Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel recommended that other Democratic mayors switch their focus from LGBT issues in schools to academics.

Emanuel appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher Saturday just as the current Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is floundering with a less than seven-percent approval rating. As a word of advice to, not only Johnson, but the mayors of New York City and Los Angeles, Emanuel recommended his own general rule of focusing on “safe streets, strong schools, stable finances.”

“We’ve gone through five years where people became way too permissive as a culture,” Emanuel said. “I’ll say this about our schools: I don’t want to hear another word about the locker room. I don’t want to hear another word about the bathroom. You better start focusing on the classroom.”

The statement prompted applause from the in-studio audience. At the moment, eighth graders have hit nearly a 30-year record low in reading scores. The 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress issued its report in January to reflect that students have yet to read pre-pandemic levels of reading scores.

Emanuel went on to express the risk that schools are taking by focusing on allowing students to enter the locker room or bathroom of their gender identity.

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“In 7th grade, if I had known I could have said ‘they’ and got in the girls bathroom, I would have done it,” Emanuel said to laughter.

Emanuel’s comments come as President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning transgender athletes from women’s sports. This order is also being openly defied by schools in California.