Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said, during an event hosted by Punchbowl News, that the only reason Illinois didn’t participate in the nationwide redistricting arms race was that Indiana didn’t. <\/p>\n
GOV. JB PRITZKER: Look, I don’t think we should have had mid-cycle redistricting at all. This happens once every 10 years. We do a census all over the country. Everybody redistricts in 2021, then again in 2031. That’s been the way it’s been done forever. And now you’ve got a president who’s trying to game the system. He’s trying to create a system that will benefit him. And so he’s done that state after state after state. I do not believe that’s how we ought to do this. My view is that we had a bill back in 2021 that all the Democrats voted for, all the Republicans voted against, and it would have required independent commissions in every state to draw the lines. That would have been a much better system than this kind of political redistricting, and any year you want to do it, you can, right? ANNA PALMER, PUNCHBOWL NEWS FOUNDER: But I think the Democrats, if you talk to Hakeem Jeffries, minority leader of the House, he says, “We can’t disarm, right? If Republicans are going to take the political step here to redistrict, we need to answer the call.” Does Illinois need to take a look at this, potentially? GOV. JB PRITZKER: Well, we did. And what we did was we said, “Look, remember that Indiana did not redistrict. Why didn’t they?” Well, in part because we said, “If Indiana redistricts, we will.” And they chose not to. Republicans stood up to Donald Trump. Many of them lost their re-elections. We should all take note, those folks stood up and did the right thing in a tough circumstance. And a lot of Republicans haven’t done that. So we chose to kind of use it as a threat. We would, in fact, do it if we had to. It’s hard to do, to be clear. And the districts would be, as they seem now to have looked in some other states where they’re redistricting, you’d be drawing lines that make it look like a spiderweb. But we think we’re in the right position right now. I hope that there aren’t more efforts to redistrict. I’ve been involved in trying to fight back on the Missouri redistricting, supported the California redistricting, again because we’ve got to fight fire with fire. It’s not what I would prefer, but this is where we are in the United States today.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Here’s the full event where he discusses the Iran deal<\/a>, social media access for kids, and other issues: