My Response to Pritzker's Response
...because I'm not letting him get the last word before I vote.
Happy Election Eve (or Day, depending on when you’re reading this)! 🇺🇸 🗳
I want to address responses from Governor Pritzker & his press secretary today about emails that I reported on this weekend.
First, referring to mandating the covid-19 vaccine for K-12 school attendance, he said,
“That’s not something we’re looking at doing. It’s really not a conversation that’s even going on.”
- J.B. Pritzker, November 7, 2022
Not sure who Pritzker means by “we”, but HIS office reached out to the Illinois Department of Public Health on October 27th and asked a “we” question - specifically,
“To add immunizations, do we have to go through the Committee and have three hearings?”
- Governor’s Office, October 27, 2022, per internal IDPH email
In another statement today, the Governor’s press secretary said,
“There are no plans to update the vaccine requirements for school age children.”
- Jordan Abudayyeh, Press Secretary to Governor Pritzker, November 7, 2022
Of course there are no plans to update the requirements. Pritzker hasn’t been re-elected yet, and the process hasn’t been initiated.
This word game comes as no surprise to Illinois parents. We’re all old enough to remember when the same press secretary told WGN News that mask guidance was simply guidance, and that school districts wouldn’t lose state funding if they made their own decisions.1 A few weeks later, Prtizker illegally ordered a mask on every school kid. So excuse me if I don't believe a single syllable that comes from his Comms team.
To Abudayyeh’s statement about a covid-shot requirement for school, ABC7Chicago’s Craig Wall added,
“The Governor’s Office also said it was exploring what steps need to be taken, in order to answer questions about it — questions raised by a Democratic state representative from Bolingbrook.”
That explanation makes zero sense.
The Bolingbrook representative’s questions were to IDPH, not to the Governor’s Office. There’s no indication anyone from IPDH reached out to the Governor’s Office separately about the representative’s email, or that the Rep’s staff reached out separately to the Governor’s people.
Any email chain is one set of communications at a certain point in time, of course, but even if the Governor’s Office was looped in elsewhere, there’s still no getting around the post press conference timing and phrasing of this question.
“Do we have to”? 🙄
Yes, Governor, you have to — unless you want to take the Legislative route. Can’t *Emergency Order* your way through this one.
Anyone is free to review the full file of emails that my friend Gracia Livie received via FOIA, posted here exactly as she received them from the Department of Health FOIA officer.2
Let the record - and J.B. Pritzker’s pandemic-response record - speak for itself.
UPDATE: I spoke with Greg Bishop @bishoponair Tuesday morning about this story. You can hear our conversation - and full video/audio of Darren Bailey’s, Tom DeVore’s, and Pritzker’s responses - on Facebook.
From July 13, 2021 WGN broadcast: To be clear, the Governor’s office says, “This is guidance and simply that. It’s not a mandate in that local districts can, in fact, make their own call when it comes to masks in the classroom without any blowback from the state as far as funding is concerned.”
Some content is redacted. IDPH cited Section 7(1)(f) of the Freedom of Information Act in defense of the exemptions, i.e., “[p]reliminary drafts, notes, recommendations, memoranda and other records in which opinions are expressed, or policies or actions are formulated”. Ms. Livie (the requestor) has asked the public access counselor for a review of the decisions to redact.
Crybullies. Experts at gaslighting, projection and overall dumbassery.
We know what they want to do if they win.
They know what they want to do if they win.
They know that we know what they want to do if they win.
It speaks volumes about this state.
However, whatever happens, I am trying to remain optimistic that the Illinois Team Reality coalition will continue to grow and lead this state back to a path of sanity.