Goldberg: Can Hakeem Jeffries and Democrats break through?

By Michelle Goldberg / The New York Times

Recently I went down to Washington to speak to Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, after he gave a speech marking Donald Trump’s calamitous first 100 days in office. At a time when many Democrats feel leaderless, Jeffries, usually a relentlessly on-message inside operator, had been stepping further into the public eye.

Not long before we spoke, he’d appeared on a live taping of the “Raging Moderates” podcast in New York City; it was, he said, probably the 18th or 19th podcast he’d done since February. On April 27, he spent more than 12 hours holding a livestreamed sit-in on the Capitol steps with Sen. Cory Booker to draw attention to Republican plans to ravage the federal safety net.

“We’re in a ‘more is more’ environment,” said Jeffries, who represents a district in New York’s Brooklyn borough. “We just have to keep doing more rallies, speeches, town hall meetings in Democratic districts, town hall meetings in Republican districts.”

The day we spoke, a widely shared Bulwark article said that Jeffries was discouraging Democratic representatives from traveling to El Salvador to highlight the plight of the deportees sent by Trump to rot in a maximum-security gulag. Jeffries denied this, as did an aide to one of the Democrats who’d gone there. Said Jeffries, “I’ve said nothing other than ‘great job,’” to the Democrats who made the trip.

Still, it’s pretty clear that Jeffries would much rather talk about Medicaid and taxes — the normal stuff of Democratic legislating — than looming autocracy. What most Americans want to know, he said, is, “Are we fighting to make the economy more affordable for them? Are we protecting their health care, and are we going to battle to make sure that their future is brighter than their past?”

When I asked him about the fury that parts of the base feel toward a business-as-usual Democratic leadership, he rejected the premise of my question. Traveling all over the country, he said, he interacts with people who “are thankful that Democrats are out there fighting on their behalf repeatedly.” Then he turned the conversation back to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.

A major question is whether Jeffries’ quotidian focus on policy can break through the Trumpian onslaught. The next few months should reveal the answer. In the opening days of this administration, Congress has been an afterthought, with Republican representatives declining to either check Trump or do much lawmaking. But the next phase of Trump’s agenda runs through the House, where Republicans are negotiating a budget bill extending his first-term tax cuts, now set to expire at the end of the year, while cutting social programs, including Medicaid. Given the narrow Republican majority in the House, and the likelihood of a Democratic takeover in the midterms, it could be the only significant piece of new legislation Trump gets to sign.

“There’s nothing more urgent that we could be doing right now than stopping Republicans from jamming their reckless and extreme budget down the throats of the American people,” said Jeffries.

Given Republican control of Congress — and the fact that budget bills can pass the Senate with a simple majority — it’s unlikely that the legislation can be thwarted. But he still holds out hope that Republicans might fail to come up with a bill that their competing factions can agree to. After all, assuming Jeffries keeps Democrats united in opposition, House Republicans can afford only three no votes. Should at least four Republicans defect, said Jeffries, “everything will fall apart, which is a good development for the American people, and the one that we’re trying to make sure takes place.”

Though Trump has said he wants to protect Medicaid, the debate among Republicans in Congress isn’t whether to cut it, but by how much. A House budget resolution passed in February instructs the Energy and Commerce Committee to find $880 billion to cut from the programs under its jurisdiction, which would require taking an ax to Medicaid. Some so-called moderates, however, say they’ll accept only Medicaid cuts of $400 billion to $500 billion; still a giant bite, but less than what conservatives are demanding. On Wednesday, 32 House conservatives said in a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson that their support for the bill depends on “strict adherence” to the framework in the budget resolution. (There’s also a separate, parallel fight between blue- and red-state Republicans over federal tax deductions for state and local income taxes.)

“It’s sort of like a prisoner’s dilemma for them,” said Jeffries. The spending reductions conservatives want to see would mean “the largest cut to health care in American history, the largest cut to nutritional assistance in American history, and doing a whole lot of other damage to affordable housing and education and veterans,” he said.

The “moderate” Republican faction knows their voters can’t stomach austerity on this scale. “I think any time it looks like we’re actually hurting people, that’s going to piss off the American population,” Andrew Garbarino, a Republican from a swing district in New York, told CNN recently.

In all likelihood, one side will eventually cave. Tax cuts are the GOP’s raison d’être, and it’s hard to imagine Republicans letting Trump’s run out, especially when they’re desperate to juice an economy that’s slowing due to tariffs. But the longer the budget process drags out, the more opportunities Democrats will have to try to show people exactly how they’re going to be harmed. And ultimately, almost any bill Republicans manage to pass is going to make many voters’ lives harder.

I asked Jeffries how he explained the Democrats’ historic unpopularity; one NBC poll showed that only 27 percent of registered voters view the party positively. He countered that surveys show voters preferring Democrats over Republicans in the midterm congressional races.

“What’s most important in terms of the House is the side-by-side comparison,” he said. “Are we on track to taking back the House or not?” From that perspective, at least, things aren’t going so badly.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times, c.2025.