Schaumburg Area Democrats

06/24/2026

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June 23, 2026
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUN 24








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Trump continues frantically to insist that the problems with the Reflecting Pool are the acts of vandals. As Rachel Kahn of The New Republic reported, Trump insisted on Saturday that the pool had “worked perfectly” before vandals attacked, putting “a 250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade of what took so much work.” By Monday, the “gash” was 300 feet. By Tuesday it was 350 feet, according to Trump. There is, of course, no evidence of any such sabotage, and there are cameras on the Reflecting Pool.
Trump’s stories have gotten more and more elaborate, about how vandals used “a very sharp knife or razors,” “probably in the dark of night,” then added “chemicals.” He warned there could be a “10-year prison sentence for the destruction, or even the attempted destruction, of such things.” Asked for evidence, he claimed “we have pictures.” He told reporter Ed O’Keefe of CBS News: “[A]t the right time you’ll see it. You’ll see it in court. You’ll see it in court, but all you have to do is call the Parks Department, call the Department of Interior.” Tonight the Interior Department began to place fencing around the Reflecting Pool.
The Reflecting Pool is not the only thing that’s falling apart.
This morning, Trump announced that “Iran has fully and completely agreed to highest level Nuclear inspections long in the future (Infinity!!!).... If they did not agree to this, there would be no further negotiations!” Iran disagreed, saying it had made “no new commitments” on nuclear inspections although it would continue to work with the IAEA, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency, as it has for years under a system less stringent than the one that operated under the JCPOA.
Today, after a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that only 23% of Americans thought the Iran war had made the U.S. stronger, the Senate passed a war powers resolution requiring Trump to get congressional approval to continue military actions against Iran. Four Republicans joined all Democrats but one to pass the measure. The House passed the measure earlier this month. It is unclear if Trump will honor the resolution, but its passage shows growing discontent with the president.
“Trump’s historic blunder in Iran will go down in the history books as one of the worst foreign policy forays America has ever made, or any country has ever made,” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said today. “The American people have seen skyrocketing gas prices, soaring costs, and, tragically, the loss of 13 service members, and the wounding of hundreds more, and meanwhile, Iran took Trump to the cleaners.”
Holly Baxter of The Independent noted that when Trump is stressed out, he throws a campaign-style rally in front of a friendly crowd. Today, after a poll from the American Research Group showed that 66% of Americans disapprove of his job performance while only 30% approve, he went to a factory in Pennsylvania to bolster his confidence. He did his usual greatest hits, claiming he won by a landslide in 2024 and calling Democrats communists. He even made it clearer than ever that he thought people applying for political asylum in the United States had been released from “mental institutions.” He flitted from subject to subject and after an hour and a half, audience enthusiasm seemed under control.
William Kristol of The Bulwark noted today that a “sense of impending mortality seems to be making our president even more unhinged than ever.” But, Kristol noted, there are “young men with a lean and hungry look in positions of authority and power in the executive branch who are committed to making his dream of power without limits a reality.”
Those lean and hungry men include Bill Pulte, now acting director of national intelligence, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, FBI director Kash Patel, Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, and acting attorney general Todd Blanche.
And, of course, Vice President J.D. Vance, who is next in line should Trump become unable to perform the duties of the office of the presidency.
As Trump crumbles, it appears there is in the administration a drive to create unlimited power in the executive branch that will survive no matter who is in charge. That drive includes silencing political opponents while rewarding loyalists.
Last September, Trump announced he would designate “antifa”—a word that is short for “antifascists”—as a “MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” calling it a “SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER.” On September 22 he did so, claiming that protesters standing against administration policies are trying to “overthrow…the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law.” They are, the executive order said, working in coordination to riot, assault ICE agents and other law enforcement officers, and to dox “political figures and activists.”
Faiza Patel of the Brennan Center notes that even if antifa were a real group—which both Trump-appointed FBI director Chris Wray and the Congressional Research Office have denied—Trump has authority only to designate foreign terrorist organizations. Patel writes that he “has no authority to designate groups as domestic terrorist organizations, as is obvious from the failure to cite any statute or constitutional provision in support of the president’s action. There is none, and the purported designation has no legal effect.” Patel notes that the ability to formally assign the label of terrorists to political opponents would enable it to crush political opposition.
Nonetheless, three days later, Trump issued a National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM-7), titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” that called for a National Joint Terrorism Task Force to investigate Americans engaging in protest and ordered the attorney general to prosecute protest as a federal crime to the maximum extent permissible by law.
After a protest against ICE at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, last July 4 led to a protester shooting a police officer in the shoulder, the government prosecuted nine of the protesters, some of whom did not know each other and one of whom was not at the protest, as part of an antifa cell engaging in terrorism. In March all nine were found guilty in what observers saw as a test of the administration’s power to use broad antiterrorism laws to prosecute protesters.
Today, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor sentenced eight of the Prairieland protesters to between thirty and one hundred years in prison.
In contrast, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes were sentenced to 22 years and 18 years in prison, respectively, for their roles in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that was intended to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and make Donald Trump president. When he took office in 2025, Trump pardoned Tarrio and commuted Rhodes’s sentence to time served, releasing both men from prison.
Notes:
https://newrepublic.com/post/212233/size-gash-reflecting-pool-keeps-changing-told-trump
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/6-people-arrested-connection-alleged-vandalism-reflecting-pool-trump-s-rcna351409
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/reflecting-pool-paint-peeling-trump-proof-vandalism-court/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/designating-antifa-as-a-domestic-terrorist-organization/
https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/how-nspm-7-seeks-to-use-domestic-terrorism-to-target-nonprofits-and-activists
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/countering-domestic-terrorism-and-organized-political-violence/
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/trumps-orders-targeting-antifascism-aim-criminalize-opposition
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/13/texas-terrorism-trial
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/03/15/trump-el-salvador-cecot-deportations/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/13/ice-agent-court-testimony-oregon
https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/23/politics/trump-iran-claims-nuclear-inspectors
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-pennsylvania-speech-trucks-approval-rating-iran-b3001457.html
The Bulwark
The Old Dictator and His Young Henchmen
The tarps on the Kennedy Center, erected to hide the shame of a building that no longer bears Donald Trump’s name, are still in place, but we now know two things about them. One, as pictures taken from behind the tarp show, Trump’s name is now definitely, 100 percent gone. Two, Trump’s guys at the Kennedy Center are hilariously claiming that the tarps …
Read more
15 hours ago · 751 likes · 229 comments · William Kristol, Andrew Egger, and Catherine Rampell
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5937328-lincoln-memorial-vandalism-fencing/
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/06/prairieland-ice-dhs-protest-conspiracy-prison-judge-texas-immigration-sentence/
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-wants-to-designate-antifa-as-a-major-terrorist-organization-can-he-do-that
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/8-convicted-of-terrorism-charges-in-texas-immigration-center-shooting-sentenced-to-decades-in-prison
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/13/texas-terrorism-trial
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/05/enrique-tarrio-prison-sentencing-proud-boys-00114104
https://www.ksbw.com/article/trump-pardons-jan-6-defendants-tarrio-rhodes/63496997
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/23/trump-iran-war-powers-resolution
https://www.keranews.org/news/2025-12-04/daniel-sanchez-estrada-alvarado-ice-shooting-zines-trial
Bluesky:
shipwreck75.bsky.social/post/3moyfvvzjgc2e
atrupar.com/post/3moy7l4fih527
kevinmkruse.bsky.social/post/3moyaqixetk2s
Trumpstruth.org
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Clearest proof we've seen that he thinks refugees claiming political asylum were refugees from an actual insane asylum. The leader of the United States is dumber than dirt but there's an entire cult enabling him and a corporate media too cowardly to call them out. [contains quote post or other embed...

06/24/2026

Four Years After Overturn of Roe v. Wade, Illinois Republicans Continue to Attack Women’s Health

Springfield, IL — Today marks four years since Donald Trump’s Supreme Court justices ripped away bodily autonomy from millions of women, leaving Illinois to step up as a safe haven for full reproductive health care—which includes abortions. On the fourth anniversary of the Dobbs ruling, Democratic Party of Illinois Chair Lisa Hernandez released the following statement:

“Illinois Republicans cannot pretend that they care about children and pregnant women when they cut SNAP in the same breath. They can’t possibly advocate for families while they underfund Medicaid or dismantle the Department of Education. Protecting life only seems to matter when it’s connected to controlling women’s bodies. It’s days like today where I’m even more proud to be an Illinois Democrat because we have been unwavering in our belief–and actions–that women have a right to choose.”

In an effort to punish and control women, four years after extremists struck down Roe, Illinois Republicans continue their aggressive attempts strip away Illinoisans’ right to the health care they need:
• In February, Senate Republican Caucus Chair Neil Anderson, who later resigned from his GOP leadership position, led a proposal that would charge women with homicide by redefining a fertilized egg as a legal person. A separate bill would reinstate the death penalty, creating a chilling reality in which, under the ILGOP’s agenda, a woman who gets an abortion would face the threat of capital punishment.
• The following month, pro-white life Republican Mary Miller introduced the Clean Water for All Life Act, a bill based on lies about water pollution but is an attack on abortion and miscarriages. The bill would also ban telehealth abortion care–and would threaten health care providers with prison time.

While the ILGOP pretends their anti-abortion obsession is about protecting life, Illinois Democrats see through their faulty logic by protecting the lives of women. Illinois has:
• Enshrined the right to an abortion in state law.
• Passed nation-leading protections for patients and providers.
• Continued investing in reproductive health care in the FY26 budget with $24 million for reproductive health initiatives, including $10 million for the public facing navigation hotline to help patients access care. In the FY27 budget, Democrats invested another $18 million for reproductive health initiatives.
• Strengthened protections and access to reproductive health care this year amidst GOP threats.
• Expanded the list of protected parties in the Illinois Human Rights Act to prohibit discrimination against people for their reproductive health decisions, including abortion, in vitro fertilization and fertility treatment.
• Defended access to reproductive care from Trump Administration regulations that allow employers to strip workers of guaranteed, no-cost coverage for birth control and other contraceptive care

06/23/2026

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June 22, 2026
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUN 23








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It appears to be more and more clear that the Trump administration is mired in its own mistakes.
There is no way to spin the memorandum of understanding Trump signed last Friday at Versailles to advance peace talks with Iran as a win. Trump deliberately shut off both Congress and allies from the decision to go to war, making the conflict his own. That means the MOU, which achieves none of the goals Trump claimed while at the same time giving Iran access to hundreds of billions of dollars, belongs to Trump, too.
A wide range of U.S. commentators are calling the MOU a “disaster” and saying the United States lost the war. As Isaac Arnsdorf and Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post reported, right-wing hardliner on Iran Mark Dubowitz said: “The actual MOU is deeply flawed. The administration needs to stop defending it beyond stating the truth: It’s a stopgap measure to resupply energy markets, lower gas prices, and help Republicans in the midterms.”
Today, after a quick trip to Switzerland for talks with Iranian negotiators, Vice President J.D. Vance told reporters that Iran had agreed to allow international observers periodically to inspect its nuclear program. Vance called it a “major milestone for the American people, and the first step in permanently denuclearizing or permanently ending a nuclear weapons program in Iran,” and Trump heralded the plan.
In fact, such inspections were part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated in 2015 under the Obama administration, the agreement that Trump tore up in 2018, and they continued at some sites until Trump ordered military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities on June 22, 2025, a year ago today. After that, Iran refused inspections of the bombed sites. Inspections are good, but they basically just get us back to where we were before Trump took over.
The administration today also waived sanctions on Iranian oil for the period covered by the MOU as that document laid out, increasing the value of Iranian oil exports.
Meanwhile, Trump has doubled down on the idea that the problems with the Reflecting Pool are the product of vandalism by “SICK, DERANGED PEOPLE,” and administration officials have stationed National Guard personnel around the Reflecting Pool. They appear to be handing out citations to individuals who touch the water.
A friendly media figure at the White House today noted that in April Trump said he was going to fix the Reflecting Pool “in a week for about a million dollars,” and wanted to know what was going on two months and sixteen and a half million dollars later. Trump answered: “Ok, ready? Barack Hussein Obama, have you ever heard of him?” Trump went on to lambaste what he said were Obama’s botched repairs to the pool.
Officials are now trying to silence both those calling attention to their failures and political opponents.
Trump has reacted with fury at media stories that expose his failures in Iran. In response to a New York Times story saying analysts did not see that the war had accomplished much, Trump called the paper’s reporters “corrupt and unethical cowards” and appeared to object to the First Amendment, writing: “The way the Corrupt and Failing New York Times is covering stories on a very battered and beat up Iran, through FAKE & MADE UP ‘FACTS’ is, in my opinion, ‘TREASONOUS.’ I will be adding all of their false and ridiculous reporting to my multi Billion Dollar lawsuit against them. They are Criminals!”
Trump is doing more than threatening media figures. He is increasing his effort to use the government against political opponents. In the face of bipartisan opposition, Trump has shoved loyalist William Pulte into position as acting director of national intelligence, overseeing the intelligence gathered by the nation’s eighteen intelligence agencies. Pulte officially took office on Friday.
Pulte has no experience in intelligence, although such experience is a requirement for the position. What he does have is demonstrated willingness to use the power of the federal government to attack Trump’s political opponents: it’s Pulte who came up with the idea of harassing Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, New York attorney general Letitia James, and U.S. senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) by accusing them of criminal mortgage fraud. He also pushed the ouster of then–Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell by claiming Powell had lied to Congress about renovations to Federal Reserve office buildings.
Last year, Gina H**b, Josh Dawsey, and Rebecca Ballhous of the Wall Street Journal reported that Pulte’s nickname in the administration is “Little Trump,” and when big Trump announced he would install Pulte as DNI, members of both parties balked. So Trump said he would instead nominate U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton, who helped slow walk the release of the Epstein Files, for the position. Despite Clayton’s lack of intelligence experience, the Senate Intelligence Committee scheduled confirmation hearings for June 17 to rush him into office before Pulte could step in.
Then, as The Guardian recounted, on June 17, just hours before the confirmation hearing was about to start, Trump posted that “we are cancelling the Senate Hearing RE: DNI today.” This meant Pulte would indeed become the acting DNI. He showed up at the office the next day—a day early—and ordered staff to list about 300 people to be fired from the National Counterterrorism Center.
This follows cuts under former DNI Tulsi Gabbard, who said in August 2025 she would cut 40% of the staff of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
Gabbard herself is under increased scrutiny today after an in-depth story yesterday by Jon Swaine of the Washington Post explored her ties to a religious leader of what observers describe as a cult. Swaine tracked the many parallels between what appear to be orders directed at her in conversations sent by email and her official acts when she was in Congress. In one 2015 memo, Swaine writes, the advisor told “TG” “that ‘your position in general’ should be to offer an alternative to other candidates in the ‘dishonest Democratic party.’”
On Friday, Erin Banco, Phil Stewart, and Jonathan Landay of Reuters reported that the ODNI is sitting on a report that identifies vulnerabilities in the nation’s voting machines. The machines’ software is outdated, leaving vulnerabilities that could be exploited. Gabbard began the report in order to investigate Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was rigged, but the investigation turned up no evidence of such action. Neither did a second report by a government contractor, Mojave Research, which investigated voting machines in Puerto Rico. That report, too, recommended immediate updates to software systems, but it appears those plans have not been implemented.
The administration appears to be trying to intimidate voting rights groups. On June 11, 100 FBI agents and other federal officers raided the offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a group encouraging voter participation, especially by voters from groups that have historically been disenfranchised. Then the agents went to the homes of board members, staff, and volunteers, where they seized computers and phones, took documents, and questioned the people they found.
The search warrant said they were looking for voter fraud. As the Brennan Center—along with many others—has established, a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than commit voter fraud. It is vanishingly rare.
Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center, which protects voting rights, notes that Project 2025, the right-wing plan for taking over the country after Trump took office, called for using the Justice Department to go after state election officials and voter registration groups to push the myth of voter fraud and make people afraid to vote.
Waldman explained that the leading voter registration group in Ohio is the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. In 2024, he says, it registered 100,000 voters, and it works to stop partisan gerrymandering in the state.
Republicans are working to undermine their opponents with subterfuge, too. Judd Legum of Popular Information reported today that a network of super PACs that claim to be progressive and are spending millions in Democratic primaries are actually funded by a Republican dark money group, the American Prosperity Alliance. New documents from the Federal Election Commission identify all of the funding for Lead Left PAC, Real Change PAC, and California Blue PAC as coming from Conservative Americans PAC, which is funded by the right-wing American Prosperity Alliance.
But the American people are pushing back on the administration, and it seems wobbly.
Outrage over the Iran deal has risen to such a fever pitch on the right that, as Josephine Walker of Axios reported, on Thursday, right-wing commenter Tucker Carlson announced on a podcast that he was leaving the Republican Party, adding: “And if I’m out, then I think a lot of other people are out.” Carlson said he will not support the Democrats either, suggesting he is testing out whether MAGA voters, especially the antisemitic ones who embrace his attacks on Israel, will follow him if he splits from Trump.
Most people don’t seem to be buying Trump’s excuses about the Reflecting Pool, either. Social media is flooded with jokes about “Sealant Team 6” and images of the reflecting pool as the Dead Marshes from the Lord of the Rings films or with the Creature from the Black Lagoon emerging from it. Upon hearing of the arrest of former Olympian David Hearn for destruction of government property after he touched the detached liner of the pool “but didn’t destroy or break or peel anything,” conservative commentator David Frum wrote: “If destruction of government property is a crime, I wonder what they’ll do to the man who tore down the East Wing without a permit.”
Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) posted: “There is a 24/7 camera that shows the reflecting pool. If someone went into the pool and made a 250 foot gash, it would have been seen. trump is lying again. Everyone knows it, but the people at [the Justice Department] are randomly going after people to soothe trump’s fragile ego.”
And today the courts struck back at Trump’s attempts to rig the 2026 vote. The Trump administration has tried to force states to turn over their voting rolls in order to run them through a query system that checks federal databases to make sure no immigrants are collecting benefits for which they’re not eligible. Confusingly, that system—the one used to make sure noncitizens don’t collect benefits for which they’re not eligible—is called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE), making it hard to distinguish from the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (also SAVE) that Trump keeps pushing.
An investigation by Jen Fifield of ProPublica and Zach Despart of ProPublica and the Texas Tribune in February showed that when used to try to identify noncitizen voters, the system had an error rate of at least 14%, misidentifying legal voters as illegal ones.
Today U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan in Washington, D.C., ruled that the administration could not use the SAVE system to check state voting rolls, saying: “The federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote.”
Tonight Trump posted a picture of a person dressed in a pink inflatable frog costume with the word “AMPHIFA” written across the belly, carrying a sign that reads: “FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE ALGAE.” Trump called the activist “a crazy pro-algae (likely paid) protestor.”
“Who’s paying team algae?” social media poster The Volatile Mermaid retorted. “George Sporos?”
—
Notes:
https://www.yalejreg.com/nc/are-pultes-mortgage-fraud-investigations-legal-by-domenic-powell/
https://nationalmortgageprofessional.com/news/doj-serves-fed-grand-jury-subpoenas-related-renovation-office-buildings
https://www.mediamatters.org/ben-shapiro/ben-shapiro-calls-iran-mou-disaster
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/06/22/vance-says-iran-agrees-inspections-nuclear-talks-move-ahead/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/19/bill-pulte-acting-director-national-intelligence-timeline
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/bill-pulte-profile-d000c844
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/19/pulte-seeks-major-cuts-in-first-day-as-intel-chief-00968831
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/06/21/tulsi-gabbard-her-guru-mysterious-messages-that-helped-shape-her-political-career/
https://www.newsweek.com/national-guard-stops-people-touching-reflecting-pool-military-crackdown-12102198
https://www.reuters.com/world/white-house-delays-release-us-voting-machine-study-midterms-near-2026-06-19/
https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/06/18/a-week-after-the-fbi-searched-an-ohio-voting-rights-group-questions-remain/
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/politicizing-fbi-intimidate-voters
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/report/systematic-alien-verification-entitlements-save-program-fact-sheet/ #:~:text=SAVE%20is%20not%20itself%20a,determine%20a%20person’s%20immigration%20status.
https://www.axios.com/2026/06/22/tucker-carlson-quits-republicans-maga-fractures
Popular Information
UPDATE: The money behind a network of sham “progressive” super PACs
A network of purportedly progressive super PACs, spending millions in Democratic primaries across the country, is funded by a Republican dark money group, the American Prosperity Alliance (APA…
Read more
19 hours ago · 657 likes · 26 comments · Judd Legum
https://www.texastribune.org/2026/02/13/save-voter-citizenship-tool-mistakes-confusion/
https://thehill.com/national-security/5930898-iran-strait-hormuz-us-surrender/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/judge-blocks-trump-administration-immigration-database-voter-rolls-rcna351273
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/21/us/iran-us-peace-deal-nuclear-program-threats.html?searchResultPosition=5
Trumpstruth.org:
statuses/39417
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statuses/39419
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X:
davidfrum/status/2068457236221898828
tedlieu/status/2068825248800317483
Bluesky:
mrfawkes50.bsky.social/post/3movczdrwhs2r
atrupar.com/post/3movpucenoz24
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© 2026 Heather Cox Richardson
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Who’s paying team algae? George Sporos? [contains quote post or other embedded content]

06/18/2026

Illinois Democrats,

This week marks the fourteenth anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Donald Trump attempted to eliminate DACA in his first term, and now, his Administration is stripping many of the Dreamers of their lawful presence and deporting them from the country they grew up in.

Below are graphics and details that explain what DACA is (and isn't) and how Illinois Democrats are pushing back.

Toplines on DACA
The Basics:
• What is DACA: A program that would give undocumented immigrants who grew up in this country a chance to become American citizens. Hundreds of thousands of Dreamers grew up right alongside children born here, in the only place they’ve ever called home.
• Background: Twenty-five years ago, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin first introduced the Dream Act—bipartisan legislation that would give undocumented immigrants who grew up in this country a chance to become American citizens. In 2010, after years of congressional inaction, Durbin sent a letter, joined by the late Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), asking then-President Obama to stop the deportation of Dreamers. Fourteen years ago this week, President Obama responded by announcing the DACA program.
• What it is not: It’s not a handout. Or a shortcut to citizenship. It is not taking resources or opportunities from young people born in the U.S.

Why Are Republicans Attacking It:
• Short answer: Racism.
o More: The Great Replacement Theory
• Long answer: Republicans want to be the sole deciders of who’s an American and who gets to experience the promise of safety and refuge. In pursuit of that, they have questioned birthright citizenship, trampled on civil rights, terrorized communities, murdered neighbors, and imprisoned loved ones.

Dreamers’ Contributions:
• More than 835,000 Dreamers have since come forward and received DACA, which has allowed them to contribute more fully to their country as teachers, nurses, doctors, engineers, and small business owners.
• Across our country, DACA recipient households pay approximately $9.5 billion annually in federal, state and local taxes.
• In Illinois, there were approximately 28,000 DACA recipients as of September 2023, who contributed $702 million in state, local and federal taxes and had a $2 billion total spending power.

The Fallout:
• This slow-walking of DACA renewals has resulted in many Dreamers—individuals who are following every rule—to lose their DACA protections, lose their jobs, and risk deportation through no fault of their own.
• In April 2026, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) made a decision that makes Dreamers even more vulnerable by allowing ICE to begin removal proceedings, effectively rendering their DACA protections obsolete. As of January 2026, there were over 260 documented arrests of DACA recipients, and 174 recipients were deported.

Illinois Democrats Pushing Back:
• Despite multiple court challenges, thanks to Democrats, DACA is still in place, and the Trump Administration is under court order to process DACA renewal and work permit applications.
• From Senator Dick Durbin, to Congresswoman Delia Ramirez, to Congressman Chuy García, Illinois Democrats will continue to fight for protections and a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients.
• Congressmembers Delia C. Ramirez (IL-03) and Jesús “Chuy” García (IL-04), joined by Congressman Danny Davis (IL-07) and local public officials, held an oversight hearing on the urgent need to deliver, protect, and expand pathways to citizenship for DACA and undocumented immigrants.
• Congressman Jesús “Chuy” García (IL-04) led 86 Members of Congress in opposing the delays in processing DACA renewals, and urged passing legislation that would create pathways to citizenship, like the Dream and Promise Act.
• In February 2025, Congresswoman Delia C. Ramirez led 200+ colleagues in reintroducing the bipartisan American Dream and Promise Act, which would provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children.