What You're Asking

Answering your recent questions on social media

One of the most rewarding parts of posting on here and other platforms is reading the comments and DMs that come in from all of you. In this world of canned political talking points and people screaming past each other, I always find myself hungry for dialogue – and my sense is that many of you are the same way.

Below are some of the questions I’ve been hearing lately, here and on other channels.

How do we keep ICE in focus after Operation Midway Blitz and what’s the update on Ricardo and his mother?

First, thank you for the response to the post and video we did about the Navarrete family. For those who missed it: Ricardo Hernandez-Navarrete and his mother Liliana were detained by ICE nearly ten weeks ago when they reported for what they thought was an immigration check-in. Cruelly, it turned out to be a trap. They were arrested, shipped between states and unconstitutionally detained. Ricardo eventually ended up in a Kentucky county prison that houses people convicted of violent crimes. A child, thrown in prison for nothing more than showing up where the government told him to be.

Ricardo missed the end of his soccer season. He missed the end of his senior year. But last week, after a judicial decision affirming that holding innocent people in detention is unconstitutional, Liliana came home. Ricardo was released a few days later. Yesterday, he graduated. This morning, his photo was on the cover of the Chicago Tribune.

Photo Credit: Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune

Community is the antidote to authoritarianism.

No top-down magic wand brought the Navarretes home. Their community did it. People who rallied around them, secured legal representation, told their story week after week after week, raised money, and eventually drove hundreds of miles to pick them up and return them to where they belonged, just in time for graduation.

That’s the model. That’s what works. The speed and brutality of ICE operations is designed to demoralize — to move faster than our attention spans, to make this feel normal. We can’t let it.

So start with who’s closest to you. Distribute Hands Off Chicago signs to your neighbors. Host a community training. Make sure the vulnerable people on your block know where to find support and legal resources. We need to use the levers of government AND the power of advocacy to push back against this authoritarian regime. And we need to do it in a way that’s antithetical to their top-down violence. We have a movement that is inclusive, kind, communal and also likelier to win.

What can the Illinois congressional delegation do to educate voters about the human rights violations ICE is committing — and will anyone be criminally liable?

We talk a lot about holding this administration accountable and I think it’s important to define what that entails.

In a functional Congress, high-level accountability runs through hearings. Committees subpoena documents and witnesses. Officials testify under oath. A factual record is built in public, indexed forever and that record becomes the basis for legislation, for civil action, for impeachment, and yes, where warranted, for criminal referral.

We don’t have that Congress right now. Republicans control the House and they refuse to investigate this administration. Which is exactly why flipping the House matters so much, and also why even as we do everything we can to win seats, Democrats have to prepare to be ready immediately should we take the majority. Will the people responsible for planning and ordering the atrocities committed by ICE and CBP be criminally liable? Will they be impeached? I believe they should be, and I believe many will be. But that requires winning power back first. Until then, our job is to make sure we continue to try them in the court of public opinion. Every bit of pressure, every person persuaded, every fact brought to light is another step toward accountability.

How can we help you be successful in Congress — besides writing a check?

Let me answer the check part honestly first, because I think politicians usually duck it.

We are two and a half months into our general election campaign and reaching voters costs money. The fundraising treadmill that every candidate is on is something I genuinely hate, and getting big money out of politics is one of my primary goals. But the way you prove you can compete without being dependent on big money is by raising real money from real people in small amounts. So yes — if you can give what you’d spend on a lunch out, it helps. It all adds up, and the small donations we’ve raised through this Substack alone are already helping us build infrastructure to reach voters here and in swing districts elsewhere.

That said, there is so much you can do besides write a check.

The first is to help us grow our network, to talk to your friends. To bring your ideas and your community to this campaign. When volunteers ask me how to plug in sustainably, I tell them the same thing: do the thing only you can do. Think about your unique strengths and find a way to point them at this moment. We need everyone, but we need everyone doing what they’re best at — not everyone doing the same three things.

Sign up at danielbiss.com to volunteer. In addition to campaigning here in IL-9, we’ll be sending volunteers to neighboring states all summer and fall. If we want to be successful in Congress, we need a Democratic majority and that math runs through districts in the states surrounding Illinois.

Illinois has a trifecta in state government. Why haven’t we redistricted? Who’s standing in the way?

We didn’t redistrict this year in part because Indiana didn’t. Governor Pritzker used the threat of Illinois redistricting as a tool to stop Indiana from doing the same, which allowed us to maintain the same partisan balance we would have had if both states had redistricted, but without the disruption and chaos.

Unfortunately, after that worked, Trump targeted the Republican Indiana senators who resisted redistricting, and defeated most of them. That’s a pretty good indication of where we are – we have no choice but to wage maximum political warfare everywhere. Unilateral disarmament on redistricting — refusing to use the tools available to us while Republicans gerrymander aggressively in nearly every state they control — isn’t virtuous. It’s suicidal.

I think Illinois should redistrict before the 2028 elections. I’d rather live in a world where neither party drew maps for partisan advantage, and I’ll never stop fighting for that policy. But until we do, we have to play the game in front of us.

What’s your go-to Evanston news source?

Great question — I can’t pick just one, and the fact that I have options, that we all have options, is a true luxury and an essential, rapidly disappearing necessity for a healthy democracy.

In addition to the coverage we receive from Chicago news outlets, Evanston specifically has the Evanston Roundtable (nonprofit), Evanston Now (for-profit), and the Daily Northwestern (university-affiliated). We are extremely fortunate for a city of our size to have one credible news outlet, let alone three.

Full disclosure: they do good work, which means they’re sometimes tough on me which isn’t always fun. But it’s an enormous asset to the community. Our electorate is informed and engaged in significant part because we have real local journalism. The government here is held to account because there are people whose full-time job is to pay attention, and they make it easier for everyone else to be informed. As mayor, I’ve seen up close what that does for a community and it has driven home the importance of local journalism for me.

Keep the questions coming. Reply to this email, drop them in the comments, or send them my way on any of the socials.

— Daniel