Local state Rep. Kam Buckner (D-26th) is a man of metaphors and analogies. Just like a high school or college football coach, the former Illini offensive lineman turned state House Assistant Majority Leader has a habit of elucidating simple points with vivid images. 

Take, for example, Democrats’ muddled response to President Donald Trump’s blitz of executive orders versus his exaggerated address to Congress. For Buckner, the key to knowing when and on what to challenge the Trump Administration is knowing the difference between “lightning” and “thunder.”

“Thunder is loud, it’s scary, it’s distracting, but it’s not dangerous. No one’s ever died because thunder roared or rolled,” he explained to a small audience of constituents at luncheon held at the Institute of Politics, 5707 S. Woodlawn Ave. “However, thunder has a counterpart, and it’s lightning, and lightning is deadly, and it can change everything very quickly.” 

Buckner said he hopes that Democrats don’t fall into the trap of “responding to the thunder that we miss the lightning.” Although he made sure to acknowledge the dangers of inflammatory rhetoric and condemn such speech, Buckner feels that a lot of Trump’s “nasty comments” about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, are “thunder,” meaning a scary distraction, and not “lightning,” meaning those actions which will do specific damage to people’s lives.

Falling into the latter category, Buckner said, is Trump’s January executive order on “Removing Gender Ideology and Restoring the EEOC’s Role of Protecting Women in the Workplace.” 

The order appeared to allow employers to fire trans and non-binary people for their gender without legal recourse, despite a 2020 Supreme Court decision authored by Trump-appointed Justice Neal Gorsuch, which said the opposite.

Less than a month ago, exactly this hypothetical situation played out when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) abruptly dropped its own lawsuit against a hotel operator for alleged sex and gender discrimination, citing the president’s order.

Lightning, according to Buckner, also struck when Trump signed an executive order targeting affirmative action. That order, among other provisions, ended enforcement of a five-decade-old Congressional statute requiring that government contractors give employment preferences to veterans and the disabled.

“A veteran that served in Iraq or Afghanistan who lost the limb and is now on the job market” can be skipped over by an employer because of their disability, “and there will be no recourse,” Buckner said. 

And this change comes at a time when Trump’s federal hiring freeze is already leaving veterans “in the cold,” with fewer job prospects, according to Rolling Stone Magazine.

On the horizon, Buckner sees a potentially devastating storm brewing in the form of the elimination of the Department of Education, which provides significant funding to support low-income schools and for special education programs while also protecting students’ civil rights. 

As the fourth-largest unified school district in the country, with more than 320,000 students, a significant proportion of whom are low-income and have disabilities, Chicago would be gravely affected, Buckner said. (His district is located entirely within Chicago, spanning the Hyde Park, Bronzeville and Gold Coast neighborhoods, among others.)

Trump “can’t do it unilaterally. It will require an act of Congress,” he said. “As prepared as the President seems this time around, I still believe Congress just can’t get anything right, so I don’t know if they’ll actually do that or not.”

On Wednesday, however, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump is soon expected to sign an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.” Because only Congress has the power to create or shutter federal agencies, it is unclear if the order will stand up in court. 

For Buckner, a resulting decline in the school system poses, more than any other issue including violent crime, a grave threat to Chicago.

“If people don’t feel like they can send their kids to school that educates them and prepares them for the global workforce, then they will get the hell out of a Dodge,” he said. 

Buckner, who championed the legislation creating Chicago’s newly elected school board, believes its members must find ways to improve proficiency rates, test scores, graduation rates and college placement for youth in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) while balancing its budget. 

“We want to talk about sustaining Chicago for the long term, growing our city, growing our tax base, we’ve got to get this education piece right,” he said.

Mayor Brandon Johnson has repeatedly called for Springfield to allocate more funding for CPS, something that seems increasingly unlikely given Governor J.B. Pritzker’s recent announcement that the federal government is withholding nearly $2 billion in payments to the state. 

To increase state coffers for school funding, Johnson has floated the idea that Illinois pass a progressive income tax, something that passed the state legislature in 2019 but failed in a 2020 popular referendum. Last month, a Senate Democrat introduced a new amendment to the state constitution that would eliminate the flat income tax. Buckner welcomed the proposal but said that Democrats had to get the messaging right this time around. 

“People hear tax, and they run the other way because taxes are scary, no matter who you are,” he said. 

Buckner believes proponents of the progressive income tax must be explicit about where the additional tax dollars will flow and make spending cuts where appropriate to demonstrate to voters some fiscal restraint.

“Hopefully, we’ll get another bite at that apple,” he continued.

Regardless, Buckner is looking for other ways that the state government can support Chicagoans, especially in terms of housing affordability. According to the Sun-Times, nearly half of Chicago renters spend too much of their income on rent and utilities. (Experts say a family or individual household is considered cost-burdened if they spend more than 30% of their income on rent.) To address this crisis, Buckner introduced three bills in the state legislature last month which would reduce development and construction costs and thus bring down rents.

Buckner’s legislative priorities this session include passing Pritzker’s balanced budget while providing some cost-of-living relief to Illinoisans.

And when asked if he was considering running for Mayor of Chicago in 2025 after his failed bid in the 2021 election, Buckner refused to rule out the prospect.

“I’m a Chicago political animal,” he said. “You’re always thinking about running for Mayor. It is what it is, so I’ll just leave that there.”