Month: January 2024

CHICAGO — With news of Chicago City Council passing a resolution calling for ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza conflict led by Mayor Johnson and radical Illinois Democrats, Illinois Republican Party Chairman Don Tracy released the following response: 

“Democrats in Chicago and across the state would rather engage in posturing theatrics than take action to protect our citizens. Today’s vote is not only a slap in the face to the hostages held at the hands of terrorists abroad, but sends a clear message that the City Council and Chicago Democrats would rather do anything except their jobs. Much like Nero, while Chicagoans are dying due lax criminal prosecution backed by Brandon Johnson and JB Pritzker. Migrants are overrunning Chicago due to inconsistent, dysfunctional responses from the city and state. Chicago Public Schools are failing and about to become less safe if Johnson succeeds in removing police officers from schools. Democrats would rather waste time virtue signaling about a conflict half a world away than do the hard work of governing for the common good.”

CHICAGO — Playbook this morning outlined Mayor Johnson’s new plan to deal with the migrant crisis in Chicago – make it someone else’s problem.

As Mayor Johnson plans to foist responsibility for housing migrants onto religious institutions and private organizations, the same responsibility he publicly committed during his campaign and after winning, he has decided to blame Republicans in the House of Representatives for the lack of action on controlling the border crisis. 

You read that right. Despite Democrats controlling the White House and by extension the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Senate, the Illinois Statehouse, both houses of the Illinois legislature AND the Chicago City Council, the inability to deal with migrants at the border is the fault of Republicans. This level of delusion rivals even that of Governor Pritzker, who seems to have forgotten on his early 2028 Presidential campaign tour that the sanctuary city policies he and Mayor Johnson have continued to support are the reason buses continue to arrive.

ILGOP Chairman Don Tracy released the following statement:
“Democrats like JB Pritzker and Brandon Johnson can’t admit to the facts: their sanctuary policies have failed, their party leaders in Washington have failed, and they have failed. Pointing the finger and shifting responsibility is not leadership, and the inability of Democrats to gain control of this crisis despite full control of this state’s government is a sign that they are delusional, incompetent, and ineffective leaders. 

CHICAGO — Yesterday evening, the Archdiocese of Chicago announced that two south side Catholic schools would be closing their doors after a combined 196 years of education due to JB Pritzker and Illinois Democrats taking educational opportunity away from under-resourced children. 

The removal of the Invest in Kids policy, a tax credit scholarship program giving low-income children the opportunity to choose the school that works best for them, is already having disastrous impacts. When the bill was not even voted on by the legislature, it became clear that thousands of students, families, and schools would be impacted. 

From the Daily Herald’s coverage of the legislature’s inaction on the bill: “It puts our school and our families in a challenging situation, and worst of all, puts our students at risk of losing the opportunity to attend their best-fit school.”

Choices have consequences, and JB Pritzker’s inaction on scholarships for under-resourced children is having a predictable impact: Illinois schools are closing.

ILGOP Chairman Don Tracy released the following statement: 
“This is another case of Illinois Democrats choosing the special interest of their teacher union donors over the public interest.”

 An investigation into the conditions migrants in Chicago are dealing with revealed that the city was aware of the unsanitary, unsafe conditions of facilities as early as October, more than a month before a young boy died at the shelter. WTTW found that the Johnson Administration and the mayor himself were warned of unsafe conditions at the facilities, including “insufficient bathrooms, exposed pipes with raw sewage, cockroach infestation, a possible outbreak of illness with many people being sick, insufficient provision of meals and water and poor and disrespectful treatment of migrants housed in the shelter by staff.”

As this saga has unfolded, the root cause – Governor Pritzker, would rather stump across the country and take ads out in Texas newspapers than step in to take substantive action. Pritzker signed an emergency declaration in September 2022 after his public criticism of Gov. Abbott’s policy led to more buses coming to Chicago. What has been done since? More than a year later, the governor’s office announced a “Plan to Improve Asylum Seeker Emergency Response.” And now that the city of Chicago is now pushing buses into Chicago suburbs and communities are working to put their own guidelines in place, what is the Governor’s response? A sternly worded letter, an ad in an Austin newspaper, and plenty of headlines made in national news as a Joe Biden surrogate in Des Moines.

ILGOP Chairman Don Tracy released the following statement:

“More than a year after Governor Pritzker initiated this particular crisis, the only substantive thing he’s done about it so far is beg for help from Texas Gov. Abbott and Pres. Biden. The inability or unwillingness of the media to hold Governor Pritzker accountable for his role in bringing this crisis to our state has directly contributed to the Chicago migrant crisis spinning out of control. If Mayor Johnson and Governor Pritzker can’t handle the inherent responsibilities of being a sanctuary city and state, they need to start enforcing US immigration law, call to secure our borders, and work to stop the seemingly endless flow of illegal and unmanaged immigration.”