Illinois Governor JB Pritzker used his time during the Feb. 19 budget address to draw stark parallels between the current political climate in the United States and the rise of Nazi Germany.

During his speech, Pritzker warned of what he perceives as alarming trends in American politics, particularly targeting the Trump administration and its supporters. He stated, “I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

“The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.”

The governor’s remarks were particularly pointed when he said, “It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic,” urging vigilance against what he sees as authoritarian tendencies.”

While Hitler became chancellor of Germany in January 1933 and declared himself the sole leader of Germany in August 1934, a period of about 18 months, it only took one month to get the Reichstag Fire Decree passed, curtailing civil liberties. 

By March 1933, the Enabling Act was passed, giving Hitler emergency powers. This act granted Chancellor Adolf Hitler and his cabinet the power to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichstag or the approval of President Hindenburg for a period of four years. It allowed Hitler’s government to issue decrees independently of the Reichstag and the presidency and provided a legal basis to consolidate his power and establish a dictatorship.

By August 1934, Hitler had eliminated all opposition and declared himself Führer, combining the roles of President, Chancellor, and Head of the Army. This marked the completion of his transformation of Germany from a democracy into a Nazi dictatorship, a process that took approximately 19 months from his initial appointment as Chancellor.

Hitler used discrimination, particularly antisemitism and racism, as a key tool to gain and consolidate power in Germany.  He blamed Jews for Germany’s problems, including its defeat in World War I and subsequent economic struggles while promoting the idea of Aryan racial superiority, positioning Germans as the “master race” and other groups, especially Jews and Slavs, as inferior. This appealed to a sense of national pride and justified discriminatory policies.

While Jews were the primary target, Hitler’s regime also persecuted other groups, including Black people, Roma, and people with disabilities. This broadened the base of discrimination and allowed for more widespread control.

Hitler quickly implemented laws to marginalize and persecute Jews and other minority groups. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 stripped Jews of citizenship and prohibited marriages between Jews and non-Jews.

In his first month back in office, President Trump has taken several actions that echo some of Hitler’s early moves to consolidate power, particularly in terms of targeting minority groups and curtailing civil liberties.

Pritzker pointed out some of Trump’s rhetoric in his speech.

“I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now,” Pritzker said. “A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.”

While the scale and context are different, there are concerning parallels:

1. Executive orders targeting diversity and inclusion: Trump signed three executive orders in his first days back in office that undermine diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) efforts within the federal government. 
2. Restricting rights of specific groups: One of Trump’s orders prohibits references to transgender individuals, effectively erasing their recognition in federal policy.
3. Rapid implementation of discriminatory policies: Trump enacted these significant policy changes within his first month in office, similar to Hitler’s quick actions like the Reichstag Fire Decree.
4. Using executive power to bypass legislative processes: Trump’s use of executive orders to rapidly implement major policy changes echoes Hitler’s use of emergency powers to bypass normal legislative processes.
5. Scapegoating and divisive rhetoric: Trump’s past rhetoric blaming immigrants and minorities for various problems echoes Hitler’s scapegoating tactics.
6. Undermining civil rights protections: Trump’s orders are seen as a deliberate attempt to undo progress on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, creating new barriers to opportunity. This parallels Hitler’s early moves to curtail civil liberties.
7. Centralizing power: Trump’s actions, particularly in federal contracting and hiring, concentrate more power in the executive branch, similar to Hitler’s consolidation of power.

Trump has also unveiled sweeping plans for mass deportations in his second term. The administration aims to remove up to 1 million unauthorized immigrants annually. His deportation strategy targets all undocumented immigrants, not just those with criminal records. 

To achieve these ambitious goals, the administration plans to set a national quota for federal officers to arrest at least 1,200 undocumented immigrants daily. As of February 6, 2025, the administration reported arresting 11,000 undocumented immigrants, averaging about 600 daily arrests. The administration is also suspending humanitarian parole programs and refugee resettlement while reviving the controversial “Remain in Mexico” program.

Trump has consistently blamed immigrants for various societal problems, echoing Hitler’s scapegoating of Jews and other minority groups. Trump has described immigrants as “poisoning the blood of our country” and accused them of bringing crime and economic hardship. He has also referred to undocumented immigrants as “animals” and insisted that “they’re not humans,” reminiscent of Hitler’s dehumanization of Jews and other targeted groups.

Trump’s statements about immigrants are not supported by evidence:

1. Crime: Studies consistently show that immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, are not more likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens.
2. Economic impact: Research indicates that immigration generally has a positive effect on the U.S. economy, contributing to economic growth and innovation.

On January 29, 2025, a tragic midair collision between American Airlines Flight 5342 and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan National Airport resulted in 67 fatalities. In response, President Trump baselessly claimed that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) were partly responsible for the crash. He accused the Obama and Biden administrations of prioritizing diversity over air safety and signed an executive order to review all federal aviation hiring and safety decisions made during the previous four years. 

Trump declared an end to DEI initiatives in the Defense Department, emphasizing the need for “the best and brightest” in air traffic control and throughout government. These accusations were made without evidence, as investigations into the crash were still in their early stages. 

Trump justified his claims by stating, “Because I have common sense, OK, and unfortunately a lot of people don’t”.

Trump’s claims about DEI programs affecting air safety are unfounded:

1. Air traffic controllers must meet strict qualifications, including being U.S. citizens, under 31 years old when first hired, passing criminal background checks, and medical exams.
2. Training process: Controllers undergo rigorous training, including programs at the FAA Academy and extensive on-the-job training, before becoming certified.
3. Certification: Controllers must pass knowledge and practical exams and meet experience requirements to be certified by the FAA, regardless of demographic factors.
4. Union response: The Air Traffic Controllers Association emphasized that certification criteria do not consider race or gender.

However, Trump’s remarks go beyond targeting groups of people. The President has also used terms like “vermin” to describe political opponents. He’s called for Rep. Liz Cheney to be fired upon; threatened former President Joe Biden with FBI raids, investigations, indictments, and jail time at least 25 times; dismissed Archivist of the United States Colleen Shogan on February 7, 2025; dismissed 18 board members from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; several career prosecutors involved in criminal investigations concerning Trump have been fired; eight senior FBI officials who were part of the investigations into the January 6 Capitol riots were terminated.

And, like Hitler, Trump has gone after the press. Trump has intensified his criticism of traditional media outlets, labeling journalists as the “enemy of the people” and frequently issuing threats against news organizations. Trump and his ally Elon Musk have directly attacked journalists by name on social media platforms, demanding their dismissal from news organizations. And they limited journalists’ access to government information by taking government webpages offline, deleting previously available data, and restricting access to the White House and Pentagon.

During Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Munich for the Security Conference in February 2025, he met with Alice Weidel, the co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, but did not meet with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. He has also urged German mainstream political parties to drop resistance to cooperating with the far right, particularly in reference to the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Also within Trump’s circle of influence, Elon Musk virtually addressed a rally for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, urging Germans to move beyond “past guilt”. There has been debate over whether Musk made a gesture twice during an inauguration rally that resembled a Nazi-style salute, the same salute Steve Bannon gave at Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Feb. 20.

“I just have one question: What comes next?,” Pritzker asked. “After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next?”

Pritzker tied his remarks back to 1978 when a Nazi group planned a march in Skokie, Ill. where one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world lived. 

“The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.”

In 1977, a small group of neo-Nazis led by Frank Collin announced plans to march through Skokie, home to a large Jewish population including thousands of Holocaust survivors. 

The village of Skokie responded swiftly, enacting ordinances to block the demonstration and filing a lawsuit in state court. These measures included requiring liability insurance for demonstrations and prohibiting the wearing of military-style uniforms.

The case quickly escalated to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the neo-Nazis’ right to march based on free speech concerns. This decision sparked intense debate about the balance between protecting free speech and shielding communities from hate speech.

Despite the legal victory, the neo-Nazis ultimately decided not to march in Skokie. Instead, they held a rally in Chicago on June 24, 1978, which was met with a much larger counter-protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that the Nazi rally “sputtered to an unspectacular end after 10 minutes,” drawing only about 20 group members compared to an estimated 2,000 counter-protesters.

While American children are taught that the United States ended Hitler’s reign and WWII, large swaths of information about American history and sentiment are left out. 

Prior to World War II, US immigration policy significantly restricted immigration, reflecting a broader trend of limiting immigration from certain regions and groups. The Immigration Act of 1924, also known as the Johnson-Reed Act, established a quota system that heavily favored northern and western European immigrants while limiting those from southern and eastern Europe, including many Jews. It also effectively banned all immigration from Asia, violating previous agreements and formalizing racial exclusion policies. Italians, Greeks, Poles, and other Slavic peoples were also targeted. 

The law was designed to preserve what its supporters considered to be the racial and ethnic homogeneity of the United States by severely restricting immigration from certain regions and completely banning it from others. It was strongly influenced by eugenics theories, which promoted the idea of preserving the “purity” of the white race.  Supporters of the law openly argued for preserving the racial composition of the United States as it existed in earlier decades.

By basing quotas on the 1890 census, the law effectively made mass migration from Eastern Europe impossible, severely limiting Jewish immigration. The act brought to an end a historic migration of Jews to the United States that had seen over 2 million Jewish immigrants arrive between 1880 and 1920. The law’s restrictions remained in place during the 1930s and 1940s, preventing many Jewish refugees from fleeing Nazi persecution and the Holocaust.

The racist motivations behind the act were so apparent that it was later cited favorably by Nazi legislators when crafting their own discriminatory policies. 

While there is no precise estimate of how many Jewish people could have been saved if the United States had allowed more liberal immigration, the number would have been significant based on the available information:

1. In 1938, over 300,000 Germans, mostly Jewish refugees, had applied for U.S. visas, but only about 20,000 applications were approved.
2. By June 1939, the number of visa applicants had increased to over 300,000, far exceeding the annual quota of 27,370 for German citizens.
3. Between 1933 and 1945, approximately 180,000-220,000 refugees fleeing Nazism permanently immigrated to the United States. However, this number was far below the potential, as the racist immigration quotas in place since 1924 were rarely filled during that time.
4. The refusal to admit refugees continued even as the situation in Europe worsened. For instance, in 1939, 83% of Americans were opposed to the admission of refugees.
5. After World War II, when immigration policies were relaxed, the United States admitted about 400,000 displaced persons between 1945 and 1952, of which approximately 96,000 were Jewish Holocaust survivors.

While Pritzker’s statements came during the budget address, and although he focused some time on how Trump’s economic policies could affect the people of Illinois, the call to the American people was evident. 

“Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance,” he said. “Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.”

Illinois Republicans called Pritzker’s speech, “grandstanding and hypocrisy from a politician who has already set his sights on his next pursuit of office.”