Hakeem Jeffries Formally Asks House Democrats to Back Him for Speaker, Promising Common Ground on Costs and 'Accountability' for the Trump Administration, Fox News Reports
Fox News says the Democratic leader wrote to colleagues Wednesday seeking the gavel. He pledged to look for bipartisan ground on affordability and to use oversight as a check on the executive branch. Caucus elections are set for mid-December.
The next Speaker's race has a declared Democratic candidate, Fox News reports.
What happened. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., told colleagues in a letter on Wednesday that he wants to be Speaker in the next Congress. Fox says he also said so at a press conference with Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., and Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar, D-Calif. Clark and Aguilar signaled they will seek the No. 2 and No. 3 jobs.
The vote count. Fox says Jeffries should have little trouble given the size of the Democratic win, but it points to a small group of far-left members who may give him and other establishment Democrats trouble. At the time of Fox's writing, Democrats were projected to win 237 seats to 139 for Republicans, with 59 races still too close to call. Fox says Jeffries told reporters he expects 255 or more Democrats next year. We have been tracking the count on our election page, and the numbers there come from AP calls.
His pitch. In the letter, as Fox quotes it, Jeffries said he would "try to find bipartisan common ground whenever and wherever possible" on affordability. He blamed Republicans for failing to lower costs on Day One and named the Trump tariffs and the Iran war as making things worse. He also promised that the House would act as "a check and balance on an out-of-control executive branch."
The agenda. Fox reports he suggested Democrats would try to reverse the Republican Medicaid cuts, extend the enhanced Obamacare tax credits that expired at the start of this year, and end the war in Iran.
The calendar. House Democrats hold their leadership elections in mid-December, Fox says. On the Republican side, it notes that Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise are competing to lead the minority, which we covered earlier.
Why it matters here. Jeffries' letter is the first formal outline of what the Democratic majority says it will do first. The word "accountability" is his, and the letter does not say whether it means impeachment. We covered his earlier remarks that Democrats had not ruled impeachment in or out.
What we could not check. We read Fox's account and its quotes, not the full letter. The seat counts are Fox's figures at the time it wrote and have since moved. Whether any Democrat will challenge him is not reported.