This Thursday, the Illinois Senate passed legislation aimed at forcing President Trump to release his tax returns or face being barred from the state’s 2020 election ballot. The measure passed in the Democrat-led Senate by a vote of 36-19.

“If you want to run for vice president or president of the United States, hey, what’s wrong with providing your tax returns for the past five years?” Democratic State Senator Tony Munoz said, according to WBEZ.

“If you’ve got nothing to hide, you shouldn’t worry about anything,” he added. “That’s how I see it.”

Illinois Republicans weren’t too happy with the move, saying that it’s simply a ploy by the far-left to target Trump.

“This is quite frankly, with all due respect to the sponsor, an embarrassing waste of the Senate’s time,” said State Senator Dale Righter (R-Mattoon). “This is being pushed by a far-leftist organization from the city of Chicago that wants to be able to get up and chirp about the president of the United States. We ought to be better than this.”

From WBEZ:

Last week, House Democrats in Washington made a formal demand to the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department for access to Trump’s taxes, but a congressional deadline to produce the documents passed without action by Trump’s administration. Simultaneously, in New York state, Democrats in Albany have sought to work around the White House’s intransigence on the issue by trying to gain access to Trump’s state income tax returns.

Since 2017, 18 state legislatures have put forth bills that require presidential candidates to release their tax returns in order to appear on state ballots.

As CNN points out, last week House Democrats in D.C. formally requested Trump’s tax returns from the IRS, but Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin refused to meet their deadline.

The Illinois bill does not apply to congressional or statewide candidates. Any candidate who complies will have their personal information redacted when the tax returns are made public.

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