(The Center Square) – Illinois legislators were at each other’s throats the day after President Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress.
Tuesday night, Trump talked about efforts to close the border, to end the war in Ukraine, to cut taxes and to impose tariffs on foreign countries to make trade more fair.
During debate on the Illinois House floor Wednesday, state Rep. Katie Stuart, D-Edwardsville, said Trump’s actions are rattling the stock market and hurting Illinois families’ savings.
“This isn’t 12-dimensional chess, this isn’t playing hardball with trading partners, this is playing with working people who put their trust in the markets and try to build a safe and secure retirement,” Stuart said.
State Rep. Blaine Wilhour, R-Beecher City, told majority Democrats at the statehouse complaining about the Trump administration to clean up their own house.
“We can’t build anything in Illinois because you guys have destroyed, you’ve destroyed our economy with your massive regulations, with your massive taxes on everybody, on business and families and everything else,” Wilhour said.
Gender ideology also took center stage during points of personal privilege Wednesday after Trump made a point of working to end men playing in women’s sports.
State Rep. Kelly Cassidy, D-Chicago, criticized Republicans for focusing on the issue.
“These are our children we are talking about,” Cassidy said. “You are making targets out of kids. You are driving children to suicide.”
State Rep. Bill Hauter, R-Morton, a medical doctor, provided a recent study showing that it’s gender surgeries and medical procedures causing suicidal ideation.
“These are facts and evidence, not conards and not feelings,” Hauter said. “Please stop these harmful surgeries in Illinois medicine.”
Cassidy fired back with studies showing adolescents with gender dysphoria that get medical gender procedures are less likely to commit suicide.
