Britain’s Prime Minister Andy Burnham has told the Labour Party’s annual conference that a return to full European Union membership is back on the table. “We could go all the way,” he said, alleging that Brexit had done “more harm than good.” Full EU membership means a return to the EU’s Free Movement migration regime, in which virtually any EU citizen can move to any EU country with almost no restrictions or vetting. The National Pulse has modeled the likely impact of this on immigration, and the results are staggering across high, middle, and low EU immigration scenarios.

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The Starting Point.

Significantly, the immigration status quo is already unmanageable, even after the unprecedented inflows of the “Boriswave” years under the former Conservative Party government. For the year ending December 2025, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) provisionally recorded 813,000 long-term arrivals and net immigration of 171,000. Non-EU+ nationals account for almost all of the inflow at present, with net negative migration from the EU+ (the EU plus Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland, which are also party to the Free Movement migration regime).

Compared with staying outside the EU, modeling suggests that, in a middle EU immigration scenario, Britain would take in an extra 82,000 migrants a year by year five, net, if it rejoined the bloc. Over ten years, the additional inflow totals 714,000. The high-immigration scenario is larger still: 200,000 extra migrants a year by year five, and 1.76 million extra over a decade.

This means moves by Germany to naturalize migrants, and the pathway to citizenship created by Spain’s amnesty for illegal immigrants, for instance, could open up Britain to significant additional immigration of EU migrants who were originally from countries outside the bloc.

The Numbers.

*Ranges span the middle 80 percent of 20,000 modeled simulations. They are not statistical confidence intervals.

The middle scenario may be the most important to consider. It shows total immigration climbing toward 944,000, with net immigration hitting 253,000. That is the “reasonable center” for Britain back in the EU, not an extreme scenario.

The high scenario—and immigration to Britain is usually significantly higher than projected—shows more than 1.1 million arrivals in a single year, with net immigration hitting 371,000, an extra 200,000 people a year against Britain’s baseline outside the EU.

Easier availability of EU migrant workers may result in the number of non-EU migrant workers falling, as accounted for in the low EU immigration, strong replacement of non-EU migrants scenario. However, if employers keep hiring from outside Europe at today’s pace and regain easy access to a large EU labor pool, the two streams will stack. That is how a country already taking in 627,000 non-EU immigrants a year ends up facing seven-figure inflows.

Importantly, there is scant evidence of increases in EU immigration causing non-EU immigration to fall in the years prior to the Brexit referendum, with an increase in EU immigration from roughly 201,000 to 284,000 from 2013 to 2016 being accompanied by a rise in non-EU immigration from 248,000 to 289,000 over the same period.

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The 2026 midterm elections are giving rise to a new political force in America: an explicitly woke form of so-called Christianity, with over a dozen Democrat candidates directly linked to ultra-progressive churches, some of whom are pastors themselves.

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The candidates range from major Senate races to various House seats across the country, and while many come from different Christian denominations, they all support a radically progressive agenda that is making some denominations, primarily mainline Protestant churches, politically louder even as their congregation numbers fall.

The Woke ‘Christian’ Candidates.

James Talarico, the Democrat nominee for the Senate in Texas against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, is a former Presbyterian seminarian and perhaps the most high-profile woke “Christian” candidate in the midterm elections. Talarico has made a number of bizarre and controversial statements in recent years regarding his interpretation of the faith.

Comments from Talarico include statements that Allah and other religious concepts, such as the pagan “Great Spirit,” are equal to Jesus Christ as a pathway to God. This contrasts starkly with Christian scripture, with Christ stating in John 14:6: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me.”

The Texas Democrat has made a number of positive statements on Islam, in particular, stating that “Islamic mystics” have shaped his Christian faith, such as the Sufi Muslim poet Rumi. The St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, which Talarico attends, explicitly supports progressive causes, funding pro-abortion groups and LGBT children’s camps. The pastor of the church has even declared that he does not believe in Christ’s literal resurrection, a key pillar of the Christian faith.

Talarico has previously contended that the Bible does not explicitly address abortion on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast in 2025. According to Talarico, the Annunciation, which saw the Archangel St. Gabriel visit the Blessed Virgin Mary, with the latter choosing to accept her role as the Mother of Jesus Christ, justifies abortion because Mary was allowed to choose.

Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico’s pastor (PCUSA) preaches during his Easter sermon that Jesus NEVER rose bodily from the dead and that he does NOT believe in a literal resurrection. pic.twitter.com/Z6ZH7hMJXg

— Protestia (@Protestia) September 21, 2026

Adam Hamilton, a woke megachurch pastor in Kansas, is also looking to win a race in the U.S. Senate, facing incumbent Senator Roger Marshall (R). Hamilton was the senior pastor at America’s largest United Methodist church and, in prior sermons, told parishioners to repent for eating beef and driving their cars because of climate change. Significantly, the beef industry is one of Kansas’ largest employers, providing thousands of jobs and making tens of billions of dollars for the state.

Sarah Trone Garriott, who is running for Congress as a Democrat in Iowa, is an active Lutheran pastor who has been sharply criticized by her Republican opponent, Representative Zach Nunn, who told WHO NewsRadio 1040 in Iowa that while in seminary, Trone Garriott had presided over a wedding for a pair of self-professed Satanists. Nunn claimed that Trone Garriot joked about the affair, saying, “She even joked about picking Bible verses so the Satanists could feel more at home.”

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How the Denominations Went Woke.

Mainline Protestantism consists of the United Methodist Church (UMC), Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the Episcopal Church (TEC), the Presbyterian Church (USA) (PCUSA), American Baptist Churches USA, the United Church of Christ (UCC), and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). These are the primary denominations that have championed woke ideology in recent years, but their progressive history often goes back decades.

As early as 1972, the UCC ordained its first openly homosexual minister, William R. Johnson. While LGBT advocacy remained largely marginal across the other denominations, things changed rapidly at the turn of the 21st century, with the Episcopal Church ordaining its first openly homosexual bishop in 2003. In 2005, the UCC declared that marriage was between two people regardless of their gender, endorsing same-sex marriage. The ELCA opened ministry to “partnered” homosexual clergy in 2009. The Presbyterians (PCUSA) opened ordination to homosexuals in 2011, followed by approval of same-sex marriage in 2015. Finally, the United Methodists, who had declared homosexuality “incompatible with Christian teaching” in 1972, removed all prohibitions on same-sex marriage and LGBT clergy in 2024.

Roman Catholics, too, have seen woke movements within the Church, though unlike the mainline Protestants, the Vatican has not supported openly homosexual clergy or same-sex marriage or taken institutional stands on other woke issues. The American Jesuit priest Father James Martin is one of the most high-profile Catholic priests advocating for LGBT issues, though he does not have any formal institutional power in the Church. Fr. Martin has connections to many Democrats, including former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and once stated that he believed Buttigieg and his homosexual partner were married, despite the Catholic church not recognizing same-sex marriage as legitimate.

Immigration, however, is an issue that unites many of the mainline Protestants with progressive Roman Catholics and many Roman Catholic charities, which have been given billions of dollars by past Democratic regimes like the Biden government. That money was later cut by the second Trump administration.

Mainline Protestant pastors have been even more direct in their opposition to President Donald J. Trump’s policies on immigration, with many openly opposing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) actions and operations. Reverend David Black, senior pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, participated in protests against ICE in September of 2025, when he was shot with pepper balls by federal agents. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin argued at the time that Black was part of a protest that was blocking federal government vehicles and that they had been ordered off federal property repeatedly.

Woke pastor preaches ROBOCOP-themed service to protest the militarization of ICE and government efforts to identify and deport illegal immigrants. pic.twitter.com/5NJ60MKA8z

— Protestia (@Protestia) June 27, 2025

Woke Churches Are Loud, But Dying.

While the new breed of ultra-progressive political Christianity appears to be getting louder and louder, the number of people actually attending progressive churches is suffering a sharp decline. Mainline Protestantism in America has seen its attendance fall rapidly for years, dropping from 18 percent of America’s adult population in 2007 to just 11 percent in 2023-2024.

In the 1970s, mainline Protestants accounted for nearly a third of the population.

Among the individual denominations, some of the most progressive, like the United Methodists, have lost over two million members from 1990 to 2020, a decline of 29 percent.

Others, like the ECLA, have also lost well over a million parishioners.

Could Christian Wokeism Triumph in 2026?

Traditionally, the Evangelical movement and much of the “religious right” has been a reliably Republican voting bloc. Woke Christianity, however, is turning into the ultra-progressive Democrat antithesis to traditional Christian politics. While the number of people attending woke churches is clearly declining, their influence appears to be growing, and if representatives like James Talarico and megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton win their Senate races in November, that influence could spread further.

Instead of a Church that calls on politicians to ground their morality and policies on the Bible and Christian tradition, woke Christianity takes the opposite approach, using existing progressive political beliefs to reinterpret Christianity to suit ideological leftism.

This is causing many voters to ask, “Is woke Christianity really Christianity at all?”

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The National Pulse Editor-in-Chief Raheem Kassam has warned on Stephen K. Bannon’s War Room show that Britain is now struggling with a deeply embedded “fifth column,” arguing that mass migration, restrictions on speech, and a two-tier justice system have left many Britons afraid to openly challenge the transformation of their communities.

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Kassam said there is “multi-tiered policing and multi-tiered justice going on in the United Kingdom,” adding that the issue extends beyond the preferential treatment of Islam and minorities to “how white people are being treated as second-class citizens in their own home nations at the moment.” Complaints against “two-tier policing” have become a growing political controversy in Britain in recent years.

Kassam argued that Britain’s speech laws also contribute to an atmosphere in which people think twice before discussing immigration, Islam, or some political leaders in a negative way. “It is one of the most stifling environments to speak that I’ve ever experienced,” he said, explaining that he is “certainly aware” that something he writes could potentially be construed in a way that results in criminal prosecution while he is in England.

Those concerns exist against a real legal backdrop: Britain’s Malicious Communications Act and Communications Act criminalize certain communications deemed offensive. Freedom of Information data reported in 2025 indicated police were making more than 12,000 arrests annually under the two laws.

Britain has also established 150-meter “safe access zones” around abortion facilities where conduct intended or likely to influence someone accessing so-called abortion services can be criminalized. Significantly, government guidance says that, depending on the circumstances, this can include silently praying inside your head.

Kassam said the larger danger is what happens after alien communities become sufficiently entrenched that assimilation and political integration become increasingly difficult. “I think that there is a fifth column in this country, Steve, that we’re not allowed to talk about, we’re not allowed to mention,” he told Bannon.

Kassam connected that warning directly to his 2017 book No Go Zones, for which he traveled through immigrant-heavy neighborhoods in the likes of Britain, France, Belgium, Sweden, and later Dearborn and Hamtramck in Michigan. Recalling a warning he attributed to the late Christopher Hitchens, Kassam argued that “if you allow these people into your midst, this fifth column into your midst, it is incredibly difficult to cut that cancer out of your society once the roots have taken hold.”

FULL INTERVIEW: 

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The British government is intentionally crushing the public under an avalanche of “petty indignities” so they are unable to push for broad national reforms, argued Raheem Kassam, Editor-in-Chief of The National Pulse, during a recent appearance on former White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon’s War Room show.

“How am I going to pay my gas bill? How am I going to pay my car insurance? What am I going to do when my mother or my father or my grandmother gets sick? … [I]t’s death by a thousand cuts, because then you can’t worry about anything outside of that. You can’t worry about what your community looks like. You can’t worry about three streets down, or three doors down even, from your own house. The entire ability to care about and curate your community, let alone your country, is ripped away from you with that particular tactic,” Kassam explained.

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“The tax burden in this country is unbelievable. The levels of energy debt are unbelievable, through the roof, skyrocketing… Getting worse,” Kassam noted. Official statistics support the statement, with Britain’s Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), a fiscal watchdog comparable to the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, having forecast that taxes will reach a post-war high of roughly 38 percent of economic output by 2030–31.

Frozen income tax thresholds are helping to drive that increase through a process of “fiscal drag.” This means that as wages rise, a larger share of earnings are becoming subject to higher tax rates, despite the value of those wages having falling due to inflation. For workers trying to cover ordinary expenses, this means their budgets are eroding via “stealth taxation,” without the government having to announce a controversial increase in headline income tax rates.

With respect to Kassam’s warning on energy bills, Ofgem, Britain’s energy regulator, has pushed average July–September 2026 rates on covered household tariffs to the equivalent of approximately 35 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity and 10 cents per kilowatt-hour of natural gas. Significantly, the regulator’s typical annual household price-cap figure, equivalent to $2,463, is a benchmark based on assumed usage, not a limit on what every household can spend. The rises are being driven chiefly by higher wholesale gas prices, caused by the Ukraine war, the Iran war, and the sabotage of the domestic North Sea oil and gas industry by the incumbent Labour Party and previous Conservative Party governments.

The Labour government is currently pressing ahead with its Clean Power 2030 program. Taxpayers are already subsidizing some so-called green energy, with approximately $689 million spent through June 2026 under the Renewables Obligation to Exchequer scheme, which shifts part of the cost of green energy subsidies from energy bills to public finances. Crucially, this shift can lower the charge visible on a household bill, but still leave the public covering the cost via taxation.

WATCH HERE:

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Over the weekend, it was revealed that a former personal bodyguard to slain Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh received first asylum and then full British citizenship under Britain’s former Conservative (Tory) government. He allegedly went on to plot terrorist attacks against Jews and Israeli-linked targets in Europe from the English suburbs. Much of the media coverage of the scandal has focused on the courts’ decision to protect the identity of this “Mr. X”—identified as “Mohammed A.,” the son of Hamas politburo member Basem Naim, by the German press—for 100 years.

Less attention has been paid to the politicians who were in charge in the British government when it waved through a Hamas operative’s asylum and citizenship applications, or the fact that both of them are still members of Conservative leader Olukemi “Kemi” Badenoch’s top team.

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The Same Old Faces.

Then-Prime Minister Theresa May’s special adviser on counter-terrorism at the time was, as noted by Reform Party leader Nigel Farage on Monday morning, Nick Timothy, now a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) “recently promoted by Kemi Badenoch with a shadow justice brief.” Timothy was responsible for developing Conservative policy on police reform, criminal justice, and immigration up to 2015, when “Mr. X” first received asylum.

“You simply cannot make it up,” Farage said.

.@EllieHodgesxx and I discuss the story of the Hamas operative living in England since 2015.

How did he get here? A Tory government.

And who was responsible?

Kemi Badenoch's newest shadow cabinet recruits. pic.twitter.com/KOXGoDRrGb

— Raheem J. Kassam (@RaheemKassam) September 28, 2026

Chris Philp, the Shadow Home Secretary tasked by Badenoch with representing the Conservatives’ position on the scandal, has blamed the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which continues to bind the United Kingdom to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights despite Brexit, for the Conservatives’ supposed inability to turn away “Mr. X.”

“There’s nothing any government can do about it, and that is precisely why we need to dismantle the entire legal system, come out of the ECHR,” he told Comcast’s Sky News.

The problem is that not only did the Conservatives make no moves to leave the ECHR during their 14 years in government from 2010 to 2024, but Philp personally voted against amendments to a Conservative bill aimed at facilitating deportations to Rwanda, which in the end never went ahead, besides four people leaving voluntarily in exchange for £3,000 (~$4,000) each. Crucially, these amendments would have stopped the ECHR from being used to block removals. Yet, far from expressing concerns that the ECHR could be used to thwart the Rwanda plan, he was frequently deployed to the media to defend the watered-down policy as a junior Home Office minister, just as he claims to oppose the ECHR in the media today.

Examining the parliamentary record, The National Pulse has found Philp in 2021, as an even more junior Home Office minister, declaring that “the United Kingdom has been a beacon of human rights for many centuries now and we intend to honour our ECHR obligations”—hardly the words of a determined opponent of the Convention.

You’ve probably seen the Hamas chief story today. But what you might not know is how this kind of person ever got asylum and citizenship in Britain.

Not only was it under the Tories, but it was the 2 most senior Tories Kemi Badenoch just put in charge of the Justice and Home… pic.twitter.com/6Yb93untkD

— Raheem J. Kassam (@RaheemKassam) September 27, 2026

The Fish Rots From the Head Down.

Badenoch, who gained British citizenship as a result of her Nigerian mother traveling to London to give birth in 1980, shortly before changes to citizenship law ended automatic citizenship by right of birth on British soil, served in the Conservative governments of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak, until the party’s crushing defeat in the 2024 general election.

Despite efforts to present her as a no-nonsense, anti-woke politician who just happened to serve in governments that increased immigration to its highest levels in history, her personal record on immigration is clear. In 2022, she thanked then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid in the House of Commons for lifting caps on migrant workers and foreign students, boasting that she had lobbied for the changes.

She also boasted about achieving record ethnic minority recruitment into the police and the magistracy in an ‘Inclusive Britain’ report in 2023, when she served as Minister for Equalities, and celebrated the ouster of former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán—likely Europe’s strongest leader on illegal immigration, as well as one of Britain’s few friends in Europe during Brexit.

The question facing right-leaning British voters in 2029—possibly much sooner, should Prime Minister Andy Burnham call an early election—is clear: Why should they trust a center-left Conservative Party masquerading as center-right on the ECHR and immigration, when it not only presided over the naturalization of a Hamas operative and unprecedented mass migration, but still has the same personnel who enabled or defended those catastrophes at the top of their party totem pole today?

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Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Nature under British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, told a fringe meeting at the ruling Labour Party’s ongoing annual conference in Liverpool that a rural Britain of warm ale, pubs, and a dog at your feet is a terrifying and “very far-Right nostalgic vision” that “never really existed.”⁠

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Riddell-Carpenter told Labour comrades that lies “awake at night” in “fear” that if her party cannot impose its “progressive vision for the countryside,” it will ber overtaken by a vision of “warm ale, a black Labrador by your feet in a pub that doesn’t exist, and with symbolism of fox hunting all around… a very far-right nostalgic vision of Britain that we don’t want to have, [and] never really existed.”

The School of Oriental and African Studies graduate said this as Member of Parliament (MP) for Suffolk Coastal, a rural East Anglian constituency (electoral district) comprised of farms, coastal towns, and village pubs. Official figures from the 2021 Census put about 9.5 million people in Britain’s rural settlements, and the Labrador was Britain’s most registered breed last year, suggesting that Englishmen enjoying pints in the pub with black labs by their side are more real than Riddell-Carpenter would like to believe.

These are the comments of Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, who studied at the far left SOAS in London.

She did a BA in History and Politics, completed in 2008, then an MA in Islamic History 👀 https://t.co/FkdpOrAtLE

— Raheem J. Kassam (@RaheemKassam) September 28, 2026

Studies.

Riddell-Carpenter has an unusual background for a woman representing a rural constituency. Privately-educated, she previously worked in public relations and housing, and now chairs the Labour Rural Research Group. However, she attended SOAS University of London, formerly the School of Oriental and African Studies, earning a master’s degree not in anything related to the countryside but in Islamic History.

SOAS is a specialist college focused on Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and one of the most notoriously politicized campuses in Britain. In 2005, its student union became the first in Britain to commit to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. Riddell-Carpenter completed both of her SOAS degrees in the years that followed.⁠ Critics have long called SOAS the “School of Antisemitism,” with Jewish students having reported being too frightened to wear a Star of David or speak Hebrew on campus.

In 2020, the university refunded a student £15,000 in fees after he said a “toxic antisemitic environment” forced him off his course. A 2019 Henry Jackson Society report found SOAS hosted more Islamic hate preachers than any other British university. After the October 7th, 2023, Hamas attacks, the campus became a focal point for Gaza encampments and related disciplinary fights.

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Social Media.

Riddell-Carpenter’s affinity with Islam is reflected in her social media history. On her X (formerly Twitter) account, abandoned after Labour entered government due to “abuse aimed at MPs,” she was quick to reframe Islam as peaceful following the Charlie Hebdo massacre in January 2015, writing, “Thoughts with France tonight. Freedom of speech and press a shared corner stone [sic] of our societies. As peace is to Islam #CharlieHebdo”.

In June the same year, she tweeted a complaint about “ignorant guest speakers” discussing Islam, writing, “These non Muslims are making me want to convert to Islam. ”

Europe’s migrant crisis peaked also peaked in 2015, with Germany under Angela Merkel becoming the primary but not the only destination of millions of mostly Muslim migrants. Riddell-Carpenter cheered the process on throughout the month of September, while lashing out those who were uneasy with the experiment.

September 3rd, 2015:

“Best news of my day: [British Prime Minister David] Cameron bows to pressure to allow more Syrian refugees into Britain.”

September 4th, 2015:

“Hungary is running towards fascism. In sorting the ‘Muslim problem’, the [Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán] will give more physical powers to police dealing with refugees. [Referring to Hungary moving to close its borders to illegal immigrants en route to Western Europe.]

September 7, 2015:

“Wow. Watching the response of Germans towards refugees in Munich is heart warming. Wish the British had as warm hearts and open arms.”

The same day:

“Surprised that Syrian refugees have smartphones? Sorry to break this to you, but you’re an idiot.”

September 10, 2015:

“On the train to Henley and its like I’ve walked into the Daily Mail, ignorant people discussing (light term) refugees. Take me back to [London].”

Riddell’s evident contempt for “ignorant” train passengers discussing the migrant crisis en route to Henley-on-Thames, a small English market town surrounded by countryside, and her preference for the multicultural metropolis of London will appear to many to be a particularly strong indicator of her true feelings about a rural Britain she would prefer not to exist, and of her suitability to be a leading voice in government on rural affairs.

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Rahm Emanuel has been a former advisor to the Bill Clinton White House, a Democrat Congressman for Illinois, President Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff, a two-term Chicago Mayor, and President Joe Biden’s ambassador to Japan. In the last three decades, he has not been outside the halls of power, most recently strongly hinting at a run for the Democratic presidential nomination for the 2028 election.

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In a September interview with Rolling Stone, Emanuel said he was “more yes than no” about a potential 2028 presidential run, and has spent just over a year laying the groundwork with podcast appearances on shows like Honestly with CBS News head Bari Weiss and The New Yorker Radio Hour. He has also published several policy papers over the last year, including one suggesting age limits for political office and banning children under 16 from social media.

Polling, however, shows Emanuel is far from the favorite among Democrats. Raheem Kassam, Editor-in-Chief of The National Pulse, has previously suggested an ulterior motive for his shadow campaign: Not to win the nomination, but to secure another top spot in the next Democratic presidential regime, possibly as Vice President.

Rahm Emanuel is taking a real run at this thing.

Does he think he can be President? Probably not.

But does he think if he's on that debate stage he gets the call for VP?

Almost certainly. https://t.co/FY3uBTKHiZ

— Raheem J. Kassam (@RaheemKassam) July 8, 2026

Corporate Democrat.

Unlike many of the more popular socialist contenders for the Democrat leadership,  such as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Emanuel has never shied away from corporate America, having banked over $18 million in just three years as a Wall Street investment banker after leaving the Clinton administration.

In 2001, after serving as a Clinton White House advisor from 1993 to 1998 and making his millions, Emanuel ran for Congress, winning a seat and representing Illinois from 2002 to 2009, when he went to work as Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama. While serving only part of the administration for 20 months, Emanuel represented the corporate-friendly wing of the Democratic Party, urging Obama not to include a public option in Obamacare, another policy that put him severely at odds with popular socialist Democrats.

However, the most high-profile controversy of Emanuel’s Obama years was a corruption case against Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who was accused of trying to sell Obama’s former Illinois Senate seat. Emanuel was in contact with Gov. Blagojevich at the time, although was never charged with any wrongdoing, and newly unsealed FBI files released this month show that Obama was aware of Emanuel and Blagojevich discussing giving the seat to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. According to Blagojevich, this was in exchange for her father, then Illinois House Speaker, supporting his budget and healthcare package. As a result of the scandal, Blagojevich served seven years and 11 months in prison, until he was pardoned by President Donald J. Trump in 2025.

The Chicago Machine.

Following the Blagojevich affair, Emanuel sought and won the Chicago mayoral race in 2011, serving two terms as the mayor of America’s “homicide capital.” Under Emanuel, there were 19,000 shootings, 4,000 murders,  and an average of 541 murders per year from 2011 to September 2018. This was up from an average of 463 murders the year prior to him taking office.

The fatal shooting of 17-year-old black teen Laquan McDonald in 2014 by Chicago police was Emanuel’s most high-profile scandal after the city refused to release dashcam footage of the incident for over a year. The video did not get a public release until a judge ordered it in November of 2015. McDonald had been shot 16 times by police, with the city agreeing to a $5 million settlement with his family shortly before the footage emerged.

The New York Times labeled the affair a “cover-up” in 2015. The Chicago Sun-Times also noted in a 2020 report that Emanuel conveniently agreed to the settlement a week after the April 2015 mayoral runoff, and approved it before any lawsuit had even been filed.

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The Biden Years.

The McDonald case may have influenced Emanuel’s shock announcement in 2018 that he was not running for a third term as Chicago Mayor. However, after a few years out of the political spotlight, Emanuel was selected by President Joe Biden to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to Japan in 2021. Shortly before his tenure as ambassador, The National Pulse revealed that Emanuel was a headline speaker at a China-friendly conference sponsored by groups linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2013, while he was still running Chicago.

In 2025, Emanuel ended his term as ambassador and now seems to have his sights set on the presidency, with longtime Democrats like Nancy Pelosi expecting him to run. Nationwide polling, however, often does not even list Emanuel because his numbers are so low. In an Echelon Insights poll released this month, his name is listed with less than one percent of the vote.

So the question remains: Why is Emanuel running? It seems most likely that he will use the nomination debates and the primary system to secure a higher profile and reenter the political machine he has inhabited for decades. His past shows the interests he represents are likely completely at odds with the ascendant, progressive wing of the party, but his alignment with Wall Street, big business, international corporations, and possibly even the Chinese Communist Party may yet see him secure significant backing.

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Image by Daniel X. O’Neil.

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