(light music) (dramatic music) - Thanks for joining us on "CapitolView."

I'm Fred Martino.

This week, Illinois prepares for an immigration crackdown by the Trump administration, and it's already started.

In fiscal news, the state has a projected budget deficit of more than $3 billion already, and now, word that pension reform could cost nearly 30 billion.

Plus, the Illinois lieutenant governor offers a hint on her possible Senate plans.

Those stories and more with Mawa Iqbal of WBEZ and Andrew Adams from Capitol News Illinois.

Mawa, we start with two stories from the "Chicago Sun-Times" this week.

Trump officials joined federal agents, and of all people, Dr. Phil, for immigration arrests in Chicago.

After the arrests, another story provided a few more details but many unanswered questions.

- Yeah, so when we saw that Dr. Phil, the Dr. Phil, was joining ICE officials in Chicago, all of us, our reactions in the newsroom were just like, "What?"

Like it was just something we were never expecting.

And turns out Dr. Phil, after his longtime daytime TV show was canceled in 2023, he started this broadcast, online broadcast platform called Merit TV.

And so essentially, he, you know, did a sort of ride-along with these DHS, Department of Homeland Security, agents to go and arrest people for detention.

And it was interesting because, you know, no other media outlet has been given this kind of exclusive access.

He was allowed to interview our new border czar, Tom Homan, which no other outlet has been able to do.

And then, there's videos that are circulating online of Dr. Phil, you know, just standing there next to these ICE agents as they're arresting people.

And he's interviewing the person who's been arrested, you know, like, "Are you a citizen?"

and like, "What is your prior criminal convictions?"

and all this stuff.

And it's very, I mean, first of all, just very bizarre, right?

I think no one was really expecting this to happen.

And you know, my colleagues talked to people, like people in part of the immigrant community in these neighborhoods where ICE officials were targeting, right, for these raids.

And they're saying like just having Dr. Phil broadcasting these arrests and then these videos doing the rounds on social media, people reposting them, and even really Trump officials, like the administration officials, kind of making more media, like a hullabaloo out of it, they really felt like it was hurtful, right?

And you know, my colleagues talked to a lotta people and they said that this just feels like our immigrant community's being used as a form of entertainment, like sort of a sick form of entertainment, so.

Yeah, that was very weird.

And yeah, they definitely, they told Dr. Phil that they were targeting 300 people this weekend in Chicago.

And the Trump administration nationwide said that in the first week, they've made 7,300 arrests, including hundreds of criminal, dangerous people.

It's interesting, though, because, you know, a lotta the fears that people were feeling in the community were that it wasn't just going to be these quote, unquote, dangerous criminals that would be picked up.

It would be a lot of people with different, you know, undocumented status and residency statuses.

So and that's what ended up happening, at least so far in these initial roundups, you know?

My colleagues found, just through records requests, that two of the people that have been picked up and arrested by ICE in Chicago were charged with entering the country illegally after they had been deported.

No other dangerous felony conviction.

It's really just trying or attempting to reenter.

And a lot of elected officials in Chicago have said, you know, like, "This is completely not what the Trump administration was saying they wanted to do."

You know, they were talking about how, oftentimes, people who have been deported may wanna try to come back to the country to provide for their family who's still here or try to find another path to citizenship.

So it's been really tough for a lot of people living in these communities, in these large immigrant communities.

They just feel like there's a lot of misinformation and lack of information really like swirling around.

It kinda gives way to rumors and fear, so.

- Yeah.

And of course, you know, lack of information, as you point out, this is something where, again, there are many unanswered questions.

And while, you know, we have video of arrests, that seems to dominate coverage.

I was, even though I follow this issue very closely, I was surprised, in doing further research and looking at other stories from various outlets, that already the Trump administration has also looked at legal immigration, including folks who are seeking refugee protection, a hold on that.

And that just doesn't get a lot of attention.

But it just highlights again the importance of journalism and coverage of these issues.

But as you point out, often, the most access will go to online folks, Dr. Phil not the only one, but probably the one who's made the biggest splash after leaving Fox is Tucker Carlson, who gets access to in-depth interviews that are not news or journalism.

And so it's really questionable, disturbing, and something we have to watch.

- Totally, yeah.

I will say too, something I didn't mention is that a lot of people, just because, like you said, there's a lot of unanswered questions, then you also have this media circus that a lot of these more like right-wing personalities, like Dr. Phil, are creating online.

You know, you have like real people on the ground who are really too scared to even go out.

My colleagues talked to people in these communities who said that, you know, "We're not going to businesses.

We're not sending our kids to schools.

We're not going to restaurants."

So like, even though Governor Pritzker has said that, you know, he's been to Pilsen and Little Village, which are these neighborhoods in like the southwest side of Chicago, predominantly Latino-Hispanic, predominantly immigrant communities, and businesses are empty, right?

Kids and families are too afraid to go outside.

And I think it really does speak to the fact that, you know, a lot of elected officials, including Pritzker, have been claiming that the Trump administration is purposefully trying to withhold information to sow discord, chaos, confusion, and just fear.

And I think too, you know, just having this like media attention on some of these people who are, I guess, trying to like build up that, "Oh no, we are rounding up all the dangerous, quote, unquote, bad guys."

It's just kind of, you know, obscuring the perception of what's really happening here.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

Very important information.

Mawa, thank you for that.

Andrew, speaking of fear, concern, Capitol News Illinois has also been covering the immigration issue and recently published a story on how schools are preparing.

Tell us about that.

- Absolutely.

So the state superintendent of schools, you know, the chief of schools for the state basically, issued non-regulatory guidance.

So basically, advice.

This isn't policy.

This isn't requirement by any means.

It's just advice from the state to local schools about what to do if ICE comes knocking, if immigration enforcement comes to a school.

This follows the Trump administration rescinding a kind of Biden-era policy that ICE agents and other immigration enforcement agents should not conduct any actions at designated places.

This includes schools, churches, kind of special places that, you know, the government doesn't necessarily want to, you know, conduct these actions.

And the guidance itself basically reminds school boards, school administrators, what they can and can't do with regards to immigration.

So for example, federal law says that schools cannot share student information or student records under many circumstances, including even if they are subpoenaed by the Department of Homeland Security or ICE.

They can't share those records under federal law.

It also reminded schools that local law enforcement, and many schools have local law enforcement in schools as school resource officers to help with school security, those local law enforcement agents cannot help immigration officials in many cases because of a state law that kind of limits the ways the state can support this kind of immigration enforcement.

This comes in at a time when a lot of schools are wondering what they can and can't do, what they have to do.

So it'll be interesting to watch how schools interpret this guidance and how schools interpret the guidance they are sure to receive from federal immigration officials.

- Okay, another developing story and something we'll be watching very closely.

Mawa, you are in Springfield covering the General Assembly, and we wanna talk about something that may be overlooked, but it's very interesting.

And for the first time in more than a decade, a Republican will chair an Illinois House committee.

Tell us about this.

- Yeah, so like you said, this is Representative Dan Swanson, who is a Republican from Alpha, Illinois.

He, you know, got the call from Speaker Chris Welch that he would chair the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

And he's said that he was completely not expecting this call at all, you know, that the articles goes and describes how, when he got the call, he just sank to his feet because he was just so overwhelmed with emotions.

He'd felt like this was a really great honor.

And he had served 27 years in the military, so he had worked as a lieutenant, or he served as a lieutenant colonel with the United States Army and the Illinois Army National Guard.

He was active duty for 20 years, and he's said that, you know, it was no hesitation.

Like, "I will accept this offer."

And a lot of his counterparts on the other side of the aisle, so a lotta Democrats in the House were saying, "You know, he is like the perfect choice for this.

Just given his extensive military background, his advocacy for veterans and veterans' rights and housing in Illinois, he seemed to be the perfect fit."

- Good to talk about that and to raise awareness of that, because we certainly more often hear of a lack of any kind of bipartisanship.

An example here of certainly someone with a lot of background in a position now that is in line with that background.

Andrew, of course, there are gonna be a lotta difficult discussions too in Springfield.

Projections of serious budget problems in Illinois, including a deficit of more than $3 billion in the upcoming fiscal year that has to be addressed.

But we found out recently the challenge could get a lot more difficult.

Columnist Rich Miller reports on a study that shows pension reform could cost $30 billion.

- Absolutely.

And pension reform is one of the buzzwords in Springfield that comes up all the time.

You know, talk to anyone in Springfield about the big issues facing the state, and pensions will come up every single time.

You know, part of this is because of the way we have set up our state's pension payments over the past 30 years leaves significant unfunded liabilities.

So that's, you know, if everyone cashed out their pensions today, what the difference would be between the money we have and the money we would need.

There is also an emerging issue that has been getting a lot of attention that gets called the safe harbor provision.

Federal law requires that pension systems at least meet the equivalent of what would be offered by Social Security.

Since if you have a pension, you don't pay into Social Security.

And there is concern that some state pensions, the tier two pensions, so everyone hired after 2011, don't meet that requirement, which means the state would have to step in and provide more funding to the pension system to make sure everyone has that minimum threshold of retirement benefits.

So this $30 billion number, where does that come from?

The unions representing various government employees have backed this proposal that would bump up some of the benefits to make sure that they meet that safe harbor threshold and make some other tweaks to add benefits to the pension system, to make hiring easier, to make retention easier, and that kind of thing.

Now, that is going to cost a lot of money.

Under this union proposal, that would be, like you said, $30 billion.

But even the sponsor of the proposal, you know, the legislative sponsor, says that this is not likely going to be the actual fix that gets implemented.

It's more of a starting point for conversation to say, this is the threshold that we should be aiming for.

How close can we get to that?

So there are also other proposals that would cost significantly less.

But even those lesser proposals could be putting hundreds of millions or tens of millions of dollars of spending on the state's coffers in the next few years, which, like you said, could mean some tough conversations about what needs to get cut or what taxes need to be raised.

- Very important context, because, as you lay out there, while right now this is something that legislators may discuss and decide on, if they don't, in the future, there may be outside forces, whether they be federal regulation or legal action, that would intervene because of that need to match, at least match, Social Security.

Very interesting information.

Mawa, the future (laughing) is certainly unsure for pension reform, but we're getting some hints about a possible political future for the Illinois lieutenant governor.

Tell us more about that.

- Yes, our lieutenant governor, Juliana Stratton, she just started this PAC.

It's a federal political action committee called Level Up.

And so a couple days ago, she released this video to kind of launch the PAC.

And it was really interesting, right?

She talked about how, you know, the intent of this PAC is to support candidates and campaigns that would champion the rights of working families.

And she said that the goal was to not only showcase, you know, Illinois' work in raising the state minimum wage and protecting reproductive rights and championing gun control measures, but to kind of like elevate those laws on like a national scope.

And it's fascinating for a lot of people who, I guess, would consider themselves Durbin watchers, quote, unquote, (laughing) because as you know, right, our US Senator Dick Durbin, he is, he's been in the game for a really long time, right?

He was first elected in 1997.

So this would be his fifth term in the US Senate.

He is the top Democrat and the number two, or the number two Democrat and the top Democrat in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

So he definitely has a high profile nationally when it comes to just like national political electeds.

And people are wondering if he's gonna run for reelection, right?

Like he is 80 years old.

He's reaching sort of what a lot of people are saying the end of his political career.

And because of that now, a lot of people are sort of watching to see who will try to run for his seat.

And of course, with Stratton announcing this federal, I should note, it's a hybrid PAC too, right, which means that they have one account that can, you know, make contributions to different people, different candidates, but then another account that operates as a super PAC.

So allowing unlimited contributions, which could be very helpful for Stratton if she decides to run for this Senate seat.

Of course, she would have to cut ties with this PAC, right?

But I should note also that the PAC is run by her allies.

So it certainly is a signal or a sign that a lot of like political analysis are saying that, you know, could mean that she is definitely eyeing this seat.

You know, certainly, right, Durbin hasn't said anything.

He hasn't really indicated either which way if he would not run for reelection.

And of course, there's a question of if Governor Pritzker will run for reelection as governor or if he's setting his sights to a higher office, I.e.

the president's office.

(laughing) So we'll see.

There's still a lot up in the air, but that certainly was a very interesting development in this whole game, I guess.

- Yeah, well- - In this race, yeah.

- It will be interesting to see, and we'll wait to hear from the plans for Senator Durbin.

And that will tell us, certainly tell us a lot more in that particular situation.

The pressure may be on there, because just this week, we heard about Gary Peters in Michigan deciding that he will not run for reelection in Michigan, a battleground state.

So Republicans expected to really put effort, I'm sure, in that state to try to find a winning candidate, since there will not be an incumbent Senatorial election in terms of that particular race there.

Andrew, you reported on our next story.

Recently, you reported on this.

The Illinois Supreme Court considered the legality of a law banning venue shopping in constitutional challenges.

Very interesting, tell us about this.

- Yeah, so this gets a little bit wonky.

So bear with me (Fred laughing) for a minute here.

If you recall, back during the kind of heights of the COVID pandemic, it seemed like every 10 minutes, there was a lawsuit about how the state handled its COVID mitigations, its mask requirements, its, you know, stay-at-home orders, that kind of thing.

Lots of lawsuits.

On top of that, over that same few years, there were a lot of challenges to other state laws, like the assault weapons ban and, you know, criminal justice reform, which basically put a lot of pressure on state courts and on state lawmakers because they knew every big progressive swing that came out of the Democratic supermajority in Springfield would be challenged in court.

So Democratic lawmakers in 2023 passed this law that said, if you challenge a law's constitutionality, if you say this law is unconstitutional, you have to do it in court in either Sangamon County, where Springfield is, or Cook County, where Chicago is.

This upset a lot of Republicans, who often are the people backing these lawsuits, because they often bring these lawsuits in smaller, rural counties, often where they think they might have a better chance of winning.

So you know, Republicans accused Democrats of kind of thumbing the scales of justice here.

And the Supreme Court in Illinois is now considering whether or not this lawsuit is or this law is constitutional, because someone brought a constitutional challenge in a downstate county.

And the attorney general tried to move it to Sangamon County, but the judge said, "No, we're gonna hear this in this county because that law is unconstitutional."

So it'll be very interesting to watch, because this will basically set the stage for all of the legal fights that happen in Illinois that have become so common, of where they are allowed to happen and whether or not lawmakers can even make this kind of rule.

- Yeah, very important, as we're learning not just in Illinois, but all over the country, as very often, decisions made by elected bodies end up getting challenged in various courts.

We just had, of course, an earthquake of that this week, where Trump administration plans to delay funding were challenged, were announced to be challenged.

And a judge said, "Nope," and so we'll hear more next week on that.

So it's just, it's a trend.

We only have about three minutes left, Mawa, but I wanted to get to this last story.

You reported on this, did some interviewing on this.

And your colleagues at the "Chicago Sun-Times" published an update in the past week, something to end on that isn't quite as serious in some ways as some of the other (laughing) issues we've been covering.

It is all about what to consider for the next state flag in Illinois.

- Yes, yes.

So we have the state flag redesign competition, and this commission of like, I would say, like 22 people, historians, teachers, artists, state elected officials, people who work at the state agencies, they had gotten like 5,000 submissions for designs and have now winnowed it down to 10 designs.

And so public voting for these 10 designs will run through February 14, Valentine's Day, at which point then the commission will receive the results and they'll, you know, draft up a report of their findings, like what flags they thought were really great and which ones they thought maybe are just okay.

And then they'll send that- - So this is an online vote, Mawa?

- Yes, this is a online vote.

- Okay.

- Through the secretary of state's website.

- Okay.

- And so then, yeah, so after they draft up the report, they'll send it to the General Assembly.

And then the General Assembly will then pick their favorite flag or will pick to maybe keep the current flag by April.

So it's really interesting.

All the submissions, like including the ones that were rejected, should be available online.

And there's definitely some good ones in there.

(laughing) But we did talk to some flag experts for this story about like what would make a good flag.

And of course, they said, you know, the metrics are that they should be, you know, use three or fewer colors, they should be recognizable from a distance, they should be easy to reproduce for like a five-year-old.

Like if a five-year-old were to draw it, they should be able to like know how to draw it or like a young child.

And yeah, they should use bold colors or symbols that, you know, encapsulate Illinois.

And so when I talked to a commissioner about it, he said that when you take those considerations into account, it actually makes it really hard to pick a flag, right?

'Cause you don't want anything that's too Chicago-specific.

Conversely, you don't want anything that's too southern Illinois or rural-specific.

So then, the one symbol that the whole commission could agree on, which you know, these are members from all over the state, was Abraham Lincoln.

So you'll see a lot of Abraham Lincoln themes.

You'll see a lot of stars, a lot of, there's one that has a monarch butterfly on it too, 'cause that's the state butterfly, some U of I colors in there.

But it's really interesting.

I'd highly recommend people check 'em out and let them know your thoughts, so.

(laughing) - I love the rundown on that, and I didn't know you would address the issue of, you know, honoring Lincoln possibly on the flag.

But interestingly, when I moved to Illinois more than three years ago and got my license plate with Lincoln in the background, not only did I like that and notice that, but I've had people say to me when I've made trips in my car, "Oh wow, I love your plate.

I love the Lincoln."

So that may be very popular, as it turns out, we'll see when the votes come in.

- Mm hmm, we shall.

(laughing) - All right.

Well, good luck in Springfield, Mawa, and stay warm in Chicago there, Andrew.

- Thank you very much.

- Thank you.

- (laughing) All right.

We are out of time.

That is "CapitolView" for this week.

For everyone at WSIU, I'm Fred Martino.

Have a great week.

(dramatic music) (dramatic music continues) (dramatic music continues)