In today’s edition … A senator-turned-nominee faces the Senate … We ask you about gas prices … but first …
Emanuel, considering a 2028 run, thinks it’s time to talk about immigration
Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat who famously labeled immigration the “third rail of American politics” in 2007, believes now is the moment for a national conversation about the issue because, in his estimation, the political dam on reform is about to break.
No political issue has roiled American politics more over the last decade than immigration. President Donald Trump used it to win over voters in his 2016 upset win. Democrats lurched to the left on the issue during the 2020 presidential primaries, with many pledging to decriminalize illegal border crossing, and the surge of immigrants at the southern border under President Joe Biden helped propel Trump back to the White House in 2024. And the chaos on American streets over the past year, the result of Trump’s push for aggressive immigration enforcement that led to the killings of American citizens, has been one of the greatest liabilities of the president’s second term.
“We’ve come to a point that the public, rightfully, has rejected the mayhem of open borders and the mayhem of open warfare on our streets. And we have to resolve this issue,” Emanuel told us. “The American people know more of the same isn’t going to get a different result.”
In an effort to kick-start that conversation, Emanuel, the former mayor of Chicago who is ruminating on a possible presidential run in 2028, is publicly endorsing the Dignity Act, a bipartisan immigration reform law pushed by Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) and Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Florida). The bill includes immigration priorities from both parties: investments in physical border barriers and Border Patrol, no pathway to citizenship for those here illegally and mandated employment verification for Republicans; and a pathway to legal status, protections for those brought to the country illegally as children and more humanitarian protections at the border for Democrats.
“The reality is that no plan drafted by either side alone is capable of making it through the legislative process,” Emanuel wrote in a letter to Escobar and Salazar, noting that if he had written an immigration bill, it would have looked different. But, he wrote, “that’s how compromises work,” and the proposal “would mark a crucial and significant step to break the pattern of the past.”
He adds: “To fix what’s broken and advance America past this moment — to burnish the notion that we are a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants — we face a stark choice. The two parties can keep using these issues as political cudgels or, at long last, we can actually make the progress that Americans of all political stripes demand and yearn for.”
It’s a unique position for Emanuel on multiple fronts.
First, very few elected Democrats with higher political ambition are looking to tackle full-scale immigration reform. As he told us, the issue has stymied many who have attempted to tackle it, often turning those failures into political attacks — just look at Marco Rubio in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. And Democrats have recently struggled to find the right message on the issue, too, as evidenced by Vice President Kamala Harris’s difficulties with it during her 2024 run.
“Legislatively, politically, the dam’s going to break. And it requires leadership,” he told us. “The easy thing for me to do is not to support this and not to even raise the topic. So I’m doing it because … we’re at a point where the country’s ready for the dam to be broken, and it’s going to inform the legislative process, and it requires coming to it in an honest, forthright way.”
Second is the candor Emanuel is bringing to this push.
He writes in his letter to the congresswomen that he is “keenly aware” of the way this issue has been politicized in the past and that he, a former chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and political adviser to President Bill Clinton, “played a role in allowing political priorities to get ahead of substantive progress in this realm.”
“I’m going to be frank and honest … I don’t come to this with clean hands,” he said. “I know that.”
He specifically mentioned his role in Operation Gatekeeper, a Clinton-backed policy in 1994 aimed at “prevention through deterrence” that is often credited with some of the first militarization at the Southern border.
And he went further with that honesty, faulting Democrats for moving too far to the left on immigration during the 2020 presidential election and the way Republicans have “given a permission slip for law enforcement to become lawless and kill Americans for exercising the First Amendment right.”
“At that time, the party lost the center of gravity of where the American people were, not just on immigration, on immigration reform,” Emanuel said of Democrats, citing the way many candidates backed offering government health care to people who crossed the border illegally. “Americans are struggling with health care costs and struggling with coverage, and you are raising your hand for free health care for somebody who broke the law to come into the country? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
The prospect of the Dignity Act becoming law anytime soon is bleak. Trump openly scuttled a bipartisan border security bill in 2024, and — as we have noted in this newsletter — Congress isn’t getting much done these days.
The same could be said for Emanuel’s presidential aspirations. He is a long shot, no doubt. But, as he argued to us about the Dignity Act, never say never.
“The American people are ahead of the legislative branch” on immigration, he said. “There is more consensus on this issue in America than there is in Congress. That’s why I’m optimistic about this bill.”
Get ready with The Post
- Vance is in a bind, supporting a war that could cost him politically, from Natalie Allison and John Hudson.
- Under Trump, the government’s watchdogs are losing their independence, from Meryl Kornfield and Lisa Rein.
- Pentagon seeks more than $200 billion in budget request for Iran war, from Noah Robertson, Jeff Stein and Riley Beggin.
- Trump tried to push Powell out, but now he may be stuck with him, from Andrew Ackerman and Salvador Rizzo.
- Gabbard tells senators Iranian regime is degraded but still intact, from Noah Robertson and Warren P. Strobel.
What we’re watching
What a doozy!
The Senate Homeland Security Committee had a blockbuster confirmation hearing for Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma) to be the next Secretary of Homeland Security, and let’s just say a lot of bad blood came out into the spotlight.
Senators repeatedly grilled Mullin on the mysterious travel he went on when he was a member of the House. Mullin refused to speak openly about it, saying it was “official” business as part of a “classified” trip that only a select number of people knew about on a need-to-know basis.
Senators were agog. They are U.S. senators voting on his nomination to the Cabinet. Shouldn’t they “need to know?” The committee met with Mullin in a secure chamber to discuss his travels after the hearing.
“It may be innocent, but it makes people curious when you say, ‘Oh, I’m doing secret missions for somebody, but I won’t tell you who, and only four people in the world know about this,’” committee Chairman Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) said.
Paul also read Mullin the riot act over past comments sympathizing with the Kentuckian’s neighbor who physically attacked him in 2017. Paul suggested the comments were emblematic of Mullin’s pugilistic character.
“You told the media that I was a freaking snake and that you completely understood why I’d been assaulted. I was shocked that you would justify and celebrate this violent assault that caused me so much pain and my family so much pain,” Paul said.
Mullin defended himself, saying he was blunt but honest.
The committee is meeting again today to vote on whether to advance his nomination. The committee is divided eight Republicans to seven Democrats, meaning if Paul votes against him as he said he would, Mullin will need at least one Democrat to have his back. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania) appeared receptive to his nomination.
Mullin would join a department in turmoil. Trump’s relationship with current secretary Kristi L. Noem soured as she attracted increasing bipartisan criticism for her leadership. She faced pushback for demanding to review all FEMA funding above $100,000 (Mullin said he would not have the same policy), and after federal immigration agents killed Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. (Mullin retracted his past comments blaming Pretti and Good for their own deaths.) Noem’s last day is March 31.
Read more from Maria Sacchetti and Mariana Alfaro.
In your local paper
Salt Lake Tribune (Utah): Could Utah turn purple politically? It’s a long shot — but national Democrats see a path to power in Utah through one competitive House race.
Kiowa County Press (Colorado): A massive heat wave is driving temperatures into the triple digits across the West, setting records from Los Angeles to Denver.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Georgia): It has been a tough winter for air travel — from winter storms to government uncertainty, the industry has been hit hard. The latest example of this was in Atlanta, where 36 percent of TSA agents at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport have called out of work because of the ongoing Department of Homeland Security shutdown.
From you
We asked for your thoughts about political endorsements, and the general response was that they don’t sway your votes, even if they are a subject of fascination. What is interesting is that voters often say endorsements don’t matter — and yet, campaigns continue to pursue them.
“Endorsements of any sort have never swayed my vote,” wrote Bruce Meyers. “Whether they are from politicians, celebrities or donors of any financial station. What the candidate says, or in the case of a reelection campaign, what the candidate did while in office matters, not what a third party thinks.”
“I only pay attention to endorsements in the Democratic primary. In the election, there hasn’t been a Republican candidate I would vote for since Eisenhower, who was more liberal than today’s moderate Democrats,” added Jack Scary. “If it were up to me, only those who live in the candidate’s district or state, if running for the Senate, would be allowed to contribute to a campaign. Radio and TV broadcasters should be required to provide free and equal advertising for all candidates as their public service for using our airwaves to make enormous profits. I would also set limits on how much candidates can spend.”
“While I find ‘who’s endorsing who’ of interest, I cannot think of even one time an endorsement made any difference as to who I voted for,” wrote Kenneth Wiese. “So in my case at least, ‘No, endorsements do not affect who I vote for.’”
Send a reply
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