part of the state for two years, there were there was no budget in the state of Illinois, every single thing in the state that was funded was funded through court order. The people who needed these services from the state had to go to court and get the court to mandate that the state had to pay for these things.

SPEAKER_02 52:48

And you remember, I'm sure you remember that he uh defunded the autism programs in Illinois on World Autism Day, and and all of those white suburban Republican assholes up in the northern suburbs who voted for this asshole and who had autistic children or autistic grandchildren, yes, um suddenly discovered the program that was helping their grandkids and was necessary for their grandkids' development, which they loved, was suddenly defunded by the guy they voted for. And they were like, what the fuck happened? Well, you voted for it again. You fucked around it, now you found out.

SPEAKER_08 53:24

Yeah. And we had and and I'm not I I think I think it's very clear that in the in the Democratic primary, should should J.B. Pritzker decide to run for president, we are a very pro-Pritzker podcast.

SPEAKER_02 53:36

We are.

SPEAKER_08 53:36

Uh, and and and actually the leading pro-Pritzker podcast, if I do say so myself.

SPEAKER_02 53:40

Unabashable.

SPEAKER_08 53:42

Because we're here.

SPEAKER_02 53:42

Yeah, we're here.

SPEAKER_08 53:44

When we're in the state capitol. Uh but I I think the fact that J.B. Pritzker took down a Republican who was destroying things over and over again. He was and he rebuilt this state. He talks on his ads a lot about 10 credit upgrades in his last two his the two terms that he's been in office.

SPEAKER_02 54:08

Yeah, this was a state that was on the verge of being declared junk bond status.

SPEAKER_08 54:12

Junk bonds and bankrupt.

SPEAKER_02 54:13

And bankrupt. Literally bankrupt.

SPEAKER_08 54:15

We had 17 million dollars in unpaid bills or billion.

SPEAKER_02 54:20

Just yeah, just it ridiculous amounts of and you know what? To be fair, a lot of that was the result of decades of of kicking stuff down the down the road. Yeah, especially pension stuff in Illinois.

SPEAKER_09 54:31

Pension stuff, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:32

We're not gonna we're not gonna pay teachers what they ask, but we're gonna give them a generous pension. And all that stuff rolls forward and rolls forward. But Rouner made everything worse because he saw Illinois' indebtedness and its budget problems as an opportunity to break the back of the unions.

SPEAKER_08 54:48

Yeah. Just like you break up a company to sell it off for parts. That's pretty much what he was doing to Illinois.

SPEAKER_02 54:53

Yeah, and Pritzker put in place good housekeeping measures and careful, you know, price controls, not price controls, but careful money management. Remember, he's a he his he and his family run the Hyatt Hotel chain.

SPEAKER_08 55:06

Yeah, yeah. And he also has uh uh a comproller. He made sure that the comproller had actual power to make sure that the bills got paid.

SPEAKER_02 55:17

Most importantly, yeah, he has Democratic majorities in both House of Legislature. Yeah, so he can get bills passed. He can do what cannot, what what Obama couldn't do for nine-tenths of his presidency, exactly, and what what Biden managed to do miraculously. I swear to God, Biden's presidency is going to be looked back on in 10, 15 years as an amazing accomplishment.

SPEAKER_09 55:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:38

The shit that guy got through a Congress that was actively hostile to him while being screamed at about his son's laptop and Sleepy Joe and the corrupt Biden family, crime family, what is amazing. Was record breaking. But yeah, JB Pritzker and the Democratic Party of Illinois, uh, who are perfectly willing to clean house one of their own, you know, is breaking bad, has done an amazing job of turning the state around. And of course, every time a Pritzker post shows up on social media, on Facebook, the first three are complimentary. The next 20 are making fun of his weight, hating Illinois. You should move out. Fuck you, Pritzker. Here's a picture of him doing burgers because the small minority of Republicans in the state hate him.

SPEAKER_08 56:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:26

They hate him precisely because he's successful, precisely because he has managed to do the things he they said he could never do.

SPEAKER_08 56:32

And they are you are you suggesting that Pritzker would not succeed in rebuilding the country after Trump because he wouldn't have a supermajority in the legislature? I would suggest if he just ignored the legislature like Trump did.

SPEAKER_02 56:44

Well, that's that's the thing. That's the thing. Barack Obama, you know, was tried to do everything through Congress. And and some things he did and some things he didn't.

SPEAKER_08 56:52

But, you know, this rescue Supreme Court gave the president unitary executive power.

SPEAKER_02 56:58

And and stand there and say, look, I think this it's incredibly stupid and harmful for democracy to give any executive this amount of power. However, I've got it. Did it and I'm going to use it, and we're going to clean up the shit the last guy did, just like I cleaned up Illinois after Rounder fucked it up. And except a thousand times worse, because now we have to rebuild our alliances and we have to go around the world and say, God, we're really sorry, and this will never happen again, which we have to make a figure out a way to do that. But you take the unitary executive power that they gave Trump and run with it.

SPEAKER_09 57:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:31

And and just and dare them to take him to court. Dare them to take him to court. And just keep doing that and doing that and do what you know, frankly, Mom Donnie's doing and that the Prince Group is doing in Illinois. Every time you do shit like that, tell people about it.

SPEAKER_09 57:43

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 57:44

Here's how I this legislature, this action, this executive order materially benefits you and your family. This is why you don't go broke paying for insulin in Illinois because of this thing I did. Here's all the housing we're going to build. Here's the legislature that's going to build the housing. And on and on and on like that. It's it really isn't, it's old style politics, man. You deliver for your constituents and then you brag about it. And you say, elect me again, I'll do better stuff.

SPEAKER_08 58:11

And breaking news from this afternoon. Uh Illinois Governor Prisker has signed a law removing testosterone HRT from the PDMP program, a program other states can use to access people's prescription records across state lines. It will protect trans people in Illinois from places like Texas. So he is absolutely and and there's a whole string of uh Blue Sky posts after that article about from Illinois, progressive Illinoisans saying, I didn't want to vote for a billionaire. Right. But boy, we are right there with you. We've just felt like, oh geez, we have to do this. We're going to vote for the Democrat. Of course we're going to vote for the Democrat. But we would rather it didn't have to be another billionaire like Rouner. But apparently that's the only person that can afford to run for governor in Illinois. So be it. And we'll just hold our breath and hope he doesn't do more damage. He turns out to be an absolutely fantastic walk the talk progressive governor.

SPEAKER_02 59:13

And he does two things that I don't I want to get back to this because the the this protecting medical records.

SPEAKER_09 59:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:20

That's on one hand, on the other hand, is the Illinois Freedom Caucus, who thinks drag shows are perverse. Yeah, sexualizing children. And sexualizing children. Number two, Pritzker has has used his money and his resources to bankroll the Illinois Democratic Party and to pay for campaign ads in competitive states where Democrats were on the fence, or the or the Republican candidate was, you know, was and he didn't lie in the in the these were the ads that said Jim Stevens is too is too conservative for this state.

SPEAKER_09 59:54

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 59:54

And of course, all the oh, let's nominate this asshole. So you know it didn't lie because Jim Stevens, whoever the, whoever fill in the blank was, but using his resources to actually build the party, bring people in who are and pick your opponent.

SPEAKER_08 1:00:10

That's what he did. And pick your opponent. Yeah. And pick your opponent.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:13

Because Darren Bailey is far too far too conservative for Illinois.

SPEAKER_08 1:00:16

Conservative for Illinois.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:18

So I mean, we really have lived through the ups and downs in miniature of what it looks like when a Republican is in charge of a state that's in distress. Like, here's a great opportunity to fuck people over I hate and take revenge on people I don't like and use pain and suffering and people's prejudices to get what I want. And then you flip it around and say, here's a governor who is paying the bills, taking care of business, helping people out, proposing legislation. And you know what? As we mentioned in the podcast earlier, he proposed a bigger budget than he got because we do actually have checks and balances here. The legislature said, Yeah, that's a little too much.

SPEAKER_08 1:00:55

Like every state, we have to have a balanced budget. We can't print money. Yeah. So there are compromises that have to be made. By the way, where is Bruce Rouner now? Oh, I think he could be running for governor again.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:06

I think well he's he's he's in Italy.

SPEAKER_08 1:01:09

He left, he fled. Of course he did, because he didn't accomplish what he wanted to do, which was break public sector unions. And so he took his money and his hedge fund and he left the country.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:21

Yeah. And the irony of uh Republicans, especially in the state capitol, especially in around where we live, is that way, way more of them than you would imagine are retired state workers.

SPEAKER_08 1:01:33

Yep. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:35

Who take a generous state pension with one hand and bitch about the budget with the other.

SPEAKER_08 1:01:39

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:40

And like, you know, I'm doing it, but other people are undeserving.

SPEAKER_08 1:01:45

Other other people had never worked a day in their life and they're getting this big pension. Yeah, we we know who you're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:50

So you and your friends. Broadly speaking, and and I've I've talked about this incessantly on this podcast, or at least a dozen times, from learning the lesson of Harold Washington in Chicago to learning the lesson of J.B. Pritzker in the state, in the governor's office, to understanding this complicated state that represents the country really well demographically and financially and racially and so forth. There are so many political lessons just sitting on the ground waiting for people to pick them up and use them. And yet our media just keeps well, here we they go to Ohio Diners because that's where you go to talk to MAGA voters. And but they're fucking obsessed with New York and LA. And I understand why, because those are media capitals. And they'll they'll skip through Chicago to, you know, attend a presidential library opening or whatnot. But that's it. And and it's like you're missing a story here that that is worth telling. And the story is not, you know, there's a bunch of angry counties in downstream Illinois who want to secede. That's not the fucking movie.

SPEAKER_08 1:02:51

That movement is growing according to the NBR.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:53

Yeah, my movement is growing right now. So, you know. Anyway.

SPEAKER_08 1:02:58

Anyway, Driftglass. Uh, I want everyone to feel free to write to both of us at proleftpodcast at gmail.com. We do love hearing from you. Be aware that if you write to us at any of our addresses, we reserve the right to read your email or US Postal Service Go Postal Unions letter on the air, unless you say otherwise. And thank you for supporting our show at patreon.com forward slash pro left pod.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:23

I didn't mean to talk over you, bluegill. I'm just so excited to tell people that you can also share our show on social media. We know that a lot of you love this show, and if you love it, please get someone else to listen to it too. We really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_08 1:03:33

Hey Driftclass, how are the internet kitties doing this week?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:36

Well, as you know, the internet kitties, all three of them are Springfield natives, and they think the Bailey Pritzker debate's gonna be lit.

SPEAKER_08 1:04:10

Happy BP production,