(The Center Square) – Illinois legislators from both sides of the aisle are reacting to former President Donald Trump’s apparent victory to take back the White House and Congress for Republicans.
The makeup of the Illinois General Assembly isn’t expected to change much if at all after Tuesday’s election. Democrats are expected to maintain their supermajorities in both chambers of the state legislature.
State Rep. Adam Niemerg, R-Dieterich, said Republicans need to take a page from Trump’s playbook by pushing back against Democrats harder.
“And unfortunately sometimes in the Illinois House, we don’t see that,” Niemerg told The Center Square. “So we’re sitting at 40 [Illinois House seats to Democrats’ 78 seats] and in my opinion with the way everything went last night, we should have picked up seats and that was a failure.”
With an expected sweep of both chambers of the U.S. Congress and the presidency, state Rep. La Shawn Ford, D-Chicago, said his party should aim to do what they can to counter Trump’s agenda.
“Make sure that we protect some of our human rights in our state statutes and protect education programs,” Ford told The Center Square.
Legislators return for fall veto session next week. Lame duck session is in early January. The new General Assembly will be seated mid-January.
Jan. 20, Trump is expected to be inaugurated. One of the first things he’s promised to do is start a mass deportation operation for violent illegal aliens. Millions of non-citizen migrants have entered the country under the Biden-Harris administration. Hundreds of thousands have known criminal records.
Ford said he isn’t taking the Republicans’ plan lightly. He said Illinois must find a way to cooperate or face the possible consequences.
“It’s always through federal funds where he could tie federal funds to cooperation,” Ford said.
Niemerg doesn’t expect Illinois Democrats to cooperate. He said the courts will probably have to intervene.
“So the Democrats know that it’s a loser, it has lost. It has lost them the election along with a multitude of other issues,” Niemerg said. “But to answer your question definitively, that’s something that’s probably going to have to be sorted out in the courts.”
Illinois law prohibits local and state law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement if a detention order is the only thing against an individual.
