CHICAGO — One year into President Donald Trump’s second term in office, top Illinois Democrats said it’s been a year of broken promises, uncertainty and fear for the future.
“Today marks 365 days of chaos, 365 days of attacks upon civil rights, on the rule of law and on the Constitution itself,” Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said at a Tuesday news conference in Chicago.
“When I became attorney general, I swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution and the rule of law, and I will not be deterred or intimidated, even if it means defending the rule of law from attacks by our own federal government,” Raoul added.
Gov. JB Pritzker used the day to meet with business leaders, health care workers, moms and a college student in Chicago to hear how Trump’s first year back in office has impacted their lives.
Pritzker held dozens of events and news conferences over the last year to push back on Trump and create a political blueprint for Democrats. The second-term governor, who turned 61 on Monday, emerged in 2025 as one of Trump’s most vocal critics from the Democratic Party.
“The fact that people started paying attention to the things that I was saying was, frankly, a little bit surprising to me, but it was a result I think, of no one else really was saying and being as blunt as I was,” Pritzker told reporters.
Read more: Needling Trump as 2028 looms: Inside JB Pritzker’s all-of-the-above media strategy
While Pritzker has waged the rhetorical battle, most of Democrats’ efforts to block Trump’s initiatives happened in the courtroom. Over the last year, attorneys in Raoul’s office filed 51 lawsuits on behalf of Illinois residents, or nearly one a week, according to the attorney general’s office.
What’s in the lawsuits
A handful of lawsuits have challenged the tactics of Customs and Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, sought to block deployment of National Guard troops, won a nationwide temporary restraining order against a Trump executive order that sought to end birthright citizenship, and sued the administration over its decision to pause Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits amid the government shutdown.
Other suits have pushed back against the Trump administration’s efforts to defund federal programs. Illinois won a court order barring the administration from withholding federal emergency funding due to Illinois’ immigration policies and temporarily stayed the administration from freezing $10 billion in child care and family service programs to five Democratic-led states.
Read more: Illinois, 4 other states targeted for $10B child care funding freeze win restraining order | Lawsuit puts Illinois on offensive against ‘menacing’ immigration raids | Illinois among 12 states to sue as Trump seeks forced compliance with gender order
Multiple suits sought to protect transgender and nonbinary Illinoisians, with one in August seeking to block an executive order that prohibited gender-affirming care for young people. In December, Illinois sued the White House for its threats to cut off Medicaid and Medicare funding for hospitals providing that care. Another suit recently challenged a policy that would condition billions of dollars in federal funding on states’ adherence to the Trump administration’s definitions of sex and gender.
Raoul said those suits have protected over $6.6 billion for the state, funding programs and services that Illinois families rely on.
‘This fight was personal’
Raoul struck an emotional tone when speaking about his office’s fight against the Trump administration.
The day after Trump’s inauguration last year, Raoul’s office filed its first lawsuit of the second term to protect birthright citizenship — the right to citizenship for those born in the United States regardless of their parents’ citizenship status. A judge ruled with Illinois in February, calling birthright an “unequivocal Constitutional right.”
“As a proud son of Haitian immigrants, born at the time that my mother was not yet naturalized, I am a birthright citizen,” Raoul said. “So, our first action could not have been more personal for me.”
Referencing another suit challenging the Trump administration’s move to halt medical research funding, Raoul repeated the mantra.
“As a survivor of the cancer that took my father and both my grandfathers, protecting funding for cancer research could not be more personal for me,” he said.
Raoul was joined at the conference by over 25 attorneys from his office that he credited with working overtime and on weekends to file the legal actions. Raoul said the work had taken an emotional toll on his staff.
“Today, I'm joined by the hard-working attorneys of my office to say we are not demoralized, and we are certainly not exhausted,” Raoul said. “We are standing our ground to defend the rights of the people of Illinois and the rule of law, and we’re winning in the courts.”
In many cases, Illinois joined with other states to file jointly against the administration. Raoul said about two dozen attorneys general communicate with each other about three times a week, collaboration that he called “critical” for handling the caseload.
‘We can’t go on like this’
Health care providers, food pantries and other community service organizations that rely on federal funding for social services have felt the brunt of many of Trump’s funding cuts. The panelists at Pritzker’s event told him their lives and livelihoods have been shrouded in uncertainty as Trump administration policies change on a whim.
“It's upsetting and we're all going to have to be in this together to make sure we're sending the message,” Pritzker said. “It's part of the reason we're here today and standing in front of cameras and reporters. And partly, our job is going to be making sure our representatives, Republicans and Democrats, know that we can't go on like this for much longer.”
Pritzker agreed with their sentiments about uncertainty making it hard to plan and respond to federal changes. He said whether or not funds are cut or tariffs are levied often “depends on what side of the bed someone wakes on in the morning in Washington.”
The governor warned it will be hard for the state to fill the gaps left by federal cuts to programs.
He said the president hasn’t fulfilled any of his campaign promises to make life easier or more affordable. Pritzker has long pointed to raising Illinois’ minimum wage to $15 as one of his signature accomplishments but said that’s no longer “enough for somebody to survive on.”
While his lieutenant governor, Juliana Stratton, is running for U.S. Senate supporting a $25 federal minimum wage, Pritzker did not elaborate on whether he plans to push to raise Illinois’ minimum wage again.
The Illinois GOP, meanwhile, said the last year has been “prosperous” for the state because of Trump. The party pointed to 11 events, including a reduction in the national murder rate and decline in egg prices.
“Illinois, and the United States, is stronger, safer, and more prosperous,” the party said in a statement. “In his first year as the 47th President of the United States, President Trump has delivered on his promises and produced results for the American people.”
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
This article first appeared on Capitol News Illinois and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.