[MUSIC] >> Welcome to Capital View on WSIU I'm Brian Sapp.

Immigration enforcement and protest continue in the Chicago area.

News outlets are reporting members of the Texas National Guard have arrived at an Army reserve facility in suburban Chicago, and the federal government shutdown has entered week two.

We'll talk about the potential impacts here in Illinois.

And I talked with former Congressman Ray LaHood about his initiative with Bill Daley to reform the way Illinois draws up its legislative maps.

We're going to cover these topics and more.

Today, our guests are John Jackson.

He's the visiting professor for the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, and Charlie Wheeler, he's the emeritus director of the public affairs reporting program at the University of Illinois in Springfield.

John and Charlie, thanks for joining us today.

>> Thank you for inviting us.

>> To be here.

So we'll start with immigration enforcement.

It's been going on for a few weeks now.

Um, and it just slowly seems to kind of be ramping up.

Um, last week it was reported that Ice or Ice reported that they got boxed in by some cars as they were doing some enforcement.

And then it turned into, they claim a woman drove her there, her car at them, and they ended up one of the officers shot the car, shot the woman.

Um, so it seems like things kind of slowly are getting a little more chaotic.

And the president has threatened for these past month or two about sending National Guard troops to Illinois.

It seems like it's finally happened, John, where things stand and, you know, what does this mean for the relationship, I guess, between Illinois and Washington, D.C.?

>> Well, Brian, this duel between the governor and the president has been going on for some time.

Uh, it's officially called by the federal government Operation Midway.

And of course, it's now focused on bringing in the National Guard troops.

And it escalated considerably, in my view, this week.

And yesterday, the National Guard troops from, uh, Texas came in and to suburban Will County started setting up shop.

Um, the Department of Defense had already mobilized 300 Illinois National Guard, and now we have 400 from the great state of Texas, compliments of Greg Abbott.

And, uh, I think it's getting more fraught now with that many new federal troops going back to the beginning.

Uh, it's been a dispute over the legalities to some extent.

The governor insists that the old Posse comitatus law applies, and that's for insurrection or invasion.

Uh, that's Basically the question and governor says yes.

Posse comitatus says there is to be no use in domestic law enforcement by the federal military.

The president gives us the Insurrection Act as a possible rationale, the invasion question and the insurrection question.

But he mostly just says, I'm the commander in chief, and I can do whatever I want to.

Or occasionally he goes in a totally different law and order direction saying that everything's out of control in Chicago.

Uh, I think the state has pretty effectively mobilized the city and the county and now will County to respond to that, saying, well, we could stand some federal help, but not in this form.

We don't need Texas, uh, National Guard troops stomping around just as they did in Washington, D.C., of course.

Uh, and they have said that we would work with you, but we haven't heard anything from you.

Other cities are going through this.

Portland.

Excuse me.

Portland, Oregon, for example, very much where we are.

Same situation there.

Uh, there's always, uh, the Los Angeles getting it started and in D.C.

now, possibly other cities.

So it's going to be a long running feud really, to some extent between blue states and red states as well.

I'll conclude by saying it's a terrible, chaotic mess right now.

It's fraught with some danger, particularly if somebody gets trigger happy.

I think that's my quick summary on it all.

>> There's there's quite a bit of depth.

Um, Charlie, from as you watch this with your years of experience.

>> Things that John mentioned is there's just been a long standing feud between the president and the governor.

And I think Governor Pritzker kind of ratcheted up, uh, the other day.

And I read his quote, and this is talking about Donald Trump.

This is a man who's suffering dementia.

He said in an interview with the Trib, this is a man who has something stuck in his head.

He can't get it out of his head.

He doesn't read.

He doesn't know anything.

That's up to date.

It's just something in the recesses of his brain that is effectuating to have him call out these cities.

And then, unfortunately, he has the power of the military, the power of the federal government to do his bidding, and that's what he's doing.

So in my mind, this was taking it up to another level.

Uh, as John said, this has been challenged in court.

As a matter of fact, as we're recording this, a federal judge in Chicago is preparing to rule tomorrow on the state's request to bar the National Guard from coming in.

So we'll see how that plays out.

And there's varying stories that are told the the federal people ice.

They talk about all we've rounded up all these murderers and rapists and the worst of the worst.

And yet, on the ground reporters that are there, well, they've rounding up tamale vendors.

They're rounding up families with their kids at Millennium Park.

And in my mind, a lot of this is performative.

Trump is a showman.

Basically.

He's a TV guy more than anything else.

So they prayed these these troops down Michigan Avenue, they bust into a house and bring along a, a, a friendly TV guy so they can put up pictures on Fox News and on News Nation, Breitbart and all that.

So it's all it's the optics and the there's no crime in Chicago that merits this kind of stuff.

Trump has compared it to one of the worst cities in the world.

I'm thinking, man, if I live in Gaza City, I'd say, what's he talking about?

Or if I live in Kiev, I'd say, what's he talking about?

As a matter of fact, this past summer we had fewer murders in Chicago than at any time in the last 60 years.

So his rhetoric is is unhinged.

And the governor is getting more, more and more outspoken and criticizing him.

So we'll see what happens if the judge in Illinois says, no, you can't have these these National Guard people here.

We'll see if the governor prevails or if Donald Trump says, well, I'm the commander in chief, I can do whatever I want.

And kind of as a side note, it occurred to me there's a certain irony in that we have all these National Guardsmen from Texas coming.

Sent by Governor Greg Abbott.

Now, this is the same governor who, over the last couple of years, sent tens of thousands of immigrants, bused them to Chicago with no warning to the Chicago people, just took them downtown, dropped them off.

And as I say, it's kind of ironic.

And somebody suggested, well, maybe he shouldn't have sent those those people from Venezuela to Chicago in the first place.

So we'll see.

We'll see what happens.

>> Yeah.

Well, it's as you guys both talked, I think it seems to be quite a bit of performative actions.

People trying to play a chess game, trying to just kind of see how things ratchet up.

And it's seems to have gone a lot slower than the action that happened in Los Angeles earlier this year.

So I guess we'll just kind of have to see what happens.

And it's been like a slow walk with these, um, National Guard soldiers.

So hopefully we can get the heat down.

Um, keeping it talking a little bit about federal.

The, um, shutdown has entered its second week.

Today we're taping on Wednesday.

It's been a week now.

Um, and we haven't heard a lot of local effects.

We've been hearing some smatterings of recently.

I think President Trump floated the idea that maybe people wouldn't get furloughed back pay.

Um, and he's picking and choosing, as most presidents have done in previous shutdowns, which organizations or federal agencies get money and don't?

Um, Charlie, does it look like an end is near?

Can you kind of give us some perspective of what we could expect here in Illinois with this shutdown?

>> Well, if I were able to, uh, tell you what what the outcome is likely to be, I would not be sitting here with you guys talking about it.

I'd be over to the off track betting parlor getting rich.

But there seems to be no movement in.

Both sides are pretty dug in.

The Democrats are arguing that they believe that the cuts that have been made to health care are something that should be reversed, and they want that to be part of any package.

And the Republicans are saying, no, we're not going to do anything until you pass legislation to start up government provide funding through the next couple of months.

And part of it is there are some Republicans who are very much opposed to health care.

Basically, it's Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, and they've been trying to get rid of it ever since it was approved.

And they see this as a way to do it.

And so they're kind of dug in.

And the Democrats feel that this is an issue that will resonate, because there are millions and millions of people who are going to lose health care coverage or face double premiums to maintain their health care if the the current health care programs are allowed to expire.

So that's kind of where we are.

Nobody's really feeling it that much.

Probably the biggest effect that we've seen is with air traffic controllers.

And there have been a lot of people calling in sick, and there have been delays at airports all around the country.

Some flights have been canceled.

And as a matter of fact, I think at O'Hare in Chicago last night, there was like a 6 or 7 hour delay of 40 minutes or more for individual flights because of a lack of people in the control tower.

So that's maybe the first thing that people are going to feel.

Another thing is a lot of federal workers are still entitled to like a week's pay.

They don't get paid ahead of time.

They get paid after they finish working.

So they still got money coming.

But after that, it's going to be very difficult for him.

And then the president has decided, well, maybe we won't pay him.

We'll decide who's going to get paid for work.

And during this shutdown.

And that to me is another irony, because after the last shutdown and John, you probably remember this Congress passed legislation signed by President Donald Trump guaranteeing that people who work during a shutdown will get their pay.

So there's there's still a lot of uncertainty.

And we have to wait to see how this plays out.

But so far, neither side has indicated that they're willing to blink.

>> John this isn't the first shutdown.

And where do you think historically we're standing right now.

And can we use the past to help us understand what's going to come next?

>> Well, I think it's important to note that this is a continuing resolution for the fiscal year that started on October the 1st, and we didn't ever have a budget bill last year at all.

We just had a series of these stopgap measures.

And the Democrats, I think, quite rightly, are saying we should have already gotten this all done.

But now they have only this for leverage.

They're saying they want this health care issue as a part of the deal, and the Republicans are charging them with wanting to give health care millions and millions to illegal aliens, as they say, which is not happening and not even legal to do.

And Republicans are saying, we may talk with you after we open the government back up.

So I'm not at all clear how this impasse is going to end.

I do know the polls are showing two things.

One is that the public is unhappy with both sides, they won't see their government function.

And two, to the extent that there is a difference, the blame is going slightly more to the president and to the Republicans than to the Democrats right now.

So we'll see.

>> Yep.

The last the last one went into the start about the same time and went into the new year.

We have about four minutes left for this segment.

I wanted to move on to talk a little bit about funding.

Um, this summer the Congress passed and the president signed a rescission bill to pull back about $9 billion.

And one of the big things that they wanted to hit was taking money back from public broadcasting, NPR, PBS.

And that includes us here, our stations here.

Um, our general manager, Larry Hunter, is looking for ways to make up $1.4 million, um, uh, shortfall.

And the Chicago Tribune reached out to us, and this is odd.

I feel awkward doing this, but they did a profile trying to tell the story of public broadcasting, and they came here to Southern Illinois, talked with us at WSIU radio and WSIU TV.

Um, John, you want to talk a little bit about this, about you kind of brought this up when we were planning about this funding.

We've got about three, 3.5 minutes left.

Can you kind of just tell us what some of your thoughts are?

>> Well, this is a great story in one sense.

That is, I went out and got my paper Sunday morning and walked back in, opened it up, and there were you on the front page just below the masthead.

And it was a great story on public radio, Public Television Corporation for public broadcasting, but focusing on radio.

And it told the story, uh, we never were overstaffed.

It talked about, uh, as I believe Jeff, our other host, uh, was interviewed, was on the inside there, and he pointed out doubt.

They used to be.

You used to be 11 on that side and now you are.

What?

And it was three before they hired you?

Yeah.

And, uh, we've lost $1.5 million or about, what, 25% of our.

And, uh, Larry Hunter's out beating the bush, trying to do what he can in nickels and dimes.

Way going to it was a great story about you going to very early the 911 memorial over at the gym, and how that started very early in your day and went all the way to the end of the day when you brought it to the public.

And, uh, Larry talked about, uh, going to the farmers market and raising money there, and it's going to be a desperate scramble for public radio in this end of the state, central Illinois, any place you've got a small media market and a rural media market.

Uh, public radio fills a gap that commercial radio has left.

There is no person or public or commercial radio left that covers local because they've all been bought out by the conglomerates.

So NPR is it for lots and lots of areas.

Ironically, very many of those are the rural areas and the very red areas.

So you might want to ask, why would the Republicans vote for that?

But they think public radio and public television are propaganda, and that it's ideologically skewed toward the left and goes on and on about that.

It's a victim of polarization.

And, uh, the whole ideological cultural wars barrier battle.

And I hate to see it because we know how close to home it whom it comes.

>> Yes, exactly.

We have about 45 seconds left.

Charlie, was there any thoughts that you had just to wrap us up?

>> Because the story pointed out not just the impact on Southern Illinois, but it mentioned the fact that this is occurring at rural stations or rural areas across the country.

And it also pointed out the fact that print media has pretty much disappeared in terms of covering local issues.

And so if people want straightforward, honest reporting, they have to rely on public radio and public TV, particularly public radio, and it's just kind of going away.

I saw one interesting story.

The AP reported that there's going to be an auction of Bob Ross paintings that are going to be sold, some 30 paintings by Bob Ross, and he was the, uh, on public television for like 20 years.

He would paint stuff on, on TV and they're going to auction off these 30 paintings in the coming days.

They hope it'll raise as much as a million and a half dollars for public radio.

>> Okay, well, we'll have to have to wrap it up there.

Um, thanks, gentlemen, for joining us.

Uh, I had an interview with Ray LaHood to talk about fair maps.

Illinois.

[MUSIC] Ray LaHood from Fair Maps Illinois.

Thank you for joining us today.

>> Thank you.

>> Um, in August, you and Bill Daley announced your new attempt to end gerrymandering.

Can you give us an overview of this new attempt, and how is it similar or different from what you tried in 2016?

>> In 2016, there was a group of citizens who collected, uh, well over 400 signatures to get onto the ballot, a constitutional amendment, uh, to change the way that district legislative districts, both state Rep and state senator districts, uh, were drawn.

Uh, unfortunately, the then Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional for clearly political reasons.

And, um, so we have now taken up the cause again, because we think redistricting is broken in Illinois and in other states where they've adopted a citizen commission form of drawing maps rather than legislators drawing their own districts.

Uh, we think there would be an opportunity again, to put this on the ballot.

We need 365,000 signatures filed in May of 2026.

Then we'll go on the ballot a year from now, in November of 2026.

Hopefully, the voters will have a chance to change the way that districts legislative districts are drawn in Illinois.

This is a bipartisan effort, has nothing to do with politics.

Everything to do with good government.

Everything to do with changing a very, very political system of drawing legislative maps.

>> I wanted to dive into that.

And reading your release and looking at some of the details, it was interesting how stark the number of uncontested races are.

What what are we seeing here in the state of Illinois?

If you could kind of give us some context for why this is needed here, or why you.>> Feel that.

>> Illinois is overwhelmingly represented in these legislative districts by Democrats.

That is that is not the reason that we're doing it.

We're doing it because the districts are very odd shaped.

They're not compact and contiguous, which what the Constitution requires.

We're not splitting up neighborhoods, which is the way the districts are drawn today.

We're not splitting up counties, which is the way the districts are drawn today.

Uh, we are allowing citizens 12, which will be in our amendment, um, appointed by the legislature.

12 citizens to come up with a map, not for political reasons, but to keep communities intact and to keep communities compact and contiguous.

If you look at the legislative maps today, uh, you wouldn't recognize, uh, any kind of compact and contiguous shape or form.

I will give you the example of my hometown of Peoria, okay, where our state rep, who grew up in Peoria, went to high school in Peoria, served on the city council in Peoria.

Uh, his father is a small businessman in Peoria.

And, uh, he is in leadership on the Republican side.

Was drawn out of Peoria, gone completely north of Peoria.

His district has been splintered and split in a way that his friends and neighbors, when they go to vote, are baffled by the fact they cannot vote for Ryan Spain any longer, because politicians drew him out of his hometown into very rural Illinois.

His district is very Republican, but it does not reflect where Ryan Spain grew up and lives and, uh, and where he had once represented.

>> I was not aware of that one.

That is an interesting story.

You talked about this as a bipartisan effort.

We have about a minute left.

Can you talk about that effort?

>> And Bill Daley is a well-known Democrat from Chicago.

I'm a well-known Republican from downstate Illinois.

Uh, we both served in President Obama's cabinet.

I as a Republican, he as a Democrat.

And, uh, and we are teaming up with a very bipartisan group of citizens who are fed up with politicians drawing districts to suit themselves and to incorporate their own voters, rather than allowing common, ordinary voters and citizens to have a say in who their rep is.

>> As we as we wrap up here.

If people are interested, uh, next steps are you're getting trying to get the signatures and hoping to get that those done by May.

If people are interested in helping or finding out more, what would you suggest?

>> I would suggest they go to our website, Maps Illinois, and they will find all kinds of opportunities to sign petitions, to become a part of our organization and to become a part of our, uh, group that wants to change the way that legislative maps are drawn in Illinois.

>> All right, Mr.

LaHood, that's all the time we have for today.

So I really appreciate you joining us today.

>> Thank you very much.

>> Thank you.

That's it for this week's edition of Capitol View.

Thanks for joining us.

And we'll see you next week.

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