Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker wants the next Democratic president to prosecute Trump administration officials and federal law enforcement agents. Not metaphorically. Not politically. Criminally.
In an interview with the New York Times, Pritzker laid out what he's calling "Project 2029," a Democratic counter to Project 2025 that he wants implemented immediately should his party recapture the White House in 2028. When reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro pressed him on whether he was really talking about criminal prosecution, the governor did not flinch.
"I don't think you can speak of it in shorthand, but we've got to restore the rule of law, and that means holding people accountable who've broken the law."
Asked to clarify who, exactly, he had in mind:
"I'm talking about the people in this administration who've broken the law and federal agents who've broken the law."
And the method? "Criminally prosecuted, civilly prosecuted. Whatever it is that we can do."
This isn't vague posturing. Pritzker's office has already named names, Fox News noted. A January press release from the governor's office called on the Illinois Accountability Commission to review the public statements and policy decisions of key officials involved in Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago. The individuals singled out:
The press release accused these officials of decisions that "led to the escalation of aggressive enforcement tactics" and argued they "should be held accountable." It followed the removal of top Border Patrol leader Greg Bovino from Minnesota.
So a sitting governor, currently running for a third term, is openly building an apparatus to criminally target federal officials whose offense amounts to enforcing immigration law. And he's doing it while simultaneously positioning himself as a national Democratic figure.
Pritzker's war against federal immigration enforcement in Chicago has been the defining story of his governorship for months. In October, he filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its deployment of National Guard troops to the city, arguing the action was "unconstitutional and/or unlawful." U.S. District Judge April Perry issued a temporary restraining order blocking the deployment, a decision the Supreme Court later upheld. The Trump administration withdrew federal troops from Illinois in January.
But the legal battles didn't stop there. The Trump administration faces another lawsuit related to Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago. District Judge Sara Ellis issued a preliminary injunction barring federal agents' use of force and tear gas on protesters, though an appeals court overturned her decision earlier this month.
Throughout all of this, Pritzker has accused federal agents of "waging war on our people" and "acting like jackbooted thugs." The rhetoric is not accidental. It's scaffolding for the prosecution framework he's now proposing.
Consider what Pritzker is actually proposing. A future Democratic administration would use the Justice Department to criminally prosecute officials from a prior Republican administration for carrying out immigration enforcement. Federal agents who conducted operations in Chicago. Political appointees who directed policy. A deputy chief of staff. A Border Czar.
Democrats spent years warning that political prosecutions would destroy democratic norms. They called it authoritarianism when they imagined it coming from the right. Now a prominent Democratic governor sits for an interview with the paper of record and openly advocates exactly that, and it's framed as restoring the rule of law.
The contradiction is so clean it barely needs commentary. The same political movement that accused its opponents of weaponizing government is now publishing target lists of officials to prosecute. Not for corruption. Not for personal enrichment. For enforcing federal immigration law in a city governed by people who didn't want it enforced.
Pritzker's language is revealing. He keeps invoking the "rule of law" to describe a plan that would criminalize the enforcement of existing law. Federal agents conducting immigration operations in Chicago were not acting as rogue vigilantes. They were executing the priorities of a duly elected administration operating under statutes passed by Congress.
You can disagree with those priorities. You can challenge them in court, as Pritzker has done, sometimes successfully. But threatening criminal prosecution against officials who carried out lawful federal policy is not the rule of law. It is the opposite. It is the promise that political power will be converted into legal punishment for the losing side.
Pritzker's "Project 2029" borrows its naming convention from Project 2025, which the Heritage Foundation has released in some form in nearly every election cycle since the 1980s. Project 2025 is a policy blueprint. Project 2029, as described by Pritzker, is a prosecution agenda with a branding strategy.
Pritzker is running for a third term as governor. He's also clearly running for something else. The New York Times interview, the national rhetoric, the naming of a forward-looking Democratic initiative: none of this is aimed at Illinois voters alone. This is a 2028 audition, or at minimum, a bid to shape whatever the Democratic platform becomes.
And the platform he's shaping is one where immigration enforcement officials face prison for doing their jobs. Where the names of political appointees are published on the accountability commission referral lists. Where a governor who fought federal law enforcement at every turn casts himself as the champion of law and order.
The voters Pritzker is courting already believe this framing. The question is whether the rest of the country will. Because what he's describing isn't accountability. It's retribution dressed in legal language, and the target isn't lawlessness. The target is the law itself.
