(gentle music) (dramatic music) - Welcome to "CapitolView" on WSIU.

I'm Jeff Williams, sitting in this week as we take a look at what's making news around the state in Illinois politics.

It has been a busy week not only in Illinois, but also at the national level.

And to help guide our discussion this week are John Jackson, visiting professor at the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute and Charlie Wheeler, director emeritus of the Public Affairs Reporting Program at the University of Illinois Springfield, and a long time State House reporter.

Gentlemen, welcome back to the program.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

Always good to be here.

- Well, as I mentioned at the top of the show, there've been a number of actions at the federal level that in one way or another will have influence or will influence what happens not only in states around the country, but at the state level here in Illinois.

These are just some of the headlines from the past week.

The US Supreme Court temporarily halted a federal judge's order that would've required the Department of Education to reinstate about 1,400 employees who were fired earlier this year as part of a DOGE effort to reduce the size of the workforce and to essentially dismantle the Department of Education.

Also, we had several federal district judges that blocked various Trump administration policies regarding immigration and immigrants remaining in the country while pursuing asylum, and another one related to deportation of Venezuelans.

Also, a federal judge heard arguments in Boston regarding Harvard's lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's decision to cut 2.6 billion or so in funding to that university, citing Harvard's alleged violations of orders of fighting antisemitism.

And probably most notably, Congress also approved the Rescissions Act of 2025 that clawed backed more than $9 billion in previously approved funding, including a billion dollars for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and $8 billion in foreign aid, primarily for global health and development programs.

And this has just been in the past week.

So it seems that these actions, at least in some way, are challenging historically how our democracy has functioned, or at least how our powers have historically been separated in function.

John, as you observe, just this latest news cycle, if you were teaching a course right now, how would you put into context what we are seeing unfold?

- Well, Jeff, I taught national government and state and local government for many years.

And if I were still teaching that, I would point out that one of the areas that Donald Trump is impacting and changing, or at least trying to change most dramatically is our sense of federalism and how federalism is going to work.

One of the great contributions of America to the way we judge, and the way we work, and the way we do politics and government.

This comes under public administration and political science jargon.

They're called basically fiscal federalism, and it's called sometimes, not only that, but cooperative federalism.

This means that the Congress and the president, either presently or previously, had decided that there was a national interest, that there should be objectives, and that there should be a national response to some of the challenges, and that the national government should send some money to help.

That gets the fiscal federalism.

The prevailing view since at least FDR and the New Deal, and Lyndon Johnson, and the Great Society has been that we will have an active and dynamic fiscal federalism kind of federalism.

Now, Trump wants to send a great deal of this back to the states.

Some of the major problems have been addressed by policies and major bureaucracies in Washington, and he wants to send it back mostly to the states or entirely to the states, technically called devolution in our jargon.

This includes the abortion policy coming out of the Dobbs decision, healthcare, and especially now Medicaid, virtually all the Department of Education does, FEMA, where he talked about it a lot before the case in Texas of course recently, the question of support for NPR and PBS as you just mentioned, high speed internet which we all depend on, especially the rural areas depend on getting more of it into place.

SNAP and food stamps.

And finally, electric cars and all kinds of things about cars and voltage and all kinds of things related to whether or not we're going to have solar and whether or not they're going to be subsidies at the federal level for these activities.

But I will add quickly he's not been entirely consistent on this because, in the other direction, he didn't hesitate to federalize the California National Guard and to send in the Marines.

And there was a story, a very quiet one this week, where the Marines and the other army were packing up and going home after spending a whole month in LA uninvited by both the governor and the mayor patrolling the federal buildings.

And so that's of course a movement in the other direction.

But the impact on the state budgets is important, and that's what we need to talk about at the Illinois level.

- Yeah.

John, as you alluded to that, a lot of what has been mentioned does have obviously financial implications for Illinois.

You talked about the Reconciliation Act that passed and the so-called Big Beautiful Bill.

I think probably the top is, as you mentioned, Medicaid funding, viability of some of the states rural hospitals, snap benefits.

Charlie, what kind of budget uncertainties are you seeing as a result of these recent federal policy changes or shifts?

- Well, there's a lot of uncertainty about how much money will be made available from the federal government to Illinois for programs like Medicaid or for things like education.

As a matter of fact, the Illinois and a number of other states have sued to try and get freed a number of education dollars that have been approved, but the Trump administration has been holding up, and it's roughly $7 billion nationally, And a couple days ago, the White House's Office of Management and Budget said they were gonna release 1.3 billion for afterschool programs, but that still leaves a ton of money frozen, including in Illinois according to the governor's office, 75.6 million for teacher training, professional development, more than 30 million for English learners, almost 57 million for student support school upgrades, almost 2 million for migrant education, 20 million for adult education, 3 million for adult English learners.

Now, my guess is that the Trump administration will not free up any money having anything to do with immigration.

From my perspective, they seem to be operating on a principle that if you're not an American citizen, you have no right to be here.

It doesn't matter if you have some protected status.

It doesn't matter if you're married to an American.

We're gonna find you and we're going to ship you back, not necessarily to the country that you're from.

And in some cases, it's people who've been here for 40, 50 years.

We're gonna send you somewhere else, somewhere in the middle of Africa or somewhere in El Salvador, or some nation that is willing to basically accept people that we will send them.

And in some cases, we're gonna pay 'em money to accept them.

So I think, again, it's just a notion that we basically wanna be a homogeneous society and we want basically white people.

We don't want people of color or we don't want people who don't speak English.

We want the kind of notion that we're all, sort of like back in the day, we're all... What would you say?

The idea to the US was like back in the 1950s.

And I'm old enough that I can remember that.

- Me too.

- Charlie, you mentioned, you both mentioned the Medicaid funding.

I think there was a note, maybe it might've been in today's Capitol Facts, that Congressman LaHood is maybe trying to work behind the scenes to get money restored to Illinois, not only maybe to Illinois, but also to Ohio for Medicaid.

If I read correctly, it's a pretty, potentially a pretty good size gap in the fiscal '26 budget if we don't see some of these dollars.

- Well, yeah, and keep in mind, we already have fiscal '26 budget for the state, and of course that creates headaches because it's unknown at this point.

They may have to come back in fall and try to address it, but as you touched on, Medicaid means a tremendous amount to how we deliver public health in this country, but especially in small cities and rural areas like ours, for example.

That Medicaid issue is huge, and the reason I think people don't understand entirely that it's so important is that these folks are going to get sick, or they're going to get hurt in car accidents, and they're gonna show up at the emergency room, and the hospitals have to deal with them.

And then that of course puts a tremendous strain on those budgets in especially the more rural areas like our area.

And people don't seem to understand that connection.

- Yeah, and as a matter of fact, the governor's office has predicted that the Medicaid in Illinois covers about 3.4 million people, roughly a fourth of the state's population.

It costs about roughly $34 billion a year, one of the largest categories in our entire budget.

And we talk about the notion of these are people who get sick, go to the hospital, which is true, but there's a big chunk of it that pays for nursing home care.

Well, more than half of the people who are in nursing home care are being paid through Medicaid.

And according to KFF, which is a national health analytical organization, something like 70% of all nursing home care is paid for through these Medicaid funds.

And if we were to lose that money, there's also been concerns that some hospitals would close.

As a matter of fact, a research office at the University of North Carolina predicted that there would be nine hospitals in Illinois that would probably close.

And interestingly enough or sadly enough, six of the nine are in Southern Illinois.

Actually, there's one in Darren Hood's district up in Dixon.

And then there are a couple in Danville or in Vermilion County which interestingly enough are in the congressional district of Robin Kelly, who's the South Side Chicago Democrat, but her district goes all the way down to the middle of the Vermilion County.

And so it would really have an impact on southern Illinois.

And as I understand it, you guys are there and you see it more than I would from Springfield.

There has been some pushback on Representative Bost about what may occur to healthcare in Southern Illinois.

- Yes, and we've had a couple of the healthcare agencies themselves say that they don't have a plan to close, at least not yet, contrary to what some of the popular reporting is.

Obviously, it is a fluid situation that we'll certainly be watching.

You alluded to a couple of things, Charlie, that I wanted to kind of transition here, and part and parcel of both how our state and federal government is governed is related to how Illinois obviously is gonna be represented in Congress as well as at the state level.

And it appears we'll be undergoing several changes in this upcoming election season.

I think probably most of the maneuvering originated when Senator Durbin announced that he would not seek reelection, which triggered several, I guess, politicians to contemplate their future.

I got a previous show.

I joked that we were gonna need a scorecard or at least a whiteboard to keep track of everything.

I think there's, what, at least three congressional members that may be vying for that open senate seat, Charlie.

Obviously this opens up a lot of other seats.

We've got the lieutenant governor as a candidate there.

So we've got constitutional offices.

Comptroller Mendoza has announced that she's not going to run for reelection.

So there's another constitutional office in the state that'll be opened up.

Charlie can help us make some sense in how all this is playing out or will possibly play out in the primary, in the upcoming election.

- Well, as you say, the obvious question on the state level is, who's gonna be the next state comptroller and the Cook County Democratic Party organization had slating last week, and they slated Margaret Croke who is a state representative from the Lincoln Park area of Chicago, and they did not slate a couple other women who were vying for that position.

Yeah, Senator Karina Villa from West Chicago and Lake County Treasurer Holly Kim were also seeking that post.

And instead, as I say, it went to Margaret Croke, and there was some behind the scenes maneuvering, and particularly Senate President Don Harmon who's from Oak Park said after it that he was very disappointed.

And he said that, as a result of this slating, we have a slate, and he says, quote, "That does not have any representation from Latino caucus, no representation from the Asian caucus, and no one from outside the city of Chicago."

I think this is a problem for us Democrats, and it very well might be.

As a matter of fact, I went back actually to 1818 and looked at the records, and I'm pretty sure if you look at it, the Democratic, assuming that the people who are slated will win their primaries, the statewide candidates from the US Senate on down are all gonna be from the city of Chicago, and that's never happened before.

There were a couple times when the US Senator was not up for election, and the senator for the last 20 some years has been Dick Durbin from Springfield, and all the other candidates statewide we're from Chicago.

But it's the kind of thing that it's very rare, and it'll be interesting to see how that plays out outside the city of Chicago and in the suburban areas, and particularly in downstate Illinois.

In my mind, part of the problem is though, who's gonna run against him?

The Republicans have nobody in the top tier.

Darin LaHood who's a congressman has been suggested.

He's probably the biggest Republican name out there.

But in my mind, it would be goofy for Darin LaHood to decide to run for governor when he's guaranteed to keep getting reelected to Congress.

He's moving up in the leadership ranks of the Republicans in Congress.

So why should he take this run against JB Pritzker who has all the money in the world?

Republicans aren't gonna be able to raise any money.

If I'm a Republican political donor, and I wanna make an impact to the elections, I'm not gonna spend any money in Illinois.

I'm gonna put my money into congressional races and US Senate races in states where there's a chance that we could flip a democratic seat or that we might lose a Republican seat.

I'm not gonna throw my money away on a wild goose chase here in Illinois.

I don't know, John, if you would agree with that, but that's sort of how I see it from here.

- Yeah, absolutely.

I think that's right.

- So what has changed with the Illinois Republican Party since say the Thompson or Edgar years?

We haven't really seen a constitutional officer, I don't think, since the Rauner administration.

What's changed?

'cause obviously it's a different party than it was.

- Well, MAGA has changed.

MAGA has taken over all of the parties and all of the states.

And unfortunately, that means that the possibilities for bipartisanship, the old fashioned horse-trading give and take and compromise that we had in our political process and very legitimate political process, the only thing that will work in a separation of powers, checks and balances system has become a one person road kind of situation.

There is absolutely, I wouldn't say no, but very little in terms of controlling and providing guardrails to what the president wants.

So we have a form of presidential government or what Arthur Schlesinger called in the Nixon era, the imperial presidency, and that's where the rules are made.

And the Congress or the state general assembly, really, they fall in line.

And so that's the major thing that has changed.

- Yeah, and I would observe you mentioned, Jeff, at the beginning of the show that I'm a long time observer.

Well, I really am a long, long time observer.

And as a reporter at The Sun Times, I covered Dick Ogilvie as governor, I covered Jim Thompson in foreruns for Governor, Jim Edgar.

And they were all Republicans and very good Republicans, 100% true blue Republicans back in the day, But I would venture to say that someone like Jim Edgar, there would be no way in Hades that he could win a Republican primary these days, nor could Jim Thompson.

And so that's how as...

Excuse me, as John was saying, that's how the Republican party has changed.

It's become, on social issues, has become a lot more conservative and a lot more anti inclusive than folks like Jim Edgar, and Jim Thompson, and Dick Ogilvie were, and George Ryan also for that matter.

- Well, I think the summary is we're still fighting the culture wars and leaving the economic war mostly out of the picture, And that has been the most marked change in terms of Illinois politics.

- Gentlemen, we've got about four minutes, 4 1/2 minutes or so left.

I wanted to circle back to topic that we kinda touched on a little earlier.

Especially John, you mentioned the effect of the Trump administration policies are having on higher education, especially when it comes to funding and academic freedom.

Obviously, we're here in a public university.

We've got several of them throughout the state.

Kinda help, in the time we have left, kinda help unpack this issue for us and what you're looking at.

- Well, this is a tremendously important question of the impact of the Trump administration.

There have already had the impact and it continues.

The spotlight has been on Harvard, which of course is the oldest, the richest and best known around the world.

And we all have a tremendous stake in that case because it includes not only the privates but the publics.

We all say that our missions are teaching, research, and service.

Well, this impacts all three of those missions.

The fundamentals of the Harvard case couldn't be more profound, number one, on free speech grounds.

The question is, what is protected under free speech, especially about academic freedom.

This is a question of what will the curriculum be?

Who will teach the curriculum?

Who gets hired?

Who gets fired?

Who gets all kinds of other impacts?

I wanna discuss, for example, things that people don't note outside the university system.

Number one, most understand international students are here and they don't understand how important international students are because the government pays or the parents pay for international students to come to the US and to study, and we make a profit off of them.

They help subsidize American students because of what we take in, whether it's SIU, U of I, whatever.

Nevermind Harvard.

And number two, the international faculty is crucial to keeping all kinds of things open in terms of what we teach in engineering, and medicine, and healthcare, and computer science, economics.

You couldn't mount a good faculty without all of those folks that came and stayed.

So I think it's terribly important to understand that and to understand the role that international students play.

And another thing that folks haven't noticed is they wanna take away the overhead recovery that we get for doing research, which is fundamental to our research enterprise.

That is we maintain the labs, we maintain the teachers, and they get grants from the government to do research.

And they wanna cap that at 15.

I think SIU is currently 46 or 48.

And that's a terribly esoteric, but terribly important, and they also wanna tax the foundation incomes.

So there's all kinds of money involved in this and Harvard can't afford it.

And if Harvard can't afford it, I guarantee you SIU can't afford it.

You mention PBS and place where you work, and that's the best example I can think of.

NPR and PBS, that's dear to your heart.

- Well, and it also occurs to me that we're kind of cutting off our nose to spite our face.

We're stopping money for this research that's gonna lead to the scientific advances and the great innovations of the coming decades, And we're not gonna help fund it anymore.

And then we're also gonna say, "And we don't want the smartest kids from all over the world to come and study here.

We're not gonna try and attract them.

They can go somewhere else."

And I don't know if Southern has noticed this, but I know the U of I has where some of the kids who really bright scholars from other countries are thinking, "I'm not sure I wanna go to the US to study.

I may go to Canada, or I may go to Great Britain, or Australia, or somewhere where I will be more welcome."

- Charlie, I'll let you have the last word.

And as often happens, we run out of time before we run out of things to discuss.

Gentlemen, John Jackson, Charlie Wheeler, thank you both for joining us this week.

- Thank you.

- And thank you at home for watching "Capitol View" on WSIU.

I'm Jeff Williams.

Have a good week.

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