In this episode, I speak with Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, one of the depressingly few Democratic leaders showing real fight in the face of Trumpism. We get into the weeds on how Illinois is defending its climate laws, advancing clean energy and manufacturing, and tackling thorny challenges like the housing crisis, the transition away from natural gas, and the looming “fiscal cliff” facing transit agencies. Oh, and the governor explains what quantum computing is.
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David Roberts
Greetings and salutations, everyone. This is Volts for April 30, 2025, "The Governor of Illinois discusses decarbonization in the era of Trump." I'm your host, David Roberts. One of the more disheartening aspects of Trump's reign of terror is not just the damage it is doing to the country, but how little resistance it has faced from US elites in politics, media, and civil society. Figure after figure, institution after institution, has bent the knee to Trump, throwing their values overboard for expediency.
One exception to this rule has been Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, who has lately been touring the country giving barn-burning speeches, trying to shake Democrats out of their torpor and push them to fight back.
Pritzker has plenty to be proud of — Illinois is one of the better-managed, blue-run states in the country. In the last five years, its Democratic majority has passed seminal legislation on numerous subjects, including climate and clean energy. Today, the state legislature is contemplating powerful follow-up bills on transportation and renewable energy.
I'm eager to talk to the governor about how to maintain progress and morale in the face of a two-bit tyrant, what's next in Illinois for transportation and industrial decarbonization, how states can cooperate to prove a counter-balance to Trump, and what the heck quantum computing is.
Governor JB Pritzker, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
Governor JB Pritzker
Thanks, David. Great to be here.
David Roberts
Let's start, unfortunately, with a couple of Trump questions. You can be forgiven for perhaps having lost track of the executive orders that are coming out at a furious pace. But one of them last week was basically an order to the effect that Trump is going to have his attorney general look at state climate laws with an eye to suing them as unconstitutional. It's unclear exactly how they're going to go after them, but the intent is clear enough. Trump's AG is going to go after state climate laws.
I just wonder how are you thinking about that threat and are you talking with other — you know, because Illinois is pretty far out ahead on climate laws, so I'm sure you're in the target zone — I wonder if you're talking to other sort of climate forward states about how to think about this threat and how to respond to it?
Governor JB Pritzker
Let me start with the fact that they make a lot of threats, hoping that we'll capitulate just based on the threats. We're not, I'm not afraid, we will take them to court. There is a supremacy clause in the Constitution that, you know, if there's a federal law that prohibits something, states can't authorize it. But that's not the case here. We have laws on the books in the state that protect the climate, that are focused on advancing our electrification goals. None of what's on the books at the federal level is in conflict with that. So they can investigate all they want; they're not going to succeed.
David Roberts
You know, I know you're part of the US Climate Alliance now. Are you the co-chair currently, or am I making that up?
Governor JB Pritzker
No, I co-chair a number of groups that are focused on climate, but not the US Climate Alliance. I will say I joined the US Climate Alliance, or at least I did on behalf of Illinois, right when I became governor. I think it was maybe my fifth or sixth day in office. Remember that Donald Trump was governor, I mean, was president rather, and I was governor and it was 2019. And you know, I am committed to a focus on electrification, a focus on our environment, and importantly on fighting climate change. So, we've made a lot of progress in that regard, even during Trump's first term.
We're continuing to make progress even now, even with the headwinds that the federal government is putting in our way. And let's face it, all of what they're doing is irrational. It truly makes no sense. We're creating jobs, we're growing our economy, in part, based on our focus on climate. We passed a bill here in 2021, something that I worked on for a year and a half, you know, to bring all the parties together called the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act. And it is focused on us reaching a carbon-free energy environment in the state by 2050.
David Roberts
And you're confident that's going to stand up to any legal challenge from the President?
Governor JB Pritzker
Oh, yeah, there's no doubt about it. Again, you know, federal law is in conflict with state laws; federal laws override the state law. But in this regard, you know, we passed a law that is absolutely constitutional. And we've made a ton of progress, we've tripled the amount of renewable energy that we're producing in the state and that continues to grow. And we just removed our moratorium on small modular nuclear reactors and we're considering doing that —
David Roberts
I saw that was up for a vote. I didn't know if that had gone through.
Governor JB Pritzker
Well, that happened last year. And then this year — and I think that's what you're probably thinking of — we have a bill that's moving through the legislature that would remove the moratorium on large-scale nuclear reactors.
David Roberts
Are you supportive of that one?
Governor JB Pritzker
Yes, I am. We're still negotiating the final version of the bill. So, when I say I'm in favor of it, I'm in favor of it with the focus on safety. That's really the most important thing. And, I don't frankly trust a Trump administration to provide the kind of safety and backup that we need from the federal government. So, we're making sure we've got that ready at the state level. But, we are the state that has the most; we produce the most nuclear power. We have the greatest number of nuclear reactors. It's one of the reasons why many years ago there was a moratorium put on it.
People were just, you know, it's like, "Hey, we've got enough." But the reality is, and even though it's about 52% of all the electricity that we produce, the reality is that these days, as you know, there's greater and greater demand. And even though we continue to produce more electricity than we use in our state, we believe that will dry up, you know, over the next six, seven years. So, we want to be prepared.
David Roberts
One of the things that you've been pushing for Illinois is to be sort of a manufacturing hub, kind of a clean manufacturing hub. There were some big grants headed to industrial demonstration projects in Illinois from the Office of Clean Energy Demonstration at the DOE. And I have been hearing, maybe you've been hearing, that the DOE is going to yank a lot of those back, cancel a lot of those grants insofar as they can. So I just wonder, does a state — I know state budgets are not nearly as flexible as the federal budget — do you have the resources to step in and fund that kind of innovation and sort of first-of-a-kind plants and these early start things? Can you step up and do on R&D what the feds are now bailing on?
Governor JB Pritzker
You know, across the board, David, they have been pulling back on grants, and it's damaging work that's been done at the state level all across the country. But here in Illinois, we have $1.8 billion that's owed to the state that we expect that we should get from the federal government. Not all of it is climate-brain related.
David Roberts
Those were already signed, already agreed upon?
Governor JB Pritzker
We count on that. And this is part of our budgets. And if you go state by state, it's usually 30-40% of all the money that states have available to them comes from the federal government. And now, you know, there are a number of instances in which they've pulled back. We're obviously involved in lawsuits that are designed to make sure that they do what the Congress has required by law that they do. But they're unconstitutionally withholding those grants. So we're working on that. But you know, we're talking about, for example, NEVI funding so that we can fund our charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, for example, that is something they've stopped funding.
We continue, nevertheless, to build out our charging infrastructure and we're going to continue to make those investments. We are expanding the number of people that are involved in the clean energy industry. You know, the Climate Equitable Jobs Act, the important word being equitable, requires us to train people for this relatively new industry. And we've been doing that. I just was at an opening of one of our new climate innovation hubs where we're going to have hundreds of people going through and getting trained. This is in Decatur, Illinois, central Illinois, and that's happening all across the state.
David Roberts
That's a great example, like a climate innovation hub that's training Illinoisans to work in this industry. It's a great thing. Can that survive without federal funding?
Governor JB Pritzker
Absolutely. That is something that was part of our Climate and Equitable Jobs Act and not reliant upon the Inflation Reduction Act or any other federal law. Meanwhile, that doesn't mean that we don't need the federal government to step up and do what it has promised to do. But as it regards training people for those jobs, you know, we have created a ton of jobs in the clean energy industry and we just have to have the workforce for it. And Illinois is the number one state in the Midwest for workforce development. So we're proud of that. We're going to continue to invest in that with or without the federal government.
Meanwhile, again, we're going to make sure that they do what they're supposed to do, and we're going to do that by taking them to court.
David Roberts
Let's talk about transportation. Transportation is the number one source of greenhouse gases in Illinois. I think that's true in many states, especially with the progress that's been made on electricity lately. So, let's talk a little bit about how you view transportation decarbonization. There's a bill in the legislature called the Climate and Equitable Transportation Act that sort of gathers together several transportation reforms. I'm curious if you have thoughts on that bill or the constituent parts of it. Mainly, I'd like to hear about the sort of funding cliff that the state transit systems face.
Governor JB Pritzker
Yep. So, I think this has happened in a number of states with large urban areas where transit systems, enormously burdened by COVID-19, suffered a downturn in ridership and were badly in need of funding. There was federal funding that was coming that has now subsided. So, when you talk about a funding cliff, I would just say, look, we need to restore our transit system. It's hugely important in the future of job creation and the future of our economy. I'm a big believer in transit and I would point out that transit isn't just a subway in an urban environment.
We have transit systems, you know, all over the state of Illinois: Carbondale, Decatur, Peoria, and Aurora. These are places that don't necessarily have a subway system or trains, or at least, you know, they don't have a commuter rail system. And we need to fund those properly as well. So, we've been working on that at the legislature, and the legislative session ends May 31st. That work continues. One very important thing is we need reform. We have multiple significant transit systems. Right. We have a Pace suburban bus system.
David Roberts
Yeah, there's four just in the Chicago area, as I understand it.
Governor JB Pritzker
It's a lot. Right. And then, you know, as I mentioned, in all the other areas of the state, but in the Chicagoland region, there has not been a lot of coordination between the different systems. And so we're demanding that, you know, if we're going to provide funding both at the state level and to coordinate funding from the city of Chicago and the counties that surround Chicago, that we need to have a better governance system and more coordination between those. We think we can save money doing it as well as provide better service. So that's all happening right now.
It's quite complex, as you can imagine, but it's been worked on for more than a year and there's a lot that is already ready to come forward. It's really just a question of bringing all the pieces together. And then finally, as you're pointing out, we need more funding. Who's going to provide that funding is another part of the question. The state should provide some. But again, the city of Chicago, the counties surrounding Cook County, and the county surrounding Cook County, not to mention, we're probably going to have to look at the farebox as another source of revenue. But importantly, we're going to have a world-class transit system. We have to.
David Roberts
So you're committed to getting past this fiscal cliff then?
Governor JB Pritzker
Absolutely. And I would stop calling it a cliff, to be honest, because we understand that we're going to have to continue to fund this system and it's got to be run better. So, this is really more reform than it is hitting a cliff.
David Roberts
Something you hear from transportation reformers in lots of states is that even when you have a governor and a legislature saying the right things about transportation decarbonization, you often have state departments of transportation that sort of seem to lag behind the rest of the government, seem overly focused on highways, seem under-committed to alternatives. How do you think about your state department of transportation and getting it aligned with these goals?
Governor JB Pritzker
You know, it's funny you say that. You know, I was in business before I became governor, and things move a lot faster in the private sector than they do in the public sector.
David Roberts
So, I hear.
Governor JB Pritzker
When you talk about state departments or city departments of transportation, you know, there's a reason, sometimes a good reason, why they move a little bit slower, and that is that, you know, you want to build consensus, you want to make sure that you're getting it right along the way, that it meets the needs of a lot of different constituencies and so on. That's not always the case in a business. And so that's one reason why it might move slower. But there are other reasons that don't make any sense at all. Right. They're just from history, bureaucracy, and lots of other things.
And just some people who've held a position for a long time and have had a certain idea about how to carry out their position, and then times change, policies change, and those certain people maybe need to be changed out or need to change their views. So that is another reason. It's not a good reason. It's just I'm explaining why I think there's sometimes a slower reaction in government than there is in the private sector. So here's the thing. We don't get it right all the time, I have to say, at state government, when we're trying to move fast and as you're saying, you know, maybe less focus on highways, more focus on transit. But we have made a lot of change.
And importantly, we're being more efficient about what kinds of roads we're putting in, how we're focused on electrification, which I think makes a big difference, how we're paying for it. Those are all things that have changed over the years in a positive way, and I'm proud of that about the state of Illinois. It wasn't like that — when I came into office, we had enormous deficits in the state. We had a terrible credit rating. We had a lot of challenges coming up with the funding for the things that we needed to do.
And over the last six years, that's all improved markedly. And we passed in Illinois before the federal government got around to it, the largest infrastructure package in the nation. And I'm very proud of that. And that's helped us do both more rail, more transit, and highways, and bridges, and airports, and so on.
David Roberts
And I hear good things about your new Secretary of Transportation.
Governor JB Pritzker
I'm so glad you raised that, because she is somebody who was at the city of Chicago. She's somebody that people who are cyclists and pedestrians and who understand the need for public transit and how important it is when we think about climate change, love her. Because she really gets it. So when we brought her, you know, she had left the city, but she basically had done a terrific job at the city of Chicago. We brought her at the state level. Already, I can feel the change, and I'm hearing it from people all across Illinois.
So, I'm very excited about the work that she's already doing. And she and I just met the other day to talk about the kind of big projects that we're going to be working on over the next couple of years.
David Roberts
Awesome. Let's talk a little bit about electricity. Here's a little bit of a tricky question, but I wonder if you have sort of a perspective on it. So, Illinois has restructured utilities, as I understand it, meaning a market, more or less a market, something like a market and a lot of different utilities and generation companies competing, which has its merits. But I think there is, these days, some counter thinking to the effect that the electricity system is becoming so complex, with all the resources now at the edge of the grid and people's houses and buildings, EVs and EV chargers, all of it is becoming extremely complex.
And there's an idea that with the restructuring of utilities, you sort of lost any central planning, any central grid planning. And I think this might even be in one of the energy bills that's up in Illinois this session. The idea of creating some sort of state agency just to do kind of central coordination of grid planning. Is that on your radar at all?
Governor JB Pritzker
Well, you know, I believe in having markets that help us bring down prices, electric prices for people across the state. But I also understand the point you're making. I want to point out we have the Illinois Commerce Commission is really tasked with doing exactly that — this kind of planning. And what they're designed to do is when the companies come to get their rates approved, the ICC — now, I want to be clear, this was not always the case, but it is now — that the ICC is really focused on exactly this issue of "How are we going to carry ourselves forward, get the amount of electricity that we need produced in the state and also delivered in the right ways?" And with the variety of ways in which electricity is being produced, we need to have that kind of planning.
And that's happening because we've invested in the Illinois Commerce Commission in a staff and new commissioners since I took office who exactly understand that. In fact, the person who was one of my kind of three amigos that helped us put together the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act from the governor's office, who is a former mayor of the city of Rockford and an expert on clean energy, is now the chair of the Illinois Commerce Commission. So, I've seen an enormous change since he took office, since I took office as well, you know, and I appointed him. So, I understand your point and it's true that in some other states where it's, you know, less of a free market, they have more kind of central planning capability.
But, we've redesigned the way we do things in Illinois, and I think the Illinois Commerce Commission has done just a bang-up job in this kind of new world.
David Roberts
Well, I love to hear from anyone who appreciates the importance of public utility commissions. Hail, hail.
Governor JB Pritzker
Now, that means you're a real nerd when you say something like that.
David Roberts
This is a niche podcast.
Governor JB Pritzker
No, but I love it. Look, this is sometimes where the most important work gets done, at the commissions that maybe everybody isn't paying attention to.
David Roberts
True.
Governor JB Pritzker
And so, that's why putting great people, appointing great people into those positions, is hyper-important. And that's why, you know, electing a governor that you agree with, that the voters agree with and what should happen in terms of our future electrification, is so important.
David Roberts
Well, speaking of electrification, you know, everybody is looking down the barrel of electricity forecasts which say, "Lines going up fast." You know, there's disagreement about how steep it is, but almost everyone agrees lines are going up. So, I wonder, different people have different feelings about this, the sort of flood of data centers into. Are you just sort of all in? Like, do you want the data centers? Are you worried at all about the impact of sort of giant single load customers like that? It's sort of a new thing for the electricity system, really. Like, are you just all in on trying to attract them? And do you have any worries about keeping up?
Governor JB Pritzker
Well, David, I'm the governor of a very large state, so I worry all the time. But I gotta say this, the key is, remember, we produce about 20% more electricity in the state of Illinois than we consume. Now, we've got MISO, we've got PJM. We're all sharing electricity across borders. But I just want to point out that at least for the state of Illinois, we theoretically could keep growing the number of data centers and perhaps open a bunch of AI data centers and not need new sources of electricity for some time.
Having said that, there are a lot of other things that eat up electricity, including advanced manufacturing, just to give another industry that we all ought to focus on that uses a lot of electricity. So, the key is to keep up with the demand and to make sure that we're doing everything we can on the conservation front.
David Roberts
Yeah, and what about this worry that I see popping up more and more about special deals data centers are getting, lower rates? You know, just making sure they pay. Because lots of times when you put a big data center on your system, you need a lot of infrastructure upgrades just to keep up with it. And like, who pays for those infrastructure upgrades? Are you worried about ensuring that data centers sort of pay for their own infrastructure? Do you know what I mean?
Governor JB Pritzker
You know, it. I mean, let's start with — look, the focus of virtually everything I do is working families. And if they can't afford to pay their electricity bill, that's an enormous problem. And I'm not going to let that happen in a world where, yes, we'd love to have AI data centers, we'd love to have more data centers that are paying taxes and hiring people and so on. That's all great. But if it's going to affect, in a negative way, working families across the state, then, you know, we got to do something else. Here's the trick.
If we do data centers, what we have to make sure is that they're paying appropriately into the system so that the rates that average folks out there are paying aren't going to go through the roof. And infrastructure, we all have to pay for infrastructure, but if it's caused by one of these large tech companies that wants to come in and build an AI data center, which, by the way, we have nothing against an AI data center, but you raised the real question, which is, "How is it going to affect the rest of your electricity grid and your distribution and, most importantly, people's bills?" And so, yes, of course, the goal here is to make sure that the folks who are taking up our existing infrastructure are paying for new infrastructure, that if they're going to come in and take a large piece of the infrastructure and the production that we've got, they've got to pay up for it.
So, that's part of the deal. Now, I want to say one other thing, which is data centers, by themselves, there's nothing evil about data centers. It's just that, yes, they use a lot of electricity. So, we changed our trajectory on data centers. When I came into office, we were not attracting any data centers.
David Roberts
Why was it? Was there a particular policy?
Governor JB Pritzker
Yeah, because other states had certain kinds of tax incentives that we didn't have. Right. We weren't even keeping up with the average state out there. And that was before I came into office. The first year I was in office, we passed a bill to attract data centers to the state. And guess what? So, huge advantage our location, center of the country. Here's the other big advantage we have: 20% of the world's fresh water is right on our shores.
David Roberts
Oh yeah, true.
Governor JB Pritzker
Also, underneath the state, we've got aquifers and we've got rivers that run up and down the state of Illinois. All fresh water. We've got more than 80% of the US fresh water.
David Roberts
Oh, wow.
Governor JB Pritzker
Think about that.
David Roberts
That's crazy.
Governor JB Pritzker
20% of the world's fresh water. So, if you're gonna build a data center, you wanna be in a place like ours because you need water and you need electricity. And we've got an enormous amount of baseload because 52% of our electricity is nuclear.
David Roberts
Right.
Governor JB Pritzker
So, it's great. But, to the point you raised earlier, we want to make sure that we're keeping up on electricity production with the demand that we know is coming. And once again, we got to keep our electricity rates low for businesses as well as for individuals and working families.
David Roberts
Here's another question that's related to that. So, speaking of things that are going to drive electrification, we've talked about clean manufacturing. That's one of them. We've talked about clean electric transportation — that's another one of them — EVs coming online. But the big third bucket of electrification is building heating and cooling. And so, right now, Illinois, I think, has one of the biggest gas networks in the country. I know the Commerce Commission, speaking of which, the Illinois Commerce Commission is currently running a Future of Gas Proceeding. Massachusetts, I believe, had the nation's first Future of Gas Proceeding, just concluded maybe last year.
I'm very curious how you think about gas and the future of gas in Illinois.
Governor JB Pritzker
Well, the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, not to repeat myself, but CEJA really did a lot for us to set policy going forward with regard to natural gas. And it really is designed, remember, everything here is designed to move entirely toward clean energy. And filling the gap here with the reduction in coal, for example, and the reduction in natural gas with renewables. But natural gas has its place. And we've not done away with natural gas. And we're not telling people they can't have a gas stove. But we are aware that, you know, when we think about things like, "How much should the ratepayers pay for the replacement of gas lines?"
When you know that over time there's going to be a reduction in need and at some point that reduction is going to go down to a point where we don't need to be replacing every gas line. So the question is, what does that look like? And that's a real challenge, I'll be frank with you. And we have debated this, we've come up with some solutions for it. But it's not a debate that has ended now because there's an evolution that'll take place and we don't exactly know the speed of that evolution. So we're working on it hard. I don't want to tell you we have all the right answers yet, but I do know that we can't continue to say that we're going to replace every gas pipeline that we used to replace all the time for a world in which natural gas, you know, will be reduced in the state.
David Roberts
But would you agree to the notion that on some time horizon the goal is to electrify home heating and cooling?
Governor JB Pritzker
Of course, that will eventually happen. I mean, I, again, it's going to be long after I'm governor and maybe even after I'm dead and gone. And I'm 60 years old, so you can maybe, you know, make some calculation, but you know, it's going to take a while. Right? I mean, that's why we've set a goal, you know, and we are actually going to get to carbon-free electricity and carbon-free energy in the state by 2050. So I can't tell you exactly what the timeline for all this is, but 100% we're focused on electrification. There's so many ways. Heat pumps is one example of it.
David Roberts
One of the reasons I asked this is, I just looked at a map and heat pumps are lagging in the Midwest. They are, I think, at 20% in the Midwest, where you are, way behind some other areas. So, they're nascent, I guess, in your area.
Governor JB Pritzker
That's fair to say. And you know, I haven't ever argued that the Midwest is ahead on this subject. But I do want you to recognize, I mean, we've got some pretty cold climates here in the Midwest. You know, we've got a lot of rural areas. I think there's probably an argument, a greater argument in a way, for electrification in rural climates than there is in some of the urban climates. But we're all focused on this. I don't think we're going to move forward on our energy portfolio as we head toward carbon-free energy without addressing this subject.
David Roberts
Another subject that comes up in this regard a lot, and in a lot of other regards, is the housing crisis. I feel like just in the last few years, it has sort of really quickly become conventional wisdom, now agreed upon more or less across the board among Democrats at least, that the nation is in a housing crisis. The housing crisis is worst in some ways in blue areas, in blue states — some connection to blue governance, people are talking about. And of course, there's an energy and climate connection too, because the more people sprawl, the more they sprawl out into the countryside, the more resources they consume, the more carbon intensive their lives are.
So, there's a climate angle on this, too. So, I just wonder how you are thinking about the housing crisis in the state and what sorts of mechanisms you see for beginning to address it.
Governor JB Pritzker
Housing is an enormous issue, but it's not a blue governance problem. The issue is that you associate those two because we have the largest urban environments, typically.
David Roberts
Well, it's because all the cities are blue. Right?
Governor JB Pritzker
Well, that's true. That's true. And so, you know, the blue states, right, have large blue urban environments, and it's in the urban environments in which there's the biggest housing crisis. So we have, in our state, tried to address this by creating, first of all, a Director of Housing Solutions and a set of policies that we pursued during this General Assembly that we think is going to help a lot. Look, we've got a lot of housing that we need to create. I mean, that's great news in one way. You know, it's also challenging, great news because, you know, we want people to have the ability to own a home or to rent a home, and we have population growth in areas where there aren't enough homes.
To my mind, anyway, this challenge with regard to housing is one that we're going to be addressing for several years to come. One of the problems, let me be clear, is financing. What I mean is, interest rates are too high. One of the challenges when you go talk to a developer is they can't borrow money at these kinds of rates and get a return. So, the question is, what are we going to do now? Donald Trump's solution to that is to destroy the economy so you'll have to lower interest rates. But then, nobody can afford a home.
Yeah, clever. Then nobody can afford a home. You know, that's not the way to do it. Right. We were actually on a decent trajectory. As, you know, interest rates were coming down as inflation was coming down, coming into this new administration. And now everything's been upended because of the economy, because of tariffs, because of Donald Trump's policies. We're going to face a greater challenge than we have even over the last number of years. So, we are addressing it in the state because we put together a task force. You know, I'm a big believer in not reinventing the wheel.
If there are good ideas around the country that we ought to implement in the state, let's make sure we're doing that. And then importantly, we'll adopt those policies, and that's what we're attempting to do now. Some of them we came up with that are unique to Illinois, but many have been effectuated across the country.
David Roberts
Can I ask you about one in specific? Because one of the sort of areas where Illinois has pioneered and drawn a lot of praise from people in my world is they put a moratorium on local bans of renewable energy, basically. I'm sure you remember this whole thing. There are all these sort of right-wing groups that are going around stirring up opposition to renewables at the local level. You have local towns banning renewable development. Basically, the Illinois legislature said, "No, you can't do that." I wonder if you would think about taking a similar tack on housing, because housing is another area where it's very often a handful of not particularly representative locals who are holding things up.
Governor JB Pritzker
No doubt about it. And indeed, that's part of the package that we're addressing in the General Assembly now. So, you've got it. Think about carriage houses, and we've got neighborhoods where people are not allowed to have those as separate dwellings. Or just the idea that we can, if we make a few tweaks here and there, we can significantly increase the amount of housing with the existing housing stock. What we really want is we need to build more dwellings, we need to build more multifamily housing. And again, part of that is a financing problem in the private sector. It's also like, what can we do in an environment where interest rates are high?
Can the state step in? They did this in Utah, where the state provided from their state treasury the ability for first-time home buyers to get a lower interest loan.
David Roberts
Interesting.
Governor JB Pritzker
For certain size dwellings. Right. So again, like a first-time home, I think it's less than 2,000 square feet. But the point is that you're trying to encourage, with lower interest rates, developers to come in and develop new homes and people to build new homes and for buyers to be able to afford those new homes. So those are things that we've looked at for the state. It obviously costs money to offer a lower interest rate from state money if we can invest it at a higher interest rate than we can loan the money at a lower interest rate. Then that costs us money.
But that's, you know, in some instances, worthwhile doing, even though, you know, it may be an expensive endeavor. But we're looking at all of it. Again, as you're pointing out, changing the zoning rules is just one of many possible solutions.
David Roberts
One of your staffers happened to mention that you were excited to make Illinois a hub for quantum computing. And I thought to myself, "What on earth is quantum computing?" So, I thought I would just give you a nice lob here. You can just tell us what quantum computing is and why you're excited about it.
Governor JB Pritzker
You know, I like to describe it in two ways, right? One is the effect at the end. I'll describe what quantum computing is in a second. But, you know, the impact of quantum computing is sort of imagine what could happen if we had the ability, if you could analyze the weather — just to give you an example — analyze the weather to the point where you knew exactly where a tornado was going to hit. Not just generally it's in this city, but exactly where it was going to hit. Quantum computing allows you to take all the existing data and crunch it with such speed and accuracy that you could determine that.
Imagine if you could understand the currents of the ocean such that you would never have to worry about where a tsunami was going to arise, or that you might be surprised by where a hurricane is going to hit, because you are so accurately able to predict, because of the ability to crunch the data as fast as a quantum computer.
David Roberts
All kinds of climate resilience implications.
Governor JB Pritzker
A 100%. And then, you know, and then development of pharmaceuticals, which often take five or seven years to develop because of all the work that needs to be done.
David Roberts
Or new materials to substitute for hydrocarbons in plastic, for instance.
Governor JB Pritzker
Exactly. And we talk about this when we talk about AI, but think of AI like hypercharged in a way that produces the results we just talked about. Now let's go back to what is quantum computing? So, I like to describe it in this way because I'm not a quantum scientist, but I think this is the easiest way for people to understand it. You understand what a transistor is? I think most people know what a transistor is. They knew what a transistor radio was, you know, many years ago, right? A simple device that required a transistor. People put transistors side by side by side to develop, like the first computers.
And you had many transistors that were hooked together. Then came the ability to essentially print transistors on silicon. So, you know, when you could do that, Silicon Valley, that's when you came up with your first personal computers and not those big IBM ones, with the data cards that they would put in, right? So, you could see everything getting miniaturized. Well, imagine if you could develop transistors on a molecule and imagine how many transistors you could put together on a molecule when today a chip can have billions of transistors.
Imagine how many you could have if you could do it on molecules. So, that's essentially the ability to put all those molecules together, which together, you know, is something you can't even see, but be able to compute at a multiple of what you can do today. I'm talking about a multiple of a million times. So, that's kind of the way I like for people to think about quantum: the ability for us to crunch data at a rate that it's hard to even imagine. But the scientists in the labs at the University of Chicago, at Northwestern, at the University of Illinois, and other places across Illinois, not to mention in other places across the United States and in China and other places.
Right. But this is all being worked on, and here's why this is important. Let's start with the importance from a national security perspective. If we don't win the race to develop the first really usable quantum computer, which is coming in the next five to seven years, if we don't win that race, someone else wins it. They will be able to break every code on Earth because of, again, the ability to crunch numbers and crunch data at a million times what you can now. So every kind of encryption can be broken. The reverse of that, by the way, is if you have quantum encryption, you can protect anything from attack.
And we talked about quantum sensing, quantum communication. These are all things that are the outgrowth of our ability to develop the first quantum computers. In Illinois, the first quantum computer is being built.
David Roberts
Ah, interesting.
Governor JB Pritzker
And it's being built by a company that's going onto our Quantum Park that we launched last year in Chicago on the south side. And IBM has moved in there. DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is running a quantum benchmarking program there so they can evaluate all of the companies that are developing new products in the quantum space. And other companies that are startup companies that want to be on this campus and having all of that around the University of Chicago, run by the University of Illinois, with the input of Northwestern University, not to mention the other Midwestern greats like the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Purdue, et cetera. Bringing all that together means we'll beat China at this, but we've got to make the investments to make that happen.
The federal government's role is very important in this. I'm afraid of what Donald Trump is doing at the federal level. And whether, you know, DOGE or just by mistake, they'll stop it, because that seems to be a lot of the way this government is running.
David Roberts
Wouldn't that just be the most 2025 thing to ever happen?
Governor JB Pritzker
Yeah, the most Project 2025 thing. Anyway, that's what we're doing here with quantum.
David Roberts
Awesome. Okay, Governor, one final question, and this one I know is something that's on a lot of people's minds. It's just a general political question, which is I know that I'm not alone in having been incredibly disheartened over the last few years, not just to see the rise of Trump and all that he sort of represents, but just the utter lack of resistance, just how easy it was for him and how few people and institutions are standing up. And I get it: It's scary, he's a tyrant, whatever, he can set his mobs on you.
I get all that. But, like, no one? I'm not even just talking about Democrats either. Just civic leaders, business leaders, you know what I mean? Nonprofit leaders. Where is our spine? Where is the US's spine? Why is no one — why is there so little fight, I guess, on a lot of people's minds? And as one of the few people who seem to be fighting, maybe you have some insight into that. You move in these circles. What's wrong with these people?
Governor JB Pritzker
We could have just started the podcast. What's wrong with these people? Like I said, I was elected governor during Trump's first term. I know who he is. I do. And I knew that — "Danger, Will Robinson!" as we like to say, those of us who watched Lost in Space years ago — that we have somebody that is, frankly, not very bright. He is a bombast, and he's somebody who loves to be in control and is a massive narcissist. So, all of that should have led people to be concerned, deeply concerned. And I was calling it out back then.
I think a lot of people just didn't believe that it could be worse than it was during his first term, or that he could get re-elected.
David Roberts
Even though he promised, he said it out loud numerous times, "It will be worse."
Governor JB Pritzker
Yeah, but so what? He lies half the time, so you don't know which half are the lies. And honestly, I think there were a lot of people just taken by surprise, not believing that Project 2025 could, in fact, be implemented. I'm talking about just average folks out there, right? Voters who were like, "Yeah, what does it mean?" You know, when some of us would say "Democracy is at risk!" If you go knock on 100 doors and say, "The democracy is at stake," people are like, "What are you talking about?" Like, " I need to pay the bills, I need a good job, I need better pay. I need to be able to go to the grocery store and afford things."
And nobody's experienced democracy going away. Nobody really knows what that means in the United States. But here we are, right? Project 2025 is effectuating that when you're taking away people's voting rights, you know, when you're attacking people's due process rights, when people are literally being disappeared on the streets of our country, it's something nobody could have imagined before. And yet here we are. So here's the good news, after all that, I'll give you something to think about, which is people are taking up the fight.
I see it every day, more and more people coming out to protest. And in fact, I just, you know, was reading a really great story about a woman who, you know, was so outraged back in early February about what was going on that she went out by herself with a sign in Edwardsville, Illinois, and just held up a sign, right, protesting, you know, at the intersection of two big highways in southern Illinois. And she thought, "Maybe I'm crazy, but I just need to do something." And you know what happened? Somebody walked up to her, they were walking their dog, and asked, "What are you doing?"
And then, instead of walking away, the person joined her. And then the next day, a couple of days later, four of her friends showed up. That was February. Now here in April, every Friday at 1:00, 300 people show up and protest. And that is what's happening all across the country. And you see it sometimes with these big rallies in big cities, but you also see it in small towns. Edwardsville is a city of 28,000 people. And here you've got hundreds of people showing up every week to make their point heard. And you've got, I see it everywhere, people outraged that their Social Security office is being closed, that veterans can't get the services that they need, that Elon Musk, an unelected techno bro, has essentially taken over the government and doesn't give a wit about working families who are suffering as a result of what Donald Trump is doing.
So, I see it every day. There is outrage building. And it's not just Democrats, it's not just independents, it's Republicans showing up. And you can see it in the polling data of the President. I just saw it today, right? His polling is down, down, down. He's underwater by 10 points now, you know, in terms of approval rating. And it's getting worse. And that's because people are realizing this is a real threat to their livelihoods.
David Roberts
All right, that seems like a good place to wrap it up. Governor, thank you so much for taking the time. And thanks for getting out there and fighting.
Governor JB Pritzker
Thanks, David. Appreciate you.
David Roberts
Thank you for listening to Volts. It takes a village to make this podcast work. Shout out, especially, to my super producer, Kyle McDonald, who makes me and my guests sound smart every week. And it is all supported entirely by listeners like you. So, if you value conversations like this, please consider joining our community of paid subscribers at volts.wtf. Or, leaving a nice review, or telling a friend about Volts. Or all three. Thanks so much, and I'll see you next time.
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