California got the ball rolling on boycotting conservative states. Now the governor of Illinois has decided he’s going to boycott a country.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has ordered agencies in his state to boycott work with El Salvador amid the detention fight over Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Pritzker said he was requesting that the Illinois State Board of Investment, the State Universities Retirement System and the Teachers’ Retirement System review their investments to “identify any fund investments” that are wholly or partially managed, owned or controlled by the Salvadoran government or has ties to business in El Salvador.

The governor’s office also directed the state Department of Central Management Services to launch a review to identify contracts awarded to companies affiliated with El Salvador’s government or Salvadoran businesses.

The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity has also been directed to conduct an analysis of trade between the state and El Salvador, including the “scale and nature of imports” and the extent to which Salvadoran goods are in the supply chain of products manufactured in the state.

El Salvador exports coffee (remember how the media was freaking out last week about the effects of tariffs on coffee) and knit t-shirts. I’m not sure what the plan for boycotting those are, but pension plans are supposed to be used to maximize returns for public employees, not to pick political fights. Ditto frankly for the rest of it.

If J.B. Pritzker wants to criticize a country, he can do so. He’s rich enough that a personal boycott will have an impact. But state boycotts of a country using public funds and without a legislative vote strike me as abusive and in this case a calculated effort to undermine the president’s foreign policy by abusing state authority.

In this case, Pritzker is using state assets to try and force a country away from cooperating with the White House. That’s arguably treasonous behavior. And a country can’t function if state governments try to directly sabotage foreign relations. A nation divided against itself cannot stand. Much like Pritzker.