Governor J.B. Pritzker
Appearances
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
Thanks for having me.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
Well, first of all, I think we ought to be focused, right? It's clear they're trying to flood the zone. They want us to pay attention to Greenland and Panama Canal and all these things that really don't have anything to do with the lives of ordinary Americans every day. And so at least we Democrats ought to be focused on, frankly, what we ought to have been focused on in the last election, too.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
which is affordability and just making life a little easier for people. How about health care where Democrats have the right solutions and the Republicans are just trying to take health care away from people? So I think we should talk a lot about that and focus on that.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
But I think you can't overlook the fact that they're tearing down the institutions of our government, the institutions that have been established under the Constitution. And it's vitally important to all of us that we preserve those things.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
But again, average folks out there, if you knocked on 100 doors and talked to people at the doors, and I've knocked on a lot of doors, you know, nobody's going to say, oh, yeah, democracy, that's the number one issue, even though it is something that is, you know, affecting people's daily lives. It just doesn't feel like that.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
It's, you know, when you buy your groceries, when you go to buy your automobile, you know, as soon as these tariffs go in with Canada and Mexico, which make no sense at all to me, unless you're trying to provide a large tax cut to the wealthiest Americans, of course. But because they're trying to collect from the American public those tariffs, that's who's going to pay.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
So anyway, we've got a lot of work to do to make sure that we're communicating with the public in the right way. But sounding the alarm is something that I think is hugely important. It's what I've tried to do. It's why I gave the speech that I gave last week talking about the death of a constitutional republic. And I wish more people were out there and out front, you know, raising attention.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
Yeah, but that wasn't a campaign message. I mean, that is my personal belief. I helped to build a Holocaust museum. I'm Jewish. I've been fighting anti-Semitism, well, it seems like my whole life now. And so I really felt compelled to talk about what's happening in the country broadly. It wasn't, you know, about what I think the message for 2026 ought to be or 2028.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
And that's why I really think we ought to be focused. If you want to talk messaging, it needs to be around the challenges that people are facing every single day. Going to the grocery store and can't afford eggs or tomatoes or avocados or anything else that you're looking to buy, knowing that you want to go buy a car and now prices are going up.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
And by the way, they promised that they were going to lower prices on day one.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
That's what they said. I don't know how they intended to get that done on day one, but that's what they said they would do. We're on day 39 now and prices have only gone up, not down. And and they're making it worse with the tariffs, which, again, are taxes on middle class Americans and working class Americans. So so I think that's the message. If you want to talk about what matters to people.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
It's their daily lives. You know, can I send my kid to college affordably? Can I save for retirement? Is there a way to get a better wage and a better job? That's another one. Let's talk wages. You know, you want a stark contrast between the two parties. We Democrats, we think $7.25 as a minimum wage and $14,000 a year, that's what that yields, isn't enough to live on.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
And we're for raising the minimum wage. Republicans, they're either okay with a $7.25 minimum wage or some of them want to do away with a minimum wage altogether. I'd like to fight that fight in 2026. I think that ought to be a central focus of at least one part of the economic message. So that's what I think we ought to be talking about.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
Meanwhile, as you know, you know, I do think that many of us need to, as leaders, remind people that the institutions of government are why you're able to get the things that matter to you. And when they get torn down, in other words, if you care about health care, if you care about veteran services, if you care about being able to get a rise in the minimum wage.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
You need a representative democracy that actually is representative. And you need to make sure that the courts are forcing the administration and the Congress and everybody else to follow the law. But if the administration ignores the courts, then, boy, we're all done for in this country. We're not going to have a democracy two or four years from now.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
Yeah. You know, I was asked this earlier today at a press conference. You know, what what should you know, what what should we do to amplify this? Look, it's happening on its own. I can tell you that, you know, we've seen polling data in the state of Illinois where back in December and January, voters out there wanted leaders in Illinois to work with Donald Trump to get things done.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
We're now a month and a half after that. And I've seen polling data very recently that says, actually, instead, now they want you to resist Donald Trump. So that's the beginning of the fall of his numbers. And it's going to be a challenging, I think, spring and summer for him because people's lives are being affected in a negative way.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
I do think that one of the things that we need to be doing is talking about not only preserving important institutions that preserve people's way of life. By the way, do you want to get on an airplane and know that there aren't air traffic controllers in the tower that can do the job? Elon Musk letting go air traffic controllers.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
And then I think yesterday tweeting, oh, no, we need hundreds of them to come back, please. The Ebola scientists that they fired and then discovered, oh, I guess we do need to actually react when there's a deadly disease that needs to be addressed. So those institutions and NOAA, I don't know if you've heard about the, you know, they're shutting down.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Remember, that's the thing that helps you know whether the hurricane is coming to Florida or to Georgia or to Texas. And so these are the things, you know, if they tear all that down, your daily life is going to be affected. And that's what's happening now. So what should we be doing? Well, first, we need to highlight what they're tearing down.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
Medicaid. If we're not talking about Medicaid and health care for people, we're missing the boat because seniors, children in my state, half of children are on Medicaid. Half. And seniors, you know, everybody either has a grandma or has a friend with a grandma who's in a nursing home because she has Medicaid and won't be in the nursing home if she loses her Medicaid.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
So these are the things I think, again, that we ought to be focusing on. And I think that's why you're going to see those poll numbers dropping. You are right about Elon Musk. Those numbers have been dropping like a rock. And it's certainly a feature of talking points to point at this person who is literally the wealthiest person in the world and who is now essentially running the U.S. government.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
And particularly, you know, remember Teddy Roosevelt and antitrust laws. You know, that's why there are antitrust laws. You don't want any one company or any one person to have too much economic power in this country. You're absolutely free to go out and earn like heck and become a millionaire and a billionaire.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
But you shouldn't be put in charge of the reins of government, which are supposed to be regulating your business.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
Well, let me be clear up front that I believe in universal health care. And that doesn't mean that we have to have one system that covers everybody. It does mean that we've got to have systems that cover everybody. And Medicaid is part of that patchwork of systems that we want to put together.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
But, you know, Medicaid, I mean, I can't even tell you how important it is that we preserve that and that that's a central part of a message. But, what will we do in the state of Illinois? Well, let me make clear what we're talking about.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
If they do away even just with the expansion of Medicaid, and I expect based on the budget that was passed in the House, if that were to become law somehow, the only way they could make that work is to cut Medicaid even further than just the Affordable Care Act. But let's talk just about the Affordable Care Act. 770,000 people in my state would lose health care and
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
if we were to try to make that up, it would be $7.4 billion. Now our whole budget for the state is $55 billion. That's what I proposed. $55 billion. We don't have $7 billion to try to make up for the federal government not sending us those dollars. So, So it would be devastating. And what would we do?
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
Well, we'd have to, first of all, we'd lose our rural hospitals and our safety net hospitals, rural hospitals across most of my state, safety net hospitals in Chicago, and we can't afford to lose those. So we would have to shore up those hospitals.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
We'd have to make sure that there's as much free care as we could provide, which, you know, without having seven and a half billion dollars, going to be very difficult to do. But you know, the $700 million, $750 million that the state provides as part of that Medicare expansion, we would probably have to turn that into subsidies for hospitals and for clinics. So it's not good enough, honestly.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
I mean, it's what we would be able to do, but it's not good enough. And that's why we've got to go out, all of us, and fight like heck. One more thing. The people who will lose their health care as a result of what they're trying to do in the House budget, Many of them are Republicans. Indeed, I think about half in Illinois. And we're not a 50-50 Democrat-Republican state.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
But half the people who would lose Medicaid as a result of that would be people who live in Republican districts. And they're typically they are Republicans, rural Americans who have most often voted for Donald Trump. didn't know when they voted for him this last time that they'd be losing their health care. So I don't know what to say.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
I mean, I'm frustrated as heck by this because if I had the resources available, of course, I would put that back in place and make sure that people are not harmed anymore. by what the congressional Republicans and Donald Trump are doing.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
Last thing on this topic, which is, or at least for me, Donald Trump says, he keeps saying, oh, no, he's not going to hurt, you know, he's not going to cut Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security. Well, meanwhile, indeed, he endorsed the Republican plan in the House that would cut Medicaid. So he's lying. I mean, I don't think that's a surprise to a lot of people. He's lying.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
But if he's lying about Medicaid, is he lying about Medicare and Social Security? Probably. We don't know yet, but you ought to be awfully suspicious.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
Yeah, and I think it's OK to talk about the inefficiencies.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
I, you know, admit that government, listen, I've seen it. I was in business before I became governor. I, you know, now I'm in charge of a government and I can tell you that there are inefficiencies everywhere. And, you know, waste, fraud and abuse, as people like to talk about it, it exists for sure. And we're always trying to root it out.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
But unlike, you know, using a chainsaw the way that Elon Musk talks about and just you know, cutting programs entirely. Instead, what you need to do, and this is the hard work of governing, by the way, is you need to go into the agencies and task the people who are running the agencies with finding the areas of inefficiency. and in effectiveness.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
And I want to focus on that last part because effectiveness is the important part of these programs. People need healthcare. They want efficiency, but most of all, they want to deliver it effectively to them. And that involves efficiency. So I say that because delivering, making our institutions work is really important for reinstilling trust that people have in government. Because I get it.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
People don't trust government. And, you know, again, I came from outside of government. I can tell you, you know, when I saw, for example, that in Illinois, when I showed up, my predecessor, the Republican who preceded me, had left one hundred and forty thousand Medicaid applications that they hadn't looked at.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
And they were basically just delaying giving people their health care because he didn't want to pay for it. Right. That's that's ineffective and inefficient. You need people to get health care. Otherwise, they're going to end up in an emergency room. It'll cost you a lot more. And then there are a whole lot of things that happen in government that take too long.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
And so we've got to just acknowledge those things and recognize that, of course, there's inefficiencies. People are all excited about, oh, a Department of Government Efficiency. That sounds great. But I have to say, not if they're taking away the things that really matter to you, like child care, like Meals on Wheels, like Medicaid.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
Yeah. We've got to have an immigration policy that actually makes some sense. They showed up in Chicago, Tom Homan did, with Dr. Phil. in tow.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
Listen, I think everybody in government could use a therapist. But the fact is that showing up with a television personality, I mean, it really tells you it's all for show. And, you know, they want to parade in front of the cameras the undocumented immigrants that they're finding when it turns out that, first of all, quite a number of the people that they rounded up are actually U.S. citizens.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
And they just didn't, like none of us, walk around with our citizenship papers, right? That sounds an awful lot like Germany in the 1930s. And that's not something that, you know, so people got rounded up and taken to Guantanamo, and you've read some of the stories about that. Yeah. I so it's been it's been a, you know, a, you know, a terrible, you know, show for everybody.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
First of all, and second of all, you know, you have to have a coherent policy. You can't just say we're going after all the undocumented immigrants. Let's start with the most violent, the people who've been convicted of a crime.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
I think none of us out here, governors, you know, anybody believes that someone who's been convicted of a violent crime who's undocumented deserves to stay in this country. So fine, come get them. That's great. We've always wanted help trying to arrest people who are violent criminals. But, you know, they're not showing up at our prisons and our jails with guns.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
from a court, which is all you need, right? And it would be easy to get to say, this person's undocumented, we should deport them. Why aren't they doing it? It's one of two things. Either they're smart enough to recognize that if you take people who are undocumented out of prison and then deport them and let them free, that they might end up coming back to the United States.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
These are violent criminals. We caught them. We convicted them. We put them in prison. so you don't really want to let them go. Uh, that's, you know, perhaps they understand that perhaps there, but they're not showing up at our prisons and our jails to, with warrants to, to, to take them away. Uh, uh, the second thing I think just to point out is that, uh,
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
There are a lot of undocumented people who live in Illinois and all across the country who are law-abiding citizens or residents, rather, who hold down jobs. They pay taxes. They're actually pillars of their community. They're our neighbors and our friends often. And these are the very people that if you had a good immigration policy— you'd want to come into the country.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
So if they're already here, how about we give them a path to staying here? Again, these are people law abiding, good people. Some of them own businesses or, you know, they've been they've started businesses in this country. So and the last point I'll make is, you know, because, again, I'm a business person.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
You look at the Fortune 500, 46 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or or their children, their first generation children. We want immigration in this country. It's good for our economy. It's good for the future of the country. And with birth rates going down, we're the one country in the world that is founded in many ways on immigration.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
And so we ought to take advantage of that when you look at all the other wealthy countries in the world. We're the one that really has the opportunity to take advantage of our history and our belief in immigration to help ourselves in the world economy.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
Well, I was a critic of the Biden administration's policy. In fact, I reluctantly I wrote a public letter. I sent it to the president and made it public about the mistakes that I think were being made at the border and the ways in which the federal government needed to step up and do a better job there. on immigration, particularly around the migrants.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
You know, meanwhile, just to be clear, and I know there were a lot of people not just in Chicago, but around the country who were upset about migrants showing up in their communities, you know, and it cost our state quite a lot of money and our city of Chicago. But let me be clear. This was a humanitarian crisis from my perspective. I didn't create the crisis.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
But all of a sudden, as you're pointing out, you know, buses showed up and they were aimed at Chicago. It wasn't like people just naturally decided in the middle of winter they're going to get on a bus from Texas and go to Chicago, you know. And indeed, people showed up here with T-shirts and sandals on when they arrived. So, yeah. It was an enormous challenge. The policy wasn't right.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
But when people show up, you know, we're Americans, you know, at that moment when someone is, you know, without shelter, without the proper clothing and needing to be fed, you do all those things. And we did those things because it was the right thing to do. But, yeah, the policy was wrong. And we need to have a... We need to have border security.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
And I love, by the way, that Ruben Gallego, I think, says it best. You know, you don't have a country if you don't have a secure border. So let's have a secure border. But let's also have like robust immigration and immigration that isn't just about people who are willing to pay five million or have five million dollars to pay for a gold card or
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
to get into the country and take advantage of whatever tax breaks they might be given. But also immigration that allows people like my family, who came here three generations ago and had nothing. We were refugees from Ukraine, would have been killed had they stayed, as many Jews were, and were allowed to come into this country and had nothing. But
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
The most driven people, you know, that are in our country are often the people who show up from somewhere else escaping something, wanting to make a better life for themselves and their families. And so that's the, you know, it's a challenge. There's no doubt. But it doesn't seem, frankly, all that complicated if you secure the border, which we can do. It seems like it's happening now. Right.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
But you can secure the border, but also think about the economic future of the country is dependent upon having more immigration, not less.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
Yeah, invest in it. Let's begin with that. But also, I'd like to just challenge at least couple of notions you put forward. The NAEP scores, which are the English, the reading and math scores that are done nationally, these are the tests that are given all across the nation, just came out. And our eighth graders in Illinois came in second in the nation. Number one was Massachusetts.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
Number two was Illinois. Our eighth graders in math came in fifth in the nation and So we're actually doing pretty well. I'm talking about, you know, the state of Illinois is doing reasonably well. There are always challenges in big cities versus other places like suburbs, for example. But that doesn't mean we got to give up on those kids or give up on investing in those schools.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
But they do need to be managed well. And we do need to attract teachers. We don't have enough teachers and we're going to need more. And we have put in programs. I have to attract teachers, to provide signing bonuses, to help them get housing and so on.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
And we have the ability to attract them because we pay reasonably well if you want to be a teacher in Chicago or anywhere in the state of Illinois. So it's an attractive place to teach. But we got to invest in these schools. We're not fully invested in the state of Illinois. We're trying really hard You know, I inherited a fiscal situation that was terrible in 2019 when I came into office.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
And, you know, we've gotten nine credit upgrades and we've got a finally got a rainy day fund and we've increased funding for education by more than two billion dollars since I came into office. And we're continuing that with the proposed budget I put in place. But, you know, the fact is that our, you know, our kids are worth investing in and the
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
I would say the wraparound services that you need for their families is also hugely important in order for our kids to get ahead. Last point I'll make on this early childhood education. I've been involved in this arena for 25 years, long before I was governor, is perhaps the most important arena for us to invest in.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
It's universal preschool, but it's also everything from early intervention services, which can make the difference between a child growing up with challenges and autism their whole life, or perhaps being able to actually join a classroom in a public school and graduate and go to college. Those early intervention investments make a big difference. So do home visitation programs.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
We've seen that, that nurses or professionals showing up and helping parents do a better job and answer questions for them, you know, and providing them a healthcare check makes a big difference. So I mentioned all that because I think people think that, that, um,
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
well, if children are not doing well in school, if our school isn't doing well, well, maybe we ought to divest from schools and just let it kind of happen on its own in a private market. And the reality is that public education is the foundation of our democracy, and we need to invest in it, not divest.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
Yeah. And that was a very important thing that I considered as I put the policy together. We need to first we need kids to be focused in class. We need teachers to not have to fight the fight. with students about their devices in class.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
And if you ask teachers and ask most parents, and I have done that, I've talked to an awful lot of people about this, most parents will tell you they would rather their kids didn't have those devices in class. They do want them to have them in school, though. They want, in other words, it's okay with them if it's in their locker or if they check them in outside the classroom.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
They want their kids, though, to be able to focus in class and they want their teachers to be able to focus on their kids in class. So parents, generally speaking, very much in favor. How do we take care of the problem where their parents? Remember, there are some kids who actually need to have a device because there are a variety of reasons why. But, you know, one is just anxiety.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
And so that's just one example. But what we've done is proposed a policy where the schools get to work on their individual policies, but they're designed to have exceptions. Again, there are also health needs. I mentioned a mental health need and anxiety, but there are other health needs, diabetes, for example. And we've got, you know, automatic readers for people who have diabetes.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
So these are all things that are taken into account in this policy. Broadly speaking, though, this is hugely popular. There's just no doubt about it. And it's the right thing to do. And I have kids who graduated just two, three, four years ago, two of them, you know, from high school. And I went and asked them. you know, about how distracting is it?
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
And also, did you, you know, did your friends experience cyberbullying, you know, in classes? And the answer is yes, that there was that going on just in a single classroom. People are getting bullied on their device. So I think the trade-off is actually a really positive one. Just leave the device outside the door. You know, there's a way to lock them up and you can get it when you leave class.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
And for the most part, it's not going to be a problem. And schools get to make those decisions for themselves.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
Yeah. You know, one thing that makes me rage is, and this is a funny thing to say in the context of that question, is rage. I watch our public officials and what's happening in our political life. And it's like people have forgotten how to be kind. And it seems to me that the whole purpose of public service is to, you know, deliver what people need to make their lives better.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
That seems like a, you know, part of the answer to the question of how can you be kind? And we ought to be kind to one another. And what makes me rage is to look at the political arena and see that that seems to have gone out the window. And so it drives me crazy. It's not something... I'm not a person who... will rage in public.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
But, you know, you saw the speech that I gave about the death of a constitutional republic. And obviously, my experience, you know, my own family escaped the pogroms in Ukraine. I helped to build a Holocaust museum. So you can imagine that watching our constitutional democracy be torn apart is enraging to me.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
I'm not sure what to calm down about right now.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
Yeah, but I do. I do think we've got a lot of work to do, all of us to refocus ourselves on on the direction of the country. And again, on the most vulnerable people in our society, working class Americans, middle class Americans. That's where we ought to be focusing and not letting the richest man in the world dictate the policies of the U.S. government.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)
Appreciate you.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Gov Walz PUTS THE SCREWS in Trump for GOV FREEZE
Despite what the White House press secretary said at the podium earlier, I believe it is my duty to report to you the truth of what actually happened today in Illinois. Donald Trump's administration is lying to you. The White House's attempt to walk back what they did today does not match what we saw on the ground. they assured us that Medicaid would not be affected. That was a lie.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Gov Walz PUTS THE SCREWS in Trump for GOV FREEZE
Our state agencies were unable to access the Medicaid system until an hour ago, preventing payments for services. And this has been reported from states across the nation. When we reached out to federal agencies, they informed us that they have been directed not to discuss any guidance with states. They have canceled previously scheduled meetings for this week.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Gov Walz PUTS THE SCREWS in Trump for GOV FREEZE
The White House assured us that Head Start would not be affected. That was a lie. Providers across the state experienced outages, and some were unable to make their payroll.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Gov Walz PUTS THE SCREWS in Trump for GOV FREEZE
They assured us that they were doing nothing to take away individual assistance from the most vulnerable people in our state, but they refused to say that they would restore LIHEAP, the Low Income Housing Energy Assistance Program, payments to support the unemployment system, and Meals on Wheels.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Gov Walz PUTS THE SCREWS in Trump for GOV FREEZE
These are programs that hundreds of thousands of Illinoisans depend on, children, seniors, veterans, working parents. Let's just be clear about what happened over the last 24 hours. At 7.42 p.m. last night, we saw a memo from the White House saying that they were pausing federal funding across the board.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Gov Walz PUTS THE SCREWS in Trump for GOV FREEZE
This morning, along with all 50 states across the country, we discovered that our ability to access critical federal funding had been cut off. And now the administration would like us to believe that these were just coincidental website outages. Donald Trump and his administration have not earned the benefit of the doubt. They are either lying to us or they are critically incompetent.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Gov Walz PUTS THE SCREWS in Trump for GOV FREEZE
The United States Constitution clearly states that Congress has the power of the purse and sets laws to obligate federal funding for all 50 states. What Donald Trump tried to do in the last 24 hours is illegal. Let's be clear, this is a demonstration of cruelty against people who depend on us.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Gov Walz PUTS THE SCREWS in Trump for GOV FREEZE
Working families who rely on federal assistance to pay their rent, people who need help paying their utility bills, parents who need critical programs like Head Start for quality, affordable childcare, and 3.5 million Illinoisans who get their health insurance through Medicaid.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 3/21/25
Well, I will say, at least for me, I expected it. I think we're living in a kleptocracy now. It's clear that Elon Musk is trying to benefit himself while he's also exercising powers that he was never supposed to be granted. The Constitution certainly doesn't give someone unelected like that the amount of power that he's got. And you're watching as he benefits himself, harms his enemies.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 3/21/25
And I'm talking about just Elon Musk. Then you've got Donald Trump, who is enriching himself. We've seen him already selling meme coins that are worthless, taking people for all that they're worth sometimes. And then at the same time, You know, he said that on day one, he was going to bring down prices for people across America. Right.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 3/21/25
That you could go to the grocery store and you'd know that inflation was gone. Well, he's done the exact opposite. That was supposed to be day one. You know, day 62. We've seen prices at the grocery store are going up and 25 percent tariffs. on tomatoes and lettuce and barley from Canada and aluminum cans. You go to the grocery store, your beer is costing you more.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 3/21/25
Your tomatoes, your lettuce, et cetera, costing you more. Automobiles costing you more. Housing, lumber costing you more. This is what Donald Trump's all about. And and what's what does he get out of all of it? The ability to cut taxes for the wealthiest people in the United States, the people who don't need it.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
MeidasTouch Full Podcast - 3/21/25
He's taking money from people who are suffering, people who are just trying to get by and giving that money to, again, the wealthiest and the biggest corporations.