Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi is ticking off some House Democrats for publicly opining on what her party did wrong in 2024.

Why it matters: Pelosi needs to let House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries lead the caucus, Democrats tell us.

• "She needs to take a seat," said one senior Democratic lawmaker.
• "Making scattershot comments is not just unhelpful, it's damaging," said the lawmaker.

"Hakeem has been tremendously graceful and respectful of her, but I don't think she is being respectful of him," said a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

• Both lawmakers insisted on anonymity.
• Pelosi still instills fear in the members she led for two decades.

Zoom in: The mounting frustration with Pelosi exists in the private conversations among House Democrats in various corners of the caucus.

• The trouble started when Pelosi agreed to an interview with The New York Times last week, in which she suggested Biden should have dropped out of the race sooner.
• Her comments ignited another round of finger-pointing and blame-shifting between the Biden and Harris camps.
• The transcript had more caveats and compliments than the initial article indicated, but it didn't really matter. Pelosi had started a fire.

🥊 Many of Pelosi's Democratic colleagues privately cheered when she asserted her will over the party this summer by helping push Biden out of the campaign.

• The country's first woman speaker didn't appear to care that Biden's feelings were hurt. "We just have to win the election," she said.

Between the lines: Jeffries' allies, including Pelosi, note Democrats picked up three seats in his native New York.

• On Pelosi's home turf of California, Democrats hoped to knock off five Republicans. So far, they have only taken out one.
• "He did a masterful job in New York in this election," she said in her controversial NYT interview,
• "Speaker Pelosi is immensely proud of Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his masterful stewardship of the House Democratic Caucus," a Pelosi spokesperson told us.

Zoom out: Recriminations are flying over Democrats failing to take the House, with some members airing their grievances in a caucus meeting this week.

• Jeffries told members that "the buck stops with me."

The bottom line: Some Democrats are clearly frustrated Pelosi isn't fading into the sunset like she promised when she lost the gavel two years ago.

• "My advice to my fellow Democrats is simple: Follow the leader. Hakeem Jeffries has done a great job," Pelosi said in 2023.
• "I understand that this is a difficult transition for her, not being the leader, but she is not," the member of the Congressional Black Caucus told us.
• "She needs to understand what her new role is."

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— Hans Nichols

House Speaker Mike Johnson is publicly calling on the House Ethics Committee to suppress a potentially damaging report on Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).

Why it matters: This is a big flip-flop from Johnson's previous stance — just two days ago! — that he doesn't wade into Ethics Committee matters.

• "The Speaker of the House is not involved in that — can't be involved in that," he said Wednesday.
• It's a potential gift to President-elect Trump.

Johnson said today that making the report public would set a "terrible precedent."

• "I'm going to strongly request that the Ethics Committee not issue the report because that is not the way we do things in the House," Johnson told reporters in the hallway today, as first reported on X by Politico.
• "The rules of the House have always been that a former member is beyond the jurisdiction of the Ethics Committee," Johnson said.
• Gaetz resigned from the House earlier this week, which would usually end an Ethics Committee probe. Trump plans to nominate him for attorney general.

"I defer at this moment to whatever course they decide to take. And I hope they take a course that is bipartisan," Jeffries said today about the Ethics Committee.

• Lawmakers are looking into whether an individual member can force a vote of the full House on releasing it.

Zoom in: In June, the panel officially confirmed its probe into Gaetz had picked up where the Justice Department left off in some of its investigations into sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and other allegations.

• Gaetz has denied wrongdoing.

— Juliegrace Brufke and Andrew Solender