CHICAGO — Democrats who control the Illinois General Assembly return to Springfield this week facing an agenda that now includes considering how to address the implications of President-elect Donald Trump’s return to power.

Lawmakers will be looking into whether any of the state’s left-leaning laws in areas including reproductive rights and immigration need to be shored up because of fears the incoming Trump administration might take action to undo the state’s policies.

“We’re gathering … a list of things that we may need to address, maybe not during veto session, but maybe. It can be done in the new year,” Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker said last week. “But suffice to say that we have a lot of work that we’re looking at doing.”

While Democrats held on to their supermajorities in both legislative chambers in last week’s election, Trump’s showing in the deeply blue state was surprisingly strong. The former president lost the state by only about 9 percentage points, after falling short by 17 points in each of the previous two elections.

House Republican leader Tony McCombie of Savanna said those numbers should give Democrats pause about responding to Trump with new laws.

“I don’t know any legislation that would be necessary as a reaction,” McCombie said. “I think the Democrats have to be careful.”

The fall veto session includes only six scheduled days, three this week and three next, and since Pritzker didn’t veto any bills this year lawmakers face no essential business.

House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch said last week that the session will be an opportunity to continue discussions on certain proposals but that larger issues would need more time to get settled. As for the effect Trump’s administration may have in coming years, the Hillside Democrat acknowledged Illinois has made good strides in recent years with certain laws it has put on the books, but that more could be done during the January lame duck session, held before a new legislature is sworn in.

“We could call a lame duck session and do some things when it comes to workers’ rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, we have an opportunity that we can do some things before Donald Trump takes the oath of office,” Welch said. “We’re going to be a check on Donald Trump. As a state, we have rights. And we did it in his first term and we’ll do it again.”

Aside from possibly addressing how to adapt to a Trump presidency, Pritzker has said he doesn’t have a significant legislative agenda for the year’s final session, and agreed with Welch that bigger issues will be addressed next year.

Those issues range from how to tackle a $730 million fiscal cliff for Chicago-area public transit once federal pandemic aid dries up in early 2026 to setting aside more funding for Chicago’s public school system.

The state’s perennial pension problems also need to be addressed, including a pension debt totaling more than $140 billion and concerns that some pensions in place since 2011 don’t equal what Social Security would provide, a violation of a federal “safe harbor” policy.

In addition, a report released earlier this month from Pritzker’s budget office said the state faces a deficit of about $3.2 billion in the fiscal year beginning July 1. If that estimate holds true in the next couple of months, the governor has some difficult decisions ahead, including whether to initiate spending cuts or propose more tax increases.

McCombie warned it’s “going to be a very scary time” for the governor and Democrats, given the deficit, but Pritzker last week downplayed the forecast and said the budget he proposes in February will be balanced.

Aside from financial issues warranting attention, McCombie said there could be an opening for ethics reform in Springfield, an area where many agree the state has fallen short in recent years. That opening, she said, has been reignited by the ongoing public corruption trial of former longtime House Speaker Michael Madigan of Chicago.

During Pritzker’s nearly six years in office, state legislators have passed a sweeping liberal agenda of laws, among them a measure codifying abortion as a fundamental right and another creating a special health care program for noncitizens, which Pritzker said in some cases were meant to counteract Trump’s first-term agenda.

The governor said he feels “like a lot of that work has been done over the last 5 ½ years to protect the people of Illinois from something terrible happening at the federal level or some attack on Illinois residents.”

Pritzker, who’s seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2028, said he’s spoken to senior staff and other governors around the country about issues that might need to be addressed under Trump. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, another potential 2028 Democratic presidential contender, said last week he was calling a special December session of that state’s legislature to safeguard the policies on reproductive rights, climate change and immigration in light of a Trump presidency.

One of Welch’s House Democratic legislative groups is focused on shoring up abortion rights following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Rep. Kelly Cassidy of Chicago, a member of the abortion rights group, said she would like Illinois to create its own version of the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which became law in the 1990s in response to violence toward providers and patients seeking abortions.

“In some ways, we’re well-equipped for this moment because we’ve had some practice,” said Cassidy, referring to state abortion laws already passed to protect against any opposition on the federal level. “Depending on the balance of power (in Congress), we might even find ourselves staring down the barrel of a national (abortion) ban.”

Another possible measure she said she supports would safeguard private health information that can be shared through phone apps or programs that monitor a person’s heart rate, menstrual cycle, caloric intake or travel. According to the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, many people are concerned about the sharing of health data with law enforcement “seeking to enforce restrictive abortion laws across state lines.”

Other unresolved issues include gun safety measures that Democrats haven’t been able to bring over the finish line.

Legislation that’s become known in Springfield as “Karina’s Bill” would require law enforcement to remove firearms from people who have orders of protection against them, clarifying when and how authorities can confiscate such weapons. As it stands, guns aren’t always taken from people in those situations even if the owner’s firearm identification card is revoked.

The bill is named after Karina Gonzalez, a resident of Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood who, along with her 15-year-old daughter Daniela, was shot and killed by her husband last year, according to prosecutors. The shooting happened even though Gonzalez had obtained an order of protection against him and his FOID card had been revoked.

Another holdover proposal would require gun owners with valid FOID cards to report their guns lost or stolen within 48 hours, instead of 72 hours, upon discovering their guns are missing. Another measure would prohibit storing or leaving a firearm outside an owner’s immediate possession or control unless it’s unloaded and secured in a lock box, making it inaccessible to a minor or anyone else who is barred from using guns.

“We know that the bills that we pass in Springfield have real life and death consequences. It is clear that we must address child access to firearms and safe storage,” Rep. Maura Hirschauer, a Democrat from Batavia, said at a news conference on Chicago’s West Side in October. “We know that gun owners can help make their homes and communities safe by storing their guns securely. A comprehensive statewide safe storage policy will have an impact on this.”

Illinois lawmakers could also take up a proposal to create a statewide office to help under-resourced public defenders. One of the proposal’s goals is to address the lack of public defense resources in rural areas, many of which don’t even have a public defender’s office, as well as disparities in the resources allotted to county prosecutors and public defenders. For example, Cook County’s 2024 budget provided about $102 million for its public defender’s office, and about $205 million for its state’s attorney’s office.

Rep. Dave Vella, a Rockford Democrat who’s behind the measure, said the bill could come up for discussion during January’s lame-duck session.

“We’ve been working on getting language straight and kind of letting people know about what’s going on,” Vella said in October. “The longer we push this off, the longer there are people who are in the system that we think needs to be changed.”

During the veto session, state Sen. Rachel Ventura said she wants to continue pushing for legislation that would approve the use of psilocybin, an ingredient found in certain types of mushrooms that can have psychedelic effects, as a treatment for conditions like anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. The bill has yet to make it out of the Senate and would also need to pass through the House before heading to the governor’s desk.

Ventura also wants to push a bill that would mandate more transparency from the Illinois Prisoner Review Board on its adherence to the state’s Joe Coleman Medical Release Act, which makes people in prison eligible for early release for medical reasons.

The legislation, which passed in the House in April but has languished in the Senate, calls for, among other things, the medical release hearings to be public unless the person incarcerated requests otherwise. If the review board denies medical release, it must publish details of its decision.

“There were some issues with some of those cases and we’re hoping to create some more transparency with that process,” said Ventura, a Democrat from Joliet who is the Senate sponsor of the bill.

Rep. La Shawn Ford said he was close to an agreement that would allow all dispensaries to sell medical cannabis, a proposal that failed during the spring legislative session.

Separately, he said he was reevaluating legislation for an overdose prevention site on Chicago’s West Side, which would allow people to use drugs in a supervised environment. Last week, Ford said the bill should instead be passed as a task force that could make recommendations for such a site. That bill recently received its first Republican co-sponsor in Rep. Steve Reick of Woodstock.

Another bill that could get discussed by the lame-duck session is a measure allowing people in Illinois who die to have their human remains converted into soil — a process called natural organic reduction or human composting. It’s seen by advocates as a more eco-friendly method of handling human remains. The bill has passed in the House and is currently in the Senate.

A proposal to legalize medical aid in dying, often referred to as physician-assisted suicide or medically assisted death, that would give mentally competent, terminally ill adults the right to choose to end their lives is also on the table. It would allow these patients the right to access life-ending prescription medication, which they could then self-administer at a time of their choosing.

Chicago Tribune’s Dan Petrella contributed to this story.

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