Illinois governor stands up for trans kids and blasts ‘cruel bully’ Donald Trump
J.B. Pritzker at the Human Rights Campaign’s 2025 Los Angeles Dinner held at Fairmont Century Plaza. (Christopher Polk/Variety via Getty Images)
J.B. Pritzker at the Human Rights Campaign's 2025 Los Angeles Dinner held at Fairmont Century Plaza. (Christopher Polk/Variety via Getty Images)
Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker has once again stood up for trans kids, this time condemning US president Donald Trump as a “cruel bully” at a Human Rights Campaign event.
The staunch LGBTQ+ supporter, who signed an executive order in 2019 to protect young trans people and introduced a law in 2023 to prevent book bans, spoke at the Human Rights Campaign dinner in Los Angeles on March 22.
He began: “The Trump administration and his Republican lackeys in Congress are looking to reverse every single victory this community has won over the last 50 years.
“And right now it’s drag queens reading books and transgender people serving in the military. Tomorrow, it’s your marriage license and your job they want to take.”
“Bullies respond to one thing only … a punch in the face”
Pritzker went on to call out Trump as a “bully”, saying: “Bending to the whims of a bully will not end his cruelty. It will only embolden him. The response to authoritarianism isn’t acquiescence. Bullies respond to one thing, and one thing only, a punch in the face.”
In a message for trans youth he said: “And in the midst of this existential fight, this battle that seems to consume everything, well, let’s not take the soul-sucking path of sacrificing the most persecuted for that which we deem to be most popular.”
“I know that there are transgender children right now looking out at this world and wondering if anyone is going to stand up for them and for their simple right to exist. Well, I am. We are. We will.”
At the same dinner actor and singer Janelle Monáe also branded Trump a “bully” while accepting the Human Rights Campaign’s equality award.
Taking to the stage to accept the award, Monáe said: “Bullies only win when we let them think they can. Here’s the truth: bullying doesn’t stop when we grow up. It doesn’t end when we leave school. It just gets bigger, it rebrands itself. The bully gets elected president.”
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