Photo from Gov. Pritzker’s Facebook, dated November 19, 2025
On Friday, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Patron Saint of the Americas and also the protector of the unborn, marginalized and the oppressed, Governor Pritzker chose to sign the assisted suicide bill. The signing comes just over three weeks since Pritzker and his wife met with Pope Leo XIV.
Many Illinois Catholics, myself included, were disgusted that Pope Leo XIV agreed to meet with one of the most apostate politicians ever elected. Did he not know Pritzker founded and funded a political action committee, The Think Big PAC, for the sole purpose of expanding abortion in every state in the U.S.?
The Pope met with him, reportedly, knowing that the assisted suicide bill sat on Pritzker’s desk, waiting for his signature.
In the American Spectator article, The Optics of Accommodation: Pope Leo’s Audience with Pro-Abortion Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker, the author ask in his sub-title, Did the pontiff’s meeting with the governor jeopardize the Church’s witness?
It’s a good question. Shouldn’t standard bearers be just that?
Anne Hendershott noted in her article,
The recent meeting at the Vatican between Governor JB Pritzker and Pope Leo raises troubling questions about the Church’s moral witness. It is difficult for faithful Catholics to understand why the pope would choose to sit down with a politician who has so strongly embraced the culture of death surrounding abortion and euthanasia. Earlier this year, Pritzker expanded state taxpayer complicity in abortion by allocating 23 million dollars to expand abortion services and support funds for those traveling to Illinois for abortion, making his state of Illinois a regional hub for patients traveling from restrictive states.
Every law allows or disallows an action, presumably for the greater good. Obviously, some are more impactful than others, as is such with with the assisted suicide bill.
Hendershott also noted that, “According to the published interview, Pritzker said that he brought the issue up in his meeting last month with Pope Leo XIV, when he met privately with him at the Vatican, but Pritzker didn’t say what the Pope’s response to the issue was…”
The bill passed with the bare minimum of votes in the Senate. A Pritzker veto meant the bill was dead, there would not have been enough votes to override his veto.
Pritzker had all the power to kill the bill. And powerful clergy had immense power to stop him.
Did Cardinal Cupich reach out to him about the bill? He’s more than happy to give cover to Pritzker on illegal immigration issues, did he call in a favor and ask the Gov to veto the assisted suicide bill?
Pritzker didn’t have to sign this bill – it barely passed. He wanted to. Pritzker wanted to add to his accomplishments as one of the most anti-life politicians in America.
In that regard, Pritzker is tops. Just this week, the NYT did a feature story about Carbondale, Illinois, post the overturning of ROE. It used to be a city with zero abortion clinics. Now in the town of 21,000, 11,000 abortions are done a year and 95% of them are on women from out-of-state.
Is this a selling point for realtors in the area? Can you imagine your sleepy little southern Illinois college town being the subject of a NYT feature article because of the number of abortions performed there EVERY year?
I wonder what the pastors in the town are telling their parishioners.
Pritzker has made Illinois a travel destination for abortion. And we will soon be a travel destination for killing those near the end of their life. And eventually, the killing will include people who are depressed, disabled, or simply feel they are a burden to others.
It’s not far-fetched. In Canada, authorities allow assisted suicide as an option when medical care is unobtainable in the country.
Glen Beck has offered to pay for an operation in the U.S. for a Canadian woman who saw her only relief from suffering would be to kill herself through ”Medical Aid in Dying”, a term they use to avoid using the word suicide, since she could not get a needed surgery in the country.
Here’s the short version of the story as reported in The Post Millenial:
Jolene Van Alstine has a rare thyroid disease (parathyroid hyperplasia) which causes increased blood calcium levels which can lead to abdominal pain and broken bones. She has dealt with depression, nausea and vomiting, according to the Toronto Sun.
She had surgery in 2020 to remove the glands, but as the pain returned shortly thereafter, her husband, Miles Sundeen, believes that some of the gland was left in, and she has been unsuccessful in getting the surgery to remove the remaining parathyroid gland.
Currently there is no surgeon in Saskatchewan that can perform the surgery. In order to travel outside of her province to have the surgery, she would need an endocrinologist referral, but none are accepting new patients. She cannot afford to travel to the US for surgery and does not have a passport. She applied and was accepted for MAID on Jan. 7.
After Rachel Cohen Booth, a Vox journalist, posted on X about the story, Beck responded, posting, “If there is any surgeon in America who can do this, I’ll pay for this patient to come down here for treatment.” He added, “THIS is the reality of ‘compassionate progressive healthcare. Canada must END this insanity and Americans can NEVER let it spread here.”
The article goes on to report, “In 2027, the Liberal Canadian government plans to expand MAID to mentally ill patients…Canadian doctors have found the program ‘morally distressing,’ and have expressed guilt over the program’s expansion, since it is now available to those who are not terminally ill, but just unhappy with their life.”
Illinois’ assisted suicide bill, like other laws in this realm, isn’t just about people making choices for themselves. It’s also about forcing people morally opposed to assisted suicide to participate in the practice.
In an email sent just after Governor Pritzker signed the bill, the Thomas More Society vowed to defend the rights of conscience of medical professionals from referring for assisted suicide, which the new law requires. They explained:
Beyond the tragedy of state-endorsed suicide, the law compounds its moral failure by attacking the conscience rights of healthcare providers. It now requires physicians who object to assisted suicide on moral or religious grounds to refer patients to providers who will participate in ending their lives. The State is forcing doctors to become active participants and cooperators in a patient’s suicide, no matter if their faith, ethics, or Hippocratic Oath forbid it.
This is unconscionable coercion, plain and simple. No doctor should be ordered by the government to participate directly or indirectly in a process that deliberately ends a human life.
The assault on conscience doesn’t stop with individual physicians. The law also threatens religious hospitals and clinics, forcing them to retain staff who promote assisted deaths on-site—as long as those staff provide lethal drugs off-site. This is a Trojan horse designed to violate and undermine the missions of religious healthcare institutions. Gov. Pritzker’s assisted suicide law threatens the integrity of Catholic and Christian medical institutions statewide.
We will defend the right of every healthcare professional to practice medicine consistent with their conscience and oath, and we will fight any state effort to force religious healthcare institutions to violate their beliefs.
It is more than likely Thomas More Society will be successful in striking down parts of the law. They were successful in halting a similar law that would have forced pro-life pregnancy centers to refer for abortion. That law was foolishly signed by Governor Rauner.
I want to thank my personal friend, attorney Tom Olp with the Thomas More Society, for taking on these cases. Fortunately, good people in Illinois are standing up to defend others’ rights of conscience against their laws.
I will be talking to State Representative Dr. Bill Hauter on my radio show tonight about this bill and the new law Pritzker just signed, making Illinois the first in the nation to have its own vaccine schedule.
On a related note: Illinois is truly a judicial hell-hole. This term usually refers to trial lawyers obtaining large judgments against corporations, particularly in personal injury lawsuits. Now it is related to letting criminals out of jail on electronic monitoring or no monitoring at all, to then re-offend, or allowing criminal illegals to continue to live freely in the U.S., even though they have deportation detainers.
The Department of Homeland Security issued a statement this week, that just this year, under Pritzker’s sanctuary state and SAFE-T Act policies, over 1,700 criminal illegals have been let free from custody.
Read the alarming story HERE.
IN OTHER NEWS
It’s levy time. Your local governments – cities, school districts, counties, townships, community colleges, and other units of government and special taxing districts – are passing levy resolutions to raise your property taxes.
Here’s an example of what is likely happening in 99% of school districts in Illinois.
On December 10th, the CUSD 200 School Board voted to increase the total levy by the maximum allowable of 2.9% for general operations. They also put applied the full tax rate levy on new construction and levied over $13 million for debt service. In total, the amount levied is over $194 million.
The debt service levy represents nearly 7% of the total amount. This debt service appears to be the first payment on the new bonds from the $151 million referendum voters, foolishly, approved in April. If the referendum had failed, the levy would have been substantially less, if not zero.
The district noted that their operational increases are related to contractual increases. They avoided saying that the current teacher contract mandates huge salary increases.
The teachers have received 6% pay increases every year for the last three years, 2023-2024 school year through 2025-2026 school year, for a total increase of over 19%. The CPI 2023-2025 has been 6.6%.
Student population is up 15 students year over year.
Total spending per student is over $21,800, not the $19,000 reported in the big font on the Illinois State Board of Education’s website. Read the small print – $250,768,002/11,503 students.
In CUSD 200, across the board, 61% of students are at grade level in reading and 49% in math. The number proficient is nearly meaningless now, though, because the state changed the cut-off scores to make them look better.
CUSD200 is also getting an extra $2 million from excess in a city TIF this year, but they taxed it to the max anyway.
In other property tax news, the courts have finally ruled that Cook County cannot steal a homeowner’s equity in a tax sale.
From the Chicago Tribune article:
“A homeowner might rack up $10,000 in tax-related debt on a property worth $100,000, for example. If they can’t pay the full debt — including interest — during the redemption period, the tax buyer can get the home’s title.
The original owner, the lawsuit argued, “receives nothing and loses as much as $90,000 in equity, while the tax buyer receives the windfall of a property worth $100,000 for which they paid $10,000.”
The system was ALWAYS unfair. And the Democrat politicians like Pappas, Preckwinkle, and Pritzker knew this. As did their fellow Democrats, who have been running the racket for decades.
In many cases, the owners made simple mistakes, didn’t realize they owed a de minimis amount, or simply saw their property taxes rise to a point where they could not afford them. In other cases, owners fell on hard times and just couldn’t pay the tax. They still should have received their equity back.
Literally, everything related to property taxes in Illinois is a scam. And, Pritzker has been in office for seven years and has failed to do anything on property tax reform.
Then there’s Harvey, Illinois – the canary in the coal mine to municipal financial distress.
More layoffs are happening in the City of Harvey.
I said it 7 years ago, even more true today, your pension, your job or your home, you cannot have all three.
When you can’t pay the bills, people lose their jobs. There is a reckoning coming in Illinois.
Harvey Fire Department hit with more layoffs amid partial city government shutdown
The big question now is how will Brandon Johnson plug a budget hole of over $1 billion.? Chicago is bankrupt.
I will discuss property taxes in detail with Warren Dixon on tonight’s show.