WALLIS ROGIN: Last week, students saw inconsistent wait times and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers at O’Hare International Airport, two Illinois’ 9th Congressional District candidates reportedly broke promises to consolidate the progressive vote and the Northwestern women’s basketball team has a new face on the sidelines.
From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Wallis Rogin.
EMERSON LEGER: And I’m Emerson Leger. This is The Weekly, a breakdown of the top headlines from the past week.
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EMERSON LEGER: I’m here with Social Media Editor Edward Simon Cruz to talk about how ICE presence at airports has impacted students’ Spring Break travel.
Edward, can you explain the background behind the Department of Homeland Security being shut down since Feb. 14?
EDWARD SIMON CRUZ: Yeah. So first off, thanks for having me, always glad to be here. For a few months now, Democrats, and then eventually also some Republicans in Congress, have become pretty indignant at the Trump administration about its handling of ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, especially after two US citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were killed in Minnesota in January.
So, on Feb. 14, Congress let funding for DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, lapse. So what that means is no new funding for ICE or Customs and Border Protection, the agencies that were responsible for these really controversial immigration enforcement operations that have kind of made their rounds in a bunch of big American cities, including Chicago — we remember from the fall.
One side effect of that is that TSA workers were unpaid for about one and a half months. And that eventually caused some disruptions at airports because workers would start quitting or calling out sick, because they needed a way to pay their bills and pay for their family’s bills, and you can’t do that if the main job you go to hasn’t been giving you paychecks.
So that means that, especially in the second half of March, coinciding with NU’s spring break, we saw around the country lines that a lot of airports were getting really long, and people kind of needed to budget and revise their time accordingly.
EMERSON LEGER: And what did students say? And how were they affected at the airports when coming and going from spring break?
EDWARD SIMON CRUZ: It’s been inconsistent. There have been airports in cities like New York, where, near where I’m from, and Houston, where someone that Thomas and I talked to are from. In cities like those, depending on what time you went to the airport, lines could be as long as, say, two and a half hours.
We’ve all seen in the news that it’s gone as high as, say, four hours, in some cases. And the airport websites have predicted these really high wait times, especially since the TSA website wasn’t being updated for a while. So we know about that.
But, on the other hand, we’ve seen some people be surprised in the other direction. At least one person we talked to had a long line at O’Hare when she was flying home, and then when she came back from DC, not really much of a line at all. And I mean, that’s what I dealt with too. My line was maybe 20 minutes instead of 10, but nothing compared to what we’ve seen on TV, and definitely way less time than I needed for someone who arrived at the airport four hours early. So you kind of saw a lot of difference between different people.
EMERSON LEGER: Why were ICE agents brought into the airports and what role were they supposed to play?
EDWARD SIMON CRUZ: ICE, in this case, has limited authority. They can’t conduct the security screenings in the same way that TSA agents can. We haven’t really seen them patting people down. Or we haven’t really seen them being the ones to flag bags as they go through the machines if they have prohibited items in them, as many of us are likely used to seeing.
Some people just said they were just kind of standing there; or sometimes they were helping guide traffic. Some people said they were checking IDs. One person we talked to, when he was flying through Houston, he said that ICE was kind of near the equipment. The Trump administration has said that ICE is supposed to help guide some of the traffic and kind of minimize the disruptions in the long lines. So far, it seems like they’ve kind of had a limited authority in airports, and seems like for the most part, they’ve pretty much stuck to that.
EMERSON LEGER: What should listeners understand about how government decisions trickle down into everyday experiences like travel?
EDWARD SIMON CRUZ: We’ve all dealt with it. Conversations that Congress and the President have about budgets, a lot of times they’ve been pretty abstract. They involve a lot of numbers that the average person’s not necessarily going to follow along with. But if funding gets blocked for big government departments or agencies, like it’s been with the Department of Homeland Security for a while, then any agency that falls under that, that interacts with the American people is going to suffer — or it’s going to have its services disrupted, somehow.
There’ve been a myriad of places where this has happened with the Trump administration that you can have any number of conversations about, but TSA is just one of the many agencies that’s been kind of disrupted because of all these funding pauses and these political debates going on.
We’ve seen the effects of that. Right now, TSA agents are starting to get paid again, because even though Congress hasn’t passed anything, the president did sign an executive order that would kind of draw from other places in the budget to start paying TSA agents. Seems like the disruptions at the airports aren’t as big of a news story anymore, but,it’s always worth noting, whenever a big decision is about to get made with a budget, what agencies, what government services could potentially be affected by those?
EMERSON LEGER: Thank you, Edward, for joining me on The Weekly.
EDWARD SIMON CRUZ: Thank you Emerson, appreciate it.
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EMERSON LEGER: Next, I am here with Daily reporters Ryan Ottignon and Max Turetzky to talk Bushra Amiwala and Hoan Huynh, who broke campaign promises to exit Illinois’ 9th Congressional District race if they had little chance at winning the primary.
So to start, Ryan and Max, what promise exactly did Bushra Amiwala and Hoan Huynh make that they did not keep?
RYAN OTTIGNON: So, the big thing is that they were asked by Sunrise Movement and then in a public forum whether they would drop out if they had little to no chance of winning by a little bit out from election day, or if they had no clear path to victory. That was what was said in the public town hall. Both of them answered, “Yes.” That was in 2025.
Both of them obviously did not drop out before the election, they drew about 7% of the vote by Election Day. And, it’s been pointed to as this indicator of the progressive spoiler effect, where Kat Abughazaleh, who is the endorsed progressive for Sunrise Chicago, which was the organization that they committed to initially. She lost by less than four points. While it’s unclear whether that 7% would have made up that gap, it’s definitely been hypothesized.
EMERSON LEGER: Did their decision to stay in the race affect the election outcome?
MAX TURETZKY: I don’t think it’s super likely that both of them dropping out would have really changed the outcome of the race. I think, at most, it would have narrowed the gap between Kat and Biss to a couple points instead of less than four. I don’t think that very many, and definitely not a majority of Hoan Huynh’s voters — 0.6% — would have gone to Kat. And I also don’t think that vast majority of Bushra’s voters would have gone to Kat. I think most would have either stayed home or split between Kat and Biss and possibly Mike Simmons, another candidate, unless Bushra had actually endorsed Kat and campaigned for her or put out an ad or a Twitter post for her in a serious way, which it seems like she probably wouldn’t have done.
RYAN OTTIGNON: There’s another angle to this, which is voters. We talked to a couple of voters that gave their thoughts, because obviously, it is unclear. The first one that we talked to was actually the person who asked the question at this town hall that Amiwala committed at in October that kind of spurred her to make that commitment. He talked about how if Amiwala had dropped out and endorsed Kat — it didn’t seem to be something that was so possible later in the race, but maybe earlier in the race — she could have not only gotten her voter share, but also gotten more momentum from communities that Amiwala targeted, such as the Muslim and South Asian communities in Skokie and North Chicago.
Another perspective, which is kind of opposite here: Paige Fullman, who was a Amiwala voter, thought that Kat had hit a ceiling, and it wouldn’t have affected the vote very much. She talked about how, quote, “I don’t think you can compare Kat to Bushra” and that that voter share that was within Bushra’s target audience would not have transferred over. It’s something that we would have to see if it happened, but obviously we haven’t had that chance, so still up in the air.
EMERSON LEGER: What were their comments to The Daily regarding this promise?
MAX TURETZKY: So I was at the Bushra Amiwala for Congress election night party when we asked about this commitment, and so Bushra denied ever making any commitments in an interview with The Daily. And then later on in the night, her Operations Manager Elliott Parrish, told us that she had made at least one commitment, although it was not formal, and that she never had any obligation to exit the race.
RYAN OTTIGNON: Parrish’s statement focused on the fact that while she made this commitment, and in his eyes, wasn’t formal, she still wouldn’t have had to drop out anyway. The question was about, ‘Do they have a path to victory? Do they have a chance?’ And he argued, yes.
Obviously, we talked to analysts about this and they thought “no” kind of universally. Frank Calabrese was the one that we quoted in the story. He thought that they had a chance, and ultimately, that’s what they ran with. But it is something of note that he told us.
Later on by phone, he gave us a statement. We did ask him, ‘Is it a more formal commitment if you commit in public?’ Because we had just unearthed this second commitment, which is from the town hall, and he didn’t answer that question. Ultimately, he very much leaned on this idea that Bushra could have won anyway.
EMERSON LEGER: Well, thank you, Max and Ryan for talking to me for The Weekly.
RYAN OTTIGNON: Thanks for having us.
MAX TURETZKY: Yeah, thanks for having us.
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WALLIS ROGIN: We will now be joined by Assistant Photo Editor Charlie Perlman, who reported on the new women’s basketball coach Carla Berube, along with Newsletter Editor Yoni Zacks. At the press conference, they reported that the team is optimistic about this new era of NU’s women’s team after the tenure of the recently retired Joe McKeown.
What specifically was the search committee looking for in the next women’s basketball coach?
CHARLIE PERLMAN: Athletic Director Mark Jackson really emphasized an experienced coach, someone with a lot of wins and someone who could be here for the long time. I think that was the biggest factor with someone who could be like former head coach Joe McKeown and be at the program for many years to come.
WALLIS ROGIN: You reported that Berube had an 83.5% percent win rate when she coached the Princeton Tigers. What is this team hoping to see Berube accomplish as she takes the helm?
CHARLIE PERLMAN: I think it’s just that. I think it’s gonna be a lot of winning. Berube’s won everywhere she’s been. In college under UConn with Coach Geno Auriemma, she won a national title. And she went to Tufts, had great wins there, and then she went to Princeton, where she won five Ivy titles and made five March Madnesses. So I think it’s gonna be a return to the top of the Big Ten and hopefully March Madness.
WALLIS ROGIN: Can you walk the listeners through what Berube’s mindset is going into this new role?
CHARLIE PERLMAN: Sure, in the press conference, Berube talked about how she wants to get back to winning at Northwestern, staying in Evanston for a long time and just getting back to winning. At her previous stops, Berube has done a lot of that, and hopes she can carry that over to Evanston.
WALLIS ROGIN: Is there anything else notable from the press conference that you took away?
CHARLIE PERLMAN: I think it was really interesting to see all of the team actually show up and watch the press conference. You had other head coaches in other sports, like Tracey Fuchs and Chris Collins also showed up to see their support and graduating players like Caroline Lau and Grace Sullivan. So I think it’s the start of a new era in Evanston.
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WALLIS ROGIN: Here are the other top headlines from the week:
Fountain Square construction to begin in April, no plans for fountain repair.
In A&E, BTS’ new album ‘ARIRANG’ not worth the four-year wait.
In Men’s basketball, Former 4-star recruit Tre Singleton plans to enter transfer portal.
And in campus news, The latest scoop: New ice cream machine coming to campus dining hall.
From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Wallis Rogin.
EMERSON LEGER: And I’m Emerson Leger.
Thank you for listening to another episode of The Weekly. This episode was reported by Wallis Rogin, Emerson Leger, Thomas Hurley, Edward Simon Cruz, Ryan Ottignon, Max Turetzky, Charlie Perlman and Yoni Zacks, and produced by Wallis Rogin.
The audio editor is Wallis Rogin. The multimedia managing editors are Ruby Dowling, Izzie Jacob and Matt Wasilewski. The editor in chief is Anavi Prakash.
Follow us on X and Instagram @thedailynu.
Email: [email protected]
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Email: [email protected]
Related Stories:
— Students see inconsistent wait times, ICE presence at airports over Spring Break
— Amiwala, Huynh broke commitments to consolidate field in 9th District, records show
— Women’s Basketball: Carla Berube looks to define an era of success
