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**OCTOBER 7, 2025**

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Three Democratic governors—JB Pritzker of Illinois, Tina Kotek of Oregon, and Gavin Newsom of California—have taken the lead in forcing the country to grapple with unprecedented deployments of National Guard troops in major cities. It’s up to federal courts to untangle this Gordian knot of constitutional balance-of-power issues between federal and state governments. But with members of Congress engaged in juvenile rounds of one-upmanship, governors have emerged as forces to be reckoned with in this sobering clash over the rule of law.

**–Gabrielle Gurley, senior editor**

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Illustration by The American Prospect. Sources: Alexandra Buxbaum/Sipa USA; Janet Mayer/INSTARimages/AP Images.

Governors Plunged Into Constitutional Crisis [link removed]

As members of Congress scanned the skies for signs of bipartisan intervention amid an imminent government shutdown, the governor of Illinois called for President Trump to be removed from office. Though invoking the 25th Amendment was a rhetorical flourish—no executive-branch Republican would ever entertain the idea—JB Pritzker wasn’t finished.

Last Friday, at a fundraiser for Georgia Democrats in Atlanta shortly after the president’s speech to top military commanders, the governor warned that Trump’s “treasonous words are leading to treasonous actions” and went even further: “The greatest fear of our founding fathers was not immigrants or taxes or men having a beard while serving in the military. The greatest fear of our founding fathers was Donald Trump.”

“My message of alarm,” Pritzker added, “is that the constitutional crisis is not on its way. It is here, and we all better start acting like it.”

What Pritzker did was spotlight for the country how comfortable the president is with seizing power, and how comfortable Congress is with doing nothing of consequence to extricate the republic from this quagmire.

Trump’s moves usurp governors’ executive powers—specifically their military options as the heads of National Guard units—for no other reason than to terrorize Democratic cities in blue states. Pritzker, who filed a lawsuit Monday against the Trump administration, along with California’s Gavin Newsom and Oregon’s Tina Kotek, is petitioning the courts for relief from these arbitrary military maneuvers.

Navigating legal thickets may not provide near-term solutions to this chaos, especially if the president blatantly sidesteps the court’s authority. But these regional power brokers undoubtedly recognize they’re the ones who’ll be left to pick up and reassemble the pieces of a country that’s careened into the breakdown lane.

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