Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) joins Jen Rubin to discuss all of the ways House Democrats are rising up and pushing back against Trump’s autocratic attempt to manipulate the 2026 midterms.
Already, the GOP gerrymandering scheme is falling apart. Just today, the Supreme Court rejected California Republicans’ attempt to challenge the state’s newly drawn congressional map. Similar efforts are underway in Maryland, Virginia, New York, and Wisconsin.
Leader Jeffries and Jen also discuss Democrats’ demands to reform ICE—including mandated body cameras and the removal of face masks—and the DOJ’s abominable handling of the Epstein files.
Hakeem Jeffries represents the Eighth Congressional District of New York and is serving his seventh term in the United States Congress. Rep. Jeffries is the Democratic Leader, having been unanimously elected to that position by his colleagues in November 2022. He is also the former Chair of the Democratic Caucus, Whip of the Congressional Black Caucus and previously co-chaired the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee where he helped develop the For The People agenda.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of The Contrarian. We are thrilled to welcome Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who heads the Democratic Caucus in the House of Representatives. Welcome, Mr. Leader.
Leader Jeffries
Great to be with you.
Jen Rubin
It is great to have you. I want to get your reaction on some breaking news today, which was the Supreme Court rejecting the government’s appeal on the Prop 50, meaning it will stay in effect. The California voters will have new designated House seats. What’s your reaction to that, and to the ability of Democrats to stand up to Donald Trump this way?
Leader Jeffries
Well, Donald Trump launched an unprecedented effort to gerrymander congressional maps in red states all across the country as part of a scheme to rig the midterm elections. And we made clear, months ago, that we were gonna push back forcefully, aggressively all across the country. And of course, that effort began in California in response to what was done in Texas with Prop 50, and we’re thankful, of course, for the leadership, the partnership with Governor Gavin Newsom. The California congressional delegation came together in a phenomenal way, and the California people made clear that they’re gonna be the ones to decide who represents them in Congress, not Donald Trump, as part of an effort to gerrymander the national congressional map. We’re committed to a free and fair election in November.
Donald Trump knows that when that happens, they’re gonna lose control of the House of Representatives, which was the reason why they launched this unprecedented gerrymandering scheme. Now, as you know. their original view, and all of the doom and gloom scenarios, were that Democrats weren’t gonna fight back, and that somehow we were gonna… lose 8, 10, 12, 15 seats by some estimations. The reality is, because we’ve pushed back hard in California and across the country, and currently we have efforts underway in Maryland, in Virginia, in New York, and in Wisconsin, where we’ve got litigation. Everybody now understands that the Republican gerrymandering scheme has fallen apart. And they’re not netting a single seat at the end of the day. In fact, they’ll be lucky if they don’t lose seats. In the war that they started.
Jen Rubin
And that’s exactly where I want to go next. There was a state senate seat, excuse me, over the weekend, a 31-point swing in Democrats’ favor. They made some races, in Texas much more competitive. Did they dummy themselves into a position where they could lose some of those seats?
Leader Jeffries
That’s a great, it’s a great observation, and I think This was a dummy mandar. We made that observation before the stunning results that just came out of Texas two days ago, where, of course, a Democrat was able to win a district that Trump had just won by 17 points. We won it by 14 points, 31-point swing, as you mentioned. Important for everybody to understand that state Senate districts in Texas are larger than congressional districts. And so, this is a district that was a congressional district plus Directly analogous to what the voters, are going to be, deciding upon. when they go to the polls in this midterm election, in terms of the size and shape and scope of the district, more than a million people, in fact, in the State Senate District, about 775,000 in congressional districts. What was also extraordinary is that there was a swing of the Hispanic vote by 50 points. And the whole Texas dummy mandar, was based on a theory that Republicans had that the 2024 results for voters across the board, but Latino voters in particular, we’re gonna hold.
But we’re not in a 2024 environment. We’re in a very different environment because the American people are rejecting the extremism and the broken promises, particularly on affordability. So, we were always of the view That of the 5 seats that… Republicans, Donald Trump, thought they were taking away, from Democrats, at best, they might get 3. But now, and in fact, If there was a 2018 electorate. The Democrats would win 4 out of 5. of those seats. I think it’s fair to say, if we’re not there in a 2023 environment, we’re very close.
Jen Rubin
Oh, absolutely.
Leader Jeffries
And so, I think to that point, you’re absolutely correct that what’s likely to happen now is that, at most, they get 2 or 3 seats out of Texas.
Jen Rubin
But we’re gonna get 5 out of California. Exactly. Now, one of their strategies, because apparently they understand that they’re going to get walloped in the fall, is now this notion that they’re going to, quote, nationalize elections. Trump says Republicans should run elections, and we just saw a trial run, the seizure of ballots in Fulton County. This is scary stuff, and very unconstitutional. How concerned are you, and what are Democrats doing to prepare?
Leader Jeffries
Yeah, it’s deeply concerning. I mean, this is gonna be, an all-hands-on-deck effort to protect election integrity and free and fair elections. It’s the American people, nobody else, who should decide who is in the majority in the aftermath of the midterm elections in the House and in the Senate. with the way that our constitutional system was set up by the Framers. who wanted separate and co-equal branches of government. This is not a parliamentary democracy. Thank God. Because if it was this national nightmare that we’re living through, we’d be unable to do anything about it for 4, 5, or in some cases, 6 years, if it was a parliamentary democracy.
Thankfully, the framers have set up separate and co-equal branches of government, which is why we have midterm elections. Now. There’s several things that we think we need to continue to do. I think the fact that we were successful at the Supreme Court in December, where the ability of the president to declare an emergency and then federalize the National Guard… was ruled a power that he did not have. And so that resulted, of course, in him having to pull National Guard troops out of California, Illinois, and other places, like Oregon. That was important both for public safety reasons.
But of course, it was also important in the context of, I think, his efforts to potentially deploy National Guard troops in places all across the country, blue states or places that have competitive congressional districts, as part of an effort to suppress the vote. Now, we know that’s not going to end the effort. So the other thing that we’re prepared to do is sue the president if he dares to try to invoke the Insurrection Act. Which he’s threatened to do in Minneapolis, although he’s in retreat there because of the horrors that are being inflicted on the American people, but we still gotta watch it. However, because of that successful Supreme Court case. Brought by enlightened plaintiffs and state attorney generals, and the Democratic Litigation Working Group, working in partnership with all of these entities, as we’ve done repeatedly. We now have established a standard where if the president can’t even meet an emergency standard by making stuff up to deploy National Guard troops, he certainly can’t meet the standard of an insurrection. And so we believe that we’re gonna be able to take that off the table.
Now, of course, FBI agents being deployed. It’s something that we’re working on, as well. President has clearly exceeded his authority. I mean, the President’s gonna make the 10th Amendment great again. Of course, the 10th Amendment being, you know, anchored in the reality that we have a system of federalism, and states have authority on a wide variety of issues. And that, of course, includes the management of elections. And so we’re prepared to use every tool available, legislative, legal, moral, make the case to the American people, and push him back from these efforts.
Jen Rubin
Well, I’m old enough to remember when Republicans talked about states, not being suppressed by the federal government, and I think they used to be in favor of the Second Amendment as well. The Democrats pulled off something that many people did not think was possible, and that was hold up, or at least, have time to negotiate, the DHS funding bill. You talked, today with Senator Schumer about, kind of, three buckets of ideas. Can you tell us what those are, and also if there’s any sign Republicans are being responsive in the negotiations?
Leader Jeffries
Yeah, so, you know, we plan to transmit, you know, in a concrete way. sort of our views as to how to bring about the type of dramatic change at DHS so that ICE agents are actually conducting themselves in a lawful fashion, not engaging in lawless violence and thuggery, taxpayer dollars, in our view, as a core principle. should be used to make life more affordable for everyday Americans, not brutalize or kill them. So, we want to make sure that there, of course, is accountability. Meaning that… Agents are required to wear body cameras, the American people can watch these encounters and know that if laws are broken, if protocols are violated, there will be accountability for it. One, because we’ll know the facts, as, unfortunately, we got to see… in the killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretty.
But absent American citizens, patriotic Americans being there to film it all, we may never have seen what happened, and we would have been left with Kristi Noem’s lies, calling them domestic terrorists, or Stephen Miller saying Alex Pretti was a would-be assassin. So we believe mandatory body cameras, that’s gonna be important. Masks have to come off, that’s gonna be important. We believe that State and local authorities should have the explicit ability to investigate and prosecute violations of state and local law. Because we know that Donald Trump and his Department of Justice, so-called Department of Justice. under Pam Bondi, they’re not investigating anyone. And it’s not a serious independent investigation, so that is something that we’ll demand.
We want to make sure, consistent with the Fourth Amendment, that judicial warrants are required before agents can just storm homes or rip people out of their cars, as we’ve seen on the streets of Minneapolis and in other parts of the country. We certainly want to restore the type of training that needs to be in place so that ICE is conducting itself in a professional manner, like every other law enforcement agency in the country. As you may know, Jennifer, that the training that was generally required before the Trump administration came in was at least five and a half months. And the FBI, of course, set that gold standard that ICE and other agencies were required to follow. They’ve changed that now to 47 days, no coincidence that they chose that number. And that training isn’t even serious. And so, we of course need professional training, background checks, so that we actually know Who’s joining, this… Would-be goon squad in many instances, that has been unleashed. on the American people. So, I think we’re gonna articulate broad categories, but a significant number of specific items, many of which I just detailed, that we believe are absolute necessities before there is a full year funding appropriations bill passed for DHS.
Jen Rubin
Are there Republicans there who, maybe not for moral reasons or policy reasons, but for political survival, might actually join you? It’s not clear that the House Speaker is, really the speaker of anything right now, but what about individual members?
Leader Jeffries
Yeah, I think that what we’ve seen repeatedly, and we’ve seen this on the Epstein file, where we had a successful Democratic-led, along with Congressman Massey, discharge petition. To compel an up-or-down vote on legislation to require the Trump administration to release the Epstein files. Millions of documents have been released, it’s inadequate, there’s still millions more that they’re hiding, but we were successfully able to force that issue into the public domain and actually get Donald Trump to sign a bill into law, we were able to successfully, force an up-or-down vote on a repeal in the House of Donald Trump’s executive order, where he wiped away collective bargaining rights for more than a million federal employees. 20 Republicans joined us in that effort, in the House of Representatives. That was, late last year.
And then, of course, early in January, we were successful in a discharge petition, the third one in a row, where we compelled the vote on a straightforward 3-year extension of the Affordable Care Act tax credits, and 17 Republicans joined us in getting that bill over the finish line and sent over to the Senate. So based on that context, we certainly believe That on such a visceral issue, where the American people are appropriately reacting in horror at the violence, brutality, and lawlessness that they’re seeing, that there are good and decent people on the other side of the aisle who know that enough is enough And the administration has gone too far. And if we have to go the discharge route to get some of these things done legislatively, we certainly are prepared to keep all options on the table.
Jen Rubin
Well, what you’re describing is a party that’s acting, if not by numerically, at least as if it’s the majority, making deals and moving ahead on legislation. Let me end on the Epstein files. Not only, as you point out, Mr. Leader, were there millions of documents that have not been released, but what they did release were names of the victims, pictures. very salacious pictures of, the victims. Do you believe this is intentional? Is this incompetence? What can the House do about this?
Leader Jeffries
Yeah, I think, you know, there’s been an appropriately adverse reaction by the brave and courageous and patriotic survivors to what’s been done. Both in terms of Names that have been redacted and admitted, presumably to try to hide… Some people who are privileged or connected to this administration in ways that are clearly not appropriate, while at the same time not doing everything they can to protect the survivors, which was built into the legislation.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Leader Jeffries
And I think, you know, part of our view is, and we’ll push this envelope as needed, that the Department of Justice needs to be held in contempt for violating a law that was passed on a strongly bipartisan basis and signed by the president himself. and are now intentionally flouting that law, presumably to protect people. And the American people deserve to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and as the survivors have called for, we want full transparency, so there can be full accountability. So we’re gonna explore all of the tools that are available, to us in the minority, hopefully finding some Republicans in good faith, like Thomas Massey, who has gone out on a limb here in a very significant way, and that he can find a few of his colleagues on the other side of the aisle on this issue, which we know, the American people view as one of justice and truth and fairness. And if powerful people can hide… Or be protected By forces within the government, then it’s gonna further breach the trust that we need, in a country that is anchored in the rule of law.
Jen Rubin
Well, Mr. Leader, it has been a remarkable shift in public opinion and the posture of the parties in just a year, in large part, frankly, due to the House leadership. And, I think Americans are encouraged, optimistic, that they are, in fact, going to get their democracy back. I hope you are as well. And we will look forward to following you, your caucus, and hopefully the restoration of the first branch of government, which is the Congress. So thank you so much for joining us, we really appreciate it.
Leader Jeffries
Well, I appreciate it, and we’re gonna do everything we can to restore that Article 1 branch of government, as we like to say, first amongst equals, and of course, to do all we can to protect the integrity of the free and Fair Press, the Fourth Estate, which we know has also been under assault, and as Thomas Jefferson has said, of course, plays such an important role in our democracy, so we appreciate what you do and what you represent, and will continue to stand up for the First Amendment in that regard as well.
Jen Rubin
Thanks so much, Mr. Leader. It’s a pleasure.
