* Gov. Pritzker was asked today about what’s next for him politically…

Mary Ann Ahern: What’s next for you? Third term? Run for president? What’s the plan?

Governor Pritzker: As you know, the work that I do now as governor is work that I love doing. And there is in the wake of the Tuesday election, I think back to my first days in office, my first two years in office, where Donald Trump was president and we had to defend Illinois against an awful lot of policies that the Trump administration was imposing, that we needed to make sure we were addressing.

And so I think that work is going to continue. And I don’t have anything to announce today, but I promise you, Mary Ann, you’ll be among the first to know if I have something to announce about running for reelection, and I have no plans for anything else.

Please pardon all transcription errors.

* The governor was asked about his veto session agenda…

Tribune Reporter Jeremy Gorner: Are there any state laws on the books now that you think warrant some kind of review to see as a precaution, to see if they need to be strengthened, that perhaps could be taken up in veto session or lame duck in light of any possible federal action the Trump administration may take against them.

Governor Pritzker: Thank you for asking the question, It’s an extraordinarily relevant question. As you can imagine in months past and indeed, over years past, we’ve thought a lot about what happens if the administration in Washington changes. If the tone changes, would that have a negative effect on Illinois? And how do we shore up and make sure we’re protecting people here? So we’ve done a lot of work on that, and I think you’ve seen that in some of the bills that were passed in the last session and the session before. And even over the summer as we thought about what more needs to be done.

Yesterday, I had a meeting with my senior staff to talk about exactly this. Indeed, I talked to some other governors around the country about the things that they’re looking at doing. And so we’re gathering, I would call it, a list of things that we may need to address, maybe not during a veto session, but maybe [it] can be done in the new year.

There is time to do that, but, but suffice to say that we have a lot of work that that we’re looking at doing, but I feel like a lot of that work has been done over the last five and a half years to protect the people of Illinois from something terrible happening at the federal level or some attack on Illinois residents.

Gorner: Any specific topic areas?

Pritzker: You can imagine what all the- health care, reproductive rights, you can go down the list of, you know, there are areas where I think you can imagine the people who woke up on Wednesday morning and saw the results they didn’t already see them on Tuesday night. And there are many people whose lives and livelihoods are at risk, and there are many people who cried at the result because they know what impact it may have on their families. So think about that.

* Background is here if you need it. Regarding the budget…

Reporter: I want to ask about the GOMB report from last week, the office saying that there could be a $3 billion deficit without some changes. How are you thinking about filling that and is income tax, or other kind of personal tax on the table for this upcoming year?

Governor: The General Assembly and I have balanced the budget every year. When I came into office the projections were that everything was going to go south immediately and we wouldn’t be able to recover from it. We balanced the budget every year. Indeed, we ran surpluses.

So we’re going to balance the budget again. This is a forecast that’s made every year, looking five years forward, assuming no changes in any laws. Forget about revenue, It’s just generally no changes in law, no changes in efficiencies, etc. It’s a kind of a flat projection forecast and it’s been wrong every year. I guess you might say or, you know, we’ve defeated it, you know, every year and so. So I think we’re going to submit abudget to the General Assembly. I know I’m going to submit a budget to the General Assembly in February, like I have every year over the past six years, and it’ll be balanced.

* On to federal grants…

Reporter: What should state do if Trump withholds federal funding for police grants, he goes through the mass deportations?

Pritzker: To the extent that these things are nonpartisan grants that are decided by independent groups within the agencies, which happens for most grants. It would be illegal for the Trump administration to stop those grants from flowing, and so we would take action if we saw that happen. trying to think about any other grant related stuff-

Reporter: He claims that he would survive legal challenges.

Pritzker: I don’t know what to say, except that that it would be illegal if he did it and and I presume that the courts would find it so. We certainly would take action and work with our attorney general to do so.