Hakeem Jeffries pulls off a pre-Trump power play
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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) demonstrated Thursday that he will be able to bring virtually the full weight of his caucus to bear against Republicans' razor-thin majority next year.
Why it matters: Jeffries and his members felt betrayed and cut out of the government funding process, so they held firm against House Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-La.) revised stopgap spending bill.
- Just two of Jeffries' members broke away and voted for the bill, with a third voting "present," while 38 Republicans voted to tank it.
- "Democrats are united. … All of us want to fund the government, but we can't be steamrolled. Hakeem's being strong," said Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), a member of Jeffries' leadership team.
State of play: After President-elect Trump rejected a nearly 1,550-page spending plan Johnson and Jeffries worked out, Johnson stripped out several provisions and added a two-year debt ceiling extension Trump demanded.
- During a House Democratic caucus meeting, Jeffries presided over what sources described as an energetic caucus in which Democrats raged over being cut out of negotiations on the bill.
- House Democrats broke out into chants of "hell no" during the meeting, echoing the Democratic leader's own words about his opposition.
Zoom out: Several top Democrats told Axios the vote on Thursday sends a clear message to Republicans that they can't cut Jeffries out of deals and hope it all works out.
- House Democratic Caucus chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) said it is "pretty easy to see" that Johnson needed to keep Jeffries in the loop on his revised plan if he wanted it to pass.
- "It just shows [Jeffries has] got the will of the caucus behind him for a whole lot more reasons than this fight," said Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.).
The bottom line: "What's going on now, it's about this moment, but it's also about the next two years," said Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), another Democratic leadership member.
- "If we would have allowed this to go through … it sets a standard that President Elon can just tweet and a bill gets passed. That's not how it works here."
