Democrats, as I wrote this morning for Fox, are being fooled by President Trump into opposing safe streets and orderly cities. Most citizens won’t care if it’s their local cops arresting gang members and rounding up unruly teens or some other federal group; everyone wants to be able to take a walk in their neighborhood and not be constantly looking over their shoulder.
But Dems are not quick learners. In recent days, as President Trump has authorized a crack-down on crime and issued an executive order banning cashless bail, their outrage has grown, with a number of officials making increasingly boneheaded statements that will undoubtedly come home to haunt them.
@realseanhannity Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker says, “I live rent free in the president’s head!” … and the cameraman IMMEDIATELY pans to Trump Tower right behind him 🤣
For instance, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who literally has the worst approval rating of any mayor in the U.S. (to be fair, his miserable approval of 26% is up from 7% earlier this year, which I guess is progress), recently gave a speech in which he said, “We cannot incarcerate our way out of violence” and described putting people in jail as “racist, immoral, and unholy.”
Instead, the mayor said, Chicago needed to make greater investments in affordable housing, education and healthcare in order to bring down crime. And where should the money come from for those investments? The federal government, of course. If only the nation’s taxpayers would open their wallets to Chicago residents, the Windy City would no longer have a crime problem.
The reality is the Johnson doesn’t need more federal funds to bring down crime – he needs Uncle Sam to staunch the flow of red ink in his corrupt city. Chicago is currently facing a $1.1 billion budget gap, thanks in part to spending hundreds of millions of dollars housing and caring for illegal migrants the mayor has welcomed with open arms. The federal government has also coughed up tens of millions of dollars for illegals.
I’m guessing that Chicago’s residents don’t much like their tax dollars going to supporting people who are in the state illegally. Illinois overall has allocated $3.2 billion to care for undocumented migrants, far more than Governor Jay Pritzker anticipated; consequently, other services like needed after-school programs, have been cut, infuriating parents.
One GOP state legislator makes that case: “Here we are in the last couple days of session, running over a billion-dollar shortfall that we’re aware of right now, $3.2 billion has been spent on illegals, and we don’t even have the money to shore up the federal dollars on the state side to help our own working-class Illinoisans. It’s really a shame.”
Remember that blue states were kept afloat in recent years by Covid funds, and in particular Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which by now have mostly been spent. Illinois received $109 billion in Covid money, almost as much as Florida received ($126 billion), even though Florida’s population is almost twice that of Illinois. I’ve never spent much time looking at the distribution of the Covid monies, but I’m guessing we’ll find from this map a pretty big bias towards Dem-run states.
In any event, Illinois blew through their allocated funds and now both the state and the city are in fiscal hot water and looking to tax hikes to bail them out. That’s the Dem blueprint, and they’re sticking to it. According to one analysis (from Illinois Policy) “Gov. J.B. Pritzker has grown Illinois’ budget by $16 billion and enacted over 50 tax hikes since taking office in 2019.”
In any event, while Chicago’s mayor says it’s immoral to lock up criminals, the city’s residents might say the same about squandering their hard-earned tax dollars.
Chicago voters had a chance to elect Paul Vallas in 2023, a credible school reformer and non-machine Democrat; instead they chose Brandon Johnson, a cv-light puppet of the teachers unions. That was after they sent Laurie Lightfoot packing – the next worse mayor (after Johnson) in Chicago’s history.
Maybe next time they’ll get it right and choose a candidate who will make Chicago great again. I wouldn’t count on it.
