CHICAGO — Gov. JB Pritzker emphasized his administration was closely coordinating with state and even local law enforcement to protect Texas House Democrats who fled to Illinois to stop a Republican congressional remap, especially after a bomb threat caused the lawmakers to be evacuated Wednesday morning from their suburban hotel.

Pritzker’s remarks at the Illinois State Fairgrounds in Springfield came hours after the bomb threat at a secure hotel in west suburban St. Charles forced the evacuation of 400 guests, including dozens of Texas House Democrats who left their state to stop the Republican-controlled state legislature from redrawing congressional district boundaries to the GOP’s advantage ahead of next year’s midterm election.

Even before the bomb threat, since the lawmakers arrived in Illinois, New York and Massachusetts on Sunday, they have faced Republican threats of being arrested, charged and removed from office all while Pritzker has vowed to keep those lawmakers who are in Illinois safe.

“We’ve had to react from a law enforcement perspective here in the state by calling our state police, local law enforcement, making sure that they’re protecting the people who are staying at that hotel, including the Texas visitors that we have,” Pritzker said, though he didn’t directly answer what concrete steps Illinois State Police were taking to shield the Texas legislators from possible efforts to send Texas Rangers or FBI agents to bring them back to Texas.

“These lawmakers are welcome in the state of Illinois,” Pritzker said. “So are Texas Rangers. They can go visit the lakefront in Chicago, they can come to the state fair, but they’re not arresting and taking anybody away from Illinois.”

Echoing comments he made in a Tuesday night appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” Pritzker said the Texas Democrats haven’t violated any federal laws and that a civil warrant from Texas’ GOP House speaker holds no weight in Illinois.

While an investigation into the bomb threat remained ongoing, Pritzker implied that a “right-wing podcaster” who posted a video Tuesday afternoon showing the location of the lawmakers’ hotel may have prompted the threat, though at least one mainstream news outlet had previously published the hotel’s name.

Leaders of the Texas House Democratic caucus issued a statement Wednesday morning acknowledging the threat after canceling a previously planned afternoon news conference in St. Charles with Illinois U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin.

“This morning, a threat was made against the safety of the members of the Texas House Democratic Caucus,” leaders of the caucus said. “We are safe, we are secure, and we are undeterred and unintimidated. We are grateful for Governor Pritzker, local, and state law enforcement for their quick action to ensure our safety.”

St. Charles Police responded to a report of a potential bomb threat at the Q Center hotel and convention complex shortly after 7 a.m. Wednesday morning, but no device was found, the department said. As bomb squad units conducted their investigation, 400 people were evacuated from the area, but guests and staff later returned to the premises, the department said.

According to the Kane County state’s attorney’s office, one person made multiple bomb threats during the incident but no arrests have been made. Illinois State Police spokeswoman Melaney Arnold said the agency “has been in contact with local law enforcement, which responded swiftly and cleared the building.”

Texas state Rep. John Bucy, who represents an area near the state capital of Austin, said the lawmakers staying in the suburbs were roused out of bed to “what sounded like a fire alarm going off” and a repeating message: There’s been a bomb threat on the hotel. Please evacuate immediately.

“So we woke up, threw on clothes and we all gathered outside as a caucus. We started trying to figure out what was going on,” he said. “It was an adrenaline kick at that moment.”

The hotel housed all members of the delegation who are breaking quorum in Illinois, he said.

“This climate of fear being fueled intentionally by Republican officials who would rather sow chaos than govern responsibly is unacceptable,” he said, placing some of the blame for the threat on Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, both Republicans, for “fueling the flame of this behavior.”

Paxton previously called for Texas to “use every tool at our disposal to hunt down those who think they are above the law,” and both Abbott and Paxton have called for arresting members of the Democratic delegation.

The Texas redistricting effort has spurred calls by Democrats across the nation to respond in kind and redraw maps in heavily blue states, including California, New York, and Illinois, to offset the five seats Texas Republicans hope to gain with their gambit to reconfigure congressional districts and hold onto their slim majority in the U.S. House for the final two years of President Donald Trump’s second term.

Later Wednesday, at the state fairgrounds, Pritzker said it is “never too late” for Illinois to consider redrawing its congressional district boundaries ahead of the 2026 election to try to squeeze a 15th Democratic seat out of the state’s 17-member delegation.

“We’re going to think about all the options,” the governor said, while also reiterating his support for a nationwide effort to end “any kind of partisan gerrymandering across the entire United States all at once.”

But, Pritzker said, after seeing Texas Republicans “throw the rulebook out” to satisfy Trump’s request for more GOP seats in the state, “all bets are off.”

The fight over Texas’ redistricting effort has given Pritzker another chance to raise his national profile as he campaigns for a third term and eyes a potential future White House bid in 2028. But it also calls attention to one of his most glaring political flip-flops.

During his appearance on “The Late Show,” Pritzker, who during his first term broke a campaign promise that he would veto any partisan redistricting plan for the Illinois General Assembly, continued using the controversy to position himself as a defender of democratic norms and fair elections.

Calling the Texas move “extraordinarily rare” because it is coming between the regular redistricting that occurs every 10 years after the Census, Pritzker said Abbott and his GOP allies are “taking rights away from Black and brown people.”

“They’re literally obliterating districts that were written according to the Voting Rights Act,” said Pritzker, who’s previously sparred with Abbott over the Texas governor’s decision to send busloads of migrants from the southern U.S. border to Chicago. “So this is going to end up in court if they actually are able to do it.”

Pritzker used humor to deflect questions about Illinois’ own heavily gerrymandered congressional map. After Colbert quipped that U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski’s 13th Congressional District, drawn to elect a Democrat by stretching from Champaign-Urbana to the Metro East suburbs of St. Louis, looks “like the stinger on a scorpion,” Pritzker replied, “We handed it over to a kindergarten class and let them decide.”

In reality, Pritzker’s Democratic allies in the state legislature — including state Rep. Elizabeth “Lisa” Hernandez of Cicero, whom he tapped to chair the state Democratic Party — drew the lines to cement their dominance in Springfield and in the state’s congressional delegation, even as Illinois lost one seat in the U.S. House.

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(Gorner reported from Springfield, Illinois.)

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