Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. We made it to Wednesday. It's February 24th. I'm Nile

Ibudu. Here's what you need to know today. What we're just learning about security around

the January 6th insurrection. Plus, how Home Depot is a proxy for the housing market. But

first, the state of play around minimum wage is today's one big thing.

Here in the longest period of time since the minimum wage has been created that it hasn't

been adjusted. You probably heard progressive and congressional Democrats argument for a

$15 an hour federal minimum wage. And now some Republicans are responding with a proposal

to raise it to $10 an hour by 2025. Axios political reporter Sarah Mouha has been following

the debate on this. Hey, Sarah. Welcome to Axios today. Hi. Thanks so much for having me.

Sarah, can you tell us what the state of play is here because if Democrats and Joe Biden support

$15 an hour, but Republicans are now pushing this $10 an hour, is it likely that we'll get

somewhere in the middle? Yes. Like you mentioned, Democrats have long pushed for this incremental

minimum wage hike to $15 an hour. It's actually in the broader stimulus package that $1.9 trillion

COVID relief package that Democrats are trying to pass. But this $10 an hour proposal has sort

of a poison pill in it, which is that it would mandate e-verify for all employers to ensure

that rising wages go to, quote, legally authorized workers. And it's hard to see Democrats accepting

any provisions related to undocumented immigrants like that. So by proposing this $10 an hour

versus the $15 an hour proposal, it is possible that it could land somewhere in the middle,

but progressive Democrats are very, very passionate about keeping it at that $15 level. So this

is going to be a fight that we will see play out in Congress. Sarah, are we more likely to see a $15

minimum wage if it's tucked into the stimulus bill versus being a standalone bill that's only

about minimum wage? I think so. And that's because they're going to try to pass it through

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