WASHINGTON (AP) – Without wielding a gavel or holding a formal job provided for in the Constitution, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries may very well be the most powerful person in Congress right now.
Minority leader of the House Democrats, it was Jeffries who provided the votes needed to keep the government running despite opposition from House Republicans to avoid a federal shutdown.
Jeffries, who ensured Democrats delivered the count to send US$95 billion in foreign aid to Ukraine and other US allies.
And Jeffries who, with all the strength of Democratic leadership in the House behind him, decided this week that his party would help the president Mike Johnson stay at work instead of being deposed by far-right Republicans led by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
“How powerful is Jeffries now?” said Jeffery Jenkins, a public policy professor at the University of Southern California who has written extensively about Congress. “That is a significant power.”
The decision by Jeffries and the House Democratic leadership team to lend their votes to prevent Johnson’s impeachment provides a powerful turning point in what has been a long political season of dysfunction, impasse and chaos in Congress.
By declaring that enough is enough, that it is time to “turn the page” on the Republican turmoil, the Democratic leader is exercising his power in a very public and timely way, in an attempt to show legislators, and everyone else watching Dismayed by the collapse of Congress, there may be an alternative approach to governing.
“Since the beginning of this Congress, House Republicans have unleashed chaos, dysfunction and extremism on the American people,” Jeffries said Wednesday on Capitol Hill.
Jeffries said that with House Republicans “unwilling or unable” to rein in “extremist MAGA Republicans,” “it will take a bipartisan coalition and partnership to achieve this goal. We need more common sense in Washington, D.C., and less chaos.”
In the House, the minority leader is often seen as the speaker in waiting, the highest-ranking party official who is out of power, biding his time in hopes of winning back the majority – and with it, the speaker’s gavel – in the power. the next election. Elected by the party itself, it is a job without much formal basis.
But in Jeffries’ case, the position of minority leader came with enormous power, filling the political void left by current House Speaker Johnson, who commands a fragile and tenuous Republican majority and is constantly under threat from far-right provocateurs. that the GOP speaker cannot fully control.
“He is serving as shadow speaker on every important vote,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
While Johnson still controls the powerful tools of the House speaker’s office, a role outlined in the Constitution and second in line to the presidency, the Republican-led House has been going through a tumultuous session of infighting and upheaval that has left its goals and priorities have stagnated.
In a fit of discontent, just months after coming of age, the far right Republicans impeached previous speaker, now-retired Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., last fall in an act of partisan outrage never before seen. He refused to specifically ask Democrats for help.
Johnson faces the same threat of removal, but Jeffries sees in Johnson a more honest broker and a potential partner he is willing to support at least temporarily — though Johnson has also not openly asked for any help from the other side of the aisle. A vote on Greene’s motion to remove the president is expected next week.
As Johnson cozies up to Donald Trump, taking the name of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee nod of supportit is Jeffries who holds what Democratic Representative Nancy Pelosi, the president emeritus, called “coin of the kingdom” – votes – which are needed in the Chamber for any agenda to cross the finish line.
Pelosi said in an interview that Jeffries, as minority leader, “always had influence” because of the slim majority in the House.
“But it’s a matter of him showing he’s willing to use it,” she said.
Jeffries has been “masterful,” she said, in securing Democratic priorities, namely humanitarian assistance in the foreign aid package that Republicans initially opposed.
But Pelosi disagreed with the idea that Democrats’ support for Johnson at this juncture creates some kind of new era of coalition in US politics.
“Our House works because we are willing to be bipartisan to make it work,” she said. “He’s not necessarily saving President Johnson — he’s defending the dignity of the institution.”
Jeffries is a quietly confident operator, positioning himself and his party as purveyors of democratic norms amid the Republican thunder of Trump-era disruption.
O first black american to lead a political party in Congress, Jeffries is already a historic figure, whose stature will only increase further if he is elected the first to wield the gavel as speaker of the House.
Born in Brooklyn, Jeffries, 53, has steadily risen through the ranks of New York state politics and then on the national stage, a charismatic leader of the next generation, first elected to Congress in 2012, whose districts were once represented by another historic legislator, Shirley Chisolmthe first black woman elected to Congress.
A former corporate lawyer, Jeffries is also known for his sharp oratory, based on his upbringing at the historically Black Cornerstone Baptist Church, a spiritual home for many grandchildren and great-grandchildren of enslaved African Americans who fled the southern United States to Brooklyn. But he also gives his speeches and comments a modern sensitivity and cadence, uniting generations.
Last year, when Republicans failed to muster votes at a procedural stage for a budget and debt agreementit was Jeffries who stood attentively at his desk in the House chamber and held up his voting card to signal to Democrats that it was time to step up and deliver.
Repeatedly, Jeffries secured Democratic votes to avoid a federal government shutdown. And last month, when Johnson faced a far-right Republican backlash over aid to Ukraine, Jeffries intervened again, ensuring that Democrats had more votes than Republicans to see passage.
Ahead of the November elections, both parties are in a fight for political survival to control the narrowly divided House, and Jeffries would certainly face his own challenges as leader of the Democrats if they manage to win a majority, divided on many key issues.
But Jeffries and Johnson have both been on a cross-country race, raising money and enthusiasm for their own party’s candidates before November — the Republican president trying to keep his job, the Democratic leader hoping to take it.
