As Donald Trump’s goon-squad occupation of the nation’s capital wends its way into its third week, the president is already eyeing the next Democratic stronghold he’d like to strangle with his bruised hands in the name of “fighting crime.” Among the municipalities facing the mad king’s wrath is Chicago, which has loomed in far-right lore as some kind of Third World hellhole. While we wait for many Democratic leaders and media elites to take Trump’s authoritarian spree seriously, TNR editor Michael Tomasky this week urged Illinois officials to steel themselves for what’s to come. “Okay, JB Pritzker,” he wrote, “you’re up.”

It didn’t take long for the reply to come. In a Monday afternoon news conference, Illinois’s Democratic governor joined a slew of state leaders speaking out about Trump’s plan to deploy troops to Chicago. Pritzker has, over the past year, begun to cement his national profile ahead of what many presume to be a presidential run in 2028. He has firmly planted himself in the same “fighter” lane as California Governor Gavin Newsom—the better to distinguish himself from, say, whatever it is that Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer thinks she’s been doing lately.

Pritzker ended up being the headline figure of that Monday news conference, thanks to the simplicity and directness of his message. “Mr. President, do not come to Chicago,” he said. “You are neither wanted here nor needed here.” He offered some satisfying digs at the evident decline of Trump’s mental faculties. He hit many of the right notes for someone who wants to establish himself as a leader of a dissident movement. But Pritzker saved his best for last, when he promised to take the fight against Trump a step farther than most Democrats have allowed themselves.

"Finally, to the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme, to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man, to any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous: We are watching and we are taking names."