* Gov. Pritzker was asked today if he intends to call up the National Guard to help with storm cleanup in the suburbs…

Reporter: Governor Mike Braun in Indiana called out the National Guard to help with some cleanup. Are you in any conversations about that, and will you call the National Guard to help with some of these cleanup?

Pritzker: So, once again, we have a variety of agencies that are responding to these storms. It kind of depends on where it is and what other resources exist in a local community.

So, an example is in a rural community, they would have a greater need for help from the state government and perhaps from National Guard. Only because they don’t have, for example, a local, robust emergency management agency. Many counties, like Cook County, do have a robust emergency management response. Many don’t. And so whether we call out the National Guard is sort of dependent on do we have resources on the ground that are being helpful. It isn’t like the National Guard fixes everything because we sent new people in wearing uniforms. It’s really a question of, are there enough either police, emergency management, cleanup crews, etc. at the local level, and if not, then we would send the National Guard in. But it doesn’t mitigate the damage, it’s really where they can’t do the cleanup fast enough.

Where there are…there is a disaster that has led to a lot of injuries that local officials can’t manage through. That’s when we call in kind of state police and everybody else at state government level. So we try to to do it on a an appropriate basis. But National Guard isn’t just the be-all and end-all answer to problems. I know people often say that about crime and other things, ‘If we just send the National Guard in, that solves the’ — No.

* Indiana was hit hard and it’s struggling to recover. CBS Chicago…

Residents in Northwest Indiana may have to wait more than a week to get power back after a devastating outbreak of severe weather Tuesday.

More than 204,000 NIPSCO customers were still in the dark Thursday night, after a derecho that was part of a storm complex that also spawned tornadoes hit the area earlier in the week.

The utility said in a statement on Thursday afternoon that they expect to have 90% of all impacted customers restored by next Tuesday, Aug. 18, and full service restored by Friday, Aug. 21.

* Meanwhile, WGN…

When severe storms hit the region this week, the governors of both Illinois and Indiana said they’re working to help residents who suffered significant losses.

While that could mean asking for federal help, there’s evidence to suggest the Trump administration is more likely to help red states than blue states. […]

WGN-TV asked Braun whether he thinks his red state had a leg-up in securing federal disaster assistance over deep blue Illinois.

“I think that’s going to make a difference,” Braun said.

In May, the New York Times crunched the numbers and found states that voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 were more than twice as likely to have their requests for disaster rejected by FEMA.

* Back to the governor…

Reporter: We’ve had a record number of tornadoes, multiple hitting the same area twice in a week. What can be done for the people today?

Pritzker: Let me start by reminding everybody that the federal government, the Congress and the and President Trump have defunded the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and it has affected people all across the entire nation. And this is when people are in their very worst moments and they need help, and historically have gotten help from the federal government, that’s precisely when the federal government does step in because it can happen anywhere. It can happen in a red state, it can happen in a blue state, it can happen to friends of the president, it can happen to people the president doesn’t like. Important to remember that in that context, if we don’t receive, and we have received in some cases, support from the SBA, for example, for loans, for families, for businesses, we’ve also, in some cases, received disaster assistance.

So to be clear, it hasn’t happened always that we’re not getting support. But more often, it is that that FEMA is just deciding not to support. So in that context, we try to step up and do whatever we can. I, but again, the state government doesn’t have the resources to fill in all the holes that the federal government has now made, for states across the country. We can’t, for example, deal with the massive Medicaid hole that’s been created for so many people who are going to lose their healthcare or their food assistance, SNAP benefits. Too much. The state government can’t take those things on. These are typically federal government roles. So in answer to your question, with regard to the damage that’s more recently been done, we are still in process of trying to receive the aid from the federal government. Indeed, we have sued the federal government. Our great Attorney General Kwame Raoul has taken the federal government to court over a number of these circumstances. So we’re going to continue to fight. That’s why I mentioned that in my remarks, to get those dollars. In the meantime, people often can’t wait. And so we’re doing what we can in the moments that we can, hoping that we can restore sanity, frankly, from federal government emergency management.