You may bless or blame the city of Peoria for Greg Rushford’s years of government service and independent thinking.

Growing up on Merle Lane in Central Peoria in the 1950s and ’60s, he remembers flunking out of the University of Illinois (“Twice!” he says) and feeling he had little direction, then enlisting in Peoria’s Air National Guard. Before, he graduated from Peoria High, where he was on the student council and wrote for the student newspaper, with no career goal. But earlier, he’d been fascinated by a neighbor’s stories of dealing with Russia, “Molotov and other Stalin goons.”

Eventually, Rushford went to Bradley University, where “the intellectual lightbulbs went on, and my early failures turned out to inspire a lifetime of curiosity.”

At Bradley, he was reunited with his memorable neighbor, Dr. Nicholas Nyaradi, Hungary’s former Minister of Finance who started teaching at BU in 1951 and in 1957 set up Bradley’s School of International Studies. Nyaradi became one of two Bradley mentors, along with award-winning International Studies professor John Howard, who while teaching in Peoria was working on his doctorate from American University in Washington, D.C.  A seeming cloud of uncertainty lifted like morning fog blanketing a cornfield.

After Rushford made BU’s Dean’s List several times, Howard suggested transferring to American University in 1967 and soon Rushford was juggling classes and working for Illinois Republican Sen. Charles Percy, leading to years as a senior congressional aide.

Today, Rushford, 81, is one of more than 400 members of “The Steady State,” a nonprofit group (thesteadystate.org) of “national security leaders defending democracy,” including people from the CIA, FBI and NSA; the armed forces; Capitol Hill and Cabinet offices; plus ambassadors.

One of its slogans is “Patriotism, not Partisanship.”

Career

Rushford started as a part-time clerk-typist for Sen. Percy, and within months was a research assistant, working full time. He’d also transferred to the DC’s Air National Guard, activated in 1968, and had to drop out at American, but continued with Percy until being sent to South Korea.

A year later he returned to Washington, finished at American, went to law school, and then started writing speeches for Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey (Calif.). In 1971, Rushford did research for McCloskey and told The Community Word “bipartisan commitment to fulfilling Congressional oversight duties, despite the issue, was still part of the institutional culture of Congress. The two congressional aides I worked most closely with, and trusted, worked for Sen. Ted Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat.”

In fact, in 1973, Rushford worked for Maryland Democrat Rep. Clarence D. Long, a member of the House Appropriations Committee where “Long stressed the importance of working with the committee’s top Republican, Rep. Bob Michel of Illinois.”

In 1975-76, the then-majority Democrats hired a non-partisan staff on the House Intelligence Committee, and Rushford worked with Illinois Congressman Robert McClory, the committee’s senior Republican who as a Judiciary Committee member drafted an article of impeachment against GOP President Richard Nixon for defying congressional subpoenas during the Watergate investigations.

Rushford left Capitol Hill in the late ’70s and freelanced for the Washington Post, Newsday, the LA Times, and others before becoming a senior reporter from 1987-1994 for Legal Times, which published his book about the Clinton administration, “Appointments with Power.”

Producing the Rushford Report newsletter from 1995-2022, he wrote commentaries for the Wall Street Journal, edited “How Washington Actually Works (for Dummies),” and co-authored the investigative “Judges Who Should Not Judge” with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Clark Mollenhoff.

Executive excess

“Generations of American diplomats and intelligence officers have carried their core convictions with them, personifying our values, dedicated to defending the Constitution and the rule of law — speaking truth to power,” he said. “On the failures in Iran, algae, the lies about Jan 6, ‘Russia Hoax,’ et. al. — I see a combination of the usual marks of a true demagogue: lack of intellect combined with narcissism and grift.

“Providing U.S. presidents with non-partisan, deeply researched intelligence analyses, is America’s original contribution to intelligence. The U.S. intelligence system was built to deliver hard truths to presidents, not affirm their instincts.”

But that’s in jeopardy.

“Officials from the intelligence community are being threatened with criminal prosecution for their diligence in uncovering the many ways that Russia’s Vladimir Putin – a former intelligence operative – has played Donald Trump over the past decade.

“Early in Trump’s second term, May 13, 2025, two senior U.S. intelligence analysts — Acting Chair of the National Intelligence Council Mike Collins and his deputy, Maria Langan-Riekhof, were fired because they were in charge of the NIC when a report about the Venezuelan Group Tren de Aragua upset Trump. The NIC leadership was perceived as somehow politically disloyal to Trump.”

Similarly, after last summer’s U.S. and Israeli bombing “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear weapon program, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was fired after its report concluded otherwise.

“I see red flags — warnings of future moves away from democracy and towards autocracy,” Rushford added. “U.S. intelligence agencies, the FBI and Department of Justice have been politicized, and are focused on harassing Trump’s political enemies. I think our Founding Fathers set up our checks-and-balances system to guard against the inevitable. My view is that while there have been abuses by previous presidents, Trump is in a class by himself.”

‘Peoria Nice’ and bipartisanship

In past decades, Peoria became known for America’s traditional decency, he said. Political moderation prevailed — known as “Peoria Nice” — despite McCarthyism, racism and religious discrimination.

“Midwestern Democratic and Republican congressmen had their differences,” Rushford said, “But, especially when it came to respecting the rule of law, both parties learned to succeed by reaching across the aisle. Illinois Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen worked against southern Democrats’ resistance to help President Lyndon Johnson pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

“Peoria Republicans in the 1950s supported President Harry Truman, a Democrat, and then Republican Dwight Eisenhower, as they led the European democracies in the struggle against Soviet aggression,” he continued. “So did Peoria Democrats. President John F. Kennedy, a Democrat, was ardently for lowering global trade barriers. We free-market Republicans agreed.

“Today, ‘Peoria Nice’ is gone.

“That bipartisan commitment towards Congressional oversight responsibilities despite differences in party, ideology, and views of the underlying issues, was then. Today, Congressional Republicans and Democrats can’t even work together to do the easy things,” he added. “A half-century ago, the notion that Congress would surrender its most basic constitutional responsibility — the proverbial ‘power of the purse’ — was unthinkable. Yet Congress has not passed once-routine annual funding measures to keep government agencies running smoothly on anything like a consistent basis for 30 years!

“This Republican-led Congress has too often accommodated President Trump’s MAGA extremism rather than exercising independent constitutional judgment. When the congressional majority starts treating oversight as optional, executive overreach expands, and public trust erodes. And it has,” he said. “Another difference between my days and the past 30 years: I worked for World War II’s Greatest Generation. Today, thanks to the massive amounts of money in the system, plus gerrymandering and the fear of being ‘primaried,’ Congress tends to attract more extreme types.”

Democracy at risk?

The Washington Post and other news media have reported that the Trump administration is “circulating a 17-page draft Executive Order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting.” The plan would require proof of citizenship from a passport or verified birth certificate, ban mail-in balloting, all without Congress.

Rushford is troubled but hopeful. “I see signs that Trump and his financial backers are trying to set the stage for another election denial, if the Democrats win this November,” he said. “It could be a calamity.

“Looking ahead to this November’s congressional mid-term elections, members of our country’s Exhausted Majority have an opportunity to begin the necessary rebuilding process. Every citizen can do something: Speak out for America’s traditional sense of decency in town halls, write letters to the editor of our country’s (remaining) small-town newspapers, treat neighbors with differing political views with respect. And when it comes to casting ballots on Nov. 6, vote for the candidate who is capable and willing to legislate, conduct serious oversight, defend constitutional limits, and do the hard work of self-government — and then keep that person honest by demanding results once in office.”