By Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrat Hakeem Jeffries could be poised to wield more power than a minority leader typically enjoys in the U.S. House of Representatives, with President-elect Donald Trump’s fractious Republicans holding a thin majority.
Over the past two years of Republican control, Jeffries has kept some grip on power. Republican Speaker Mike Johnson has turned to him more than a dozen times to provide Democratic votes to pass critical legislation, including in May when Jeffries helped Johnson hold off an effort by hardline Republicans to end his speakership.
Democratic unity is expected to be on full display on Friday when the new 219-215 Republican-controlled chamber votes on whether to keep Johnson in the speaker’s chair. Republicans required multiple rounds of voting in January 2023 to elect former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and again in October of that year to pick Johnson once they ousted McCarthy.
Throughout those episodes, the minority Democrats voted again and again for Jeffries, a 54-year-old New Yorker, to lead them.
“I think we have a lot more leverage there than we had” in 2017, said Democratic Representative Don Beyer in an interview last month. That year marked the start of Trump’s first term in office, when his Republicans also controlled the House, but by a 40-seat margin.
To be sure, Jeffries’ powers, and those of Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, will be limited. Republicans will try to pass much of Trump’s legislative agenda on party-line votes, bypassing Senate rules that require 60 of the 100 members to agree on most legislation, as Democrats did during President Joe Biden’s first two years in office.
In the House, Jeffries’ powers mainly will be limited to exploiting divisions among Republicans that necessitate Democratic votes to pass legislation.
It is a tactic Jeffries deployed more than a dozen times since Republicans took control of the House in January 2023 on bills ranging from government funding to an $895 billion bill authorizing military programs and emergency aid for Ukraine’s war effort against Russia.
The upcoming battle over Trump’s push to renew expiring tax cuts, which were enacted in 2017 and aimed mainly at corporations and the wealthy, gives Democrats hope that Jeffries can win concessions. These include an expanded child tax credit for low-income people and repeal of a cap on deductions for state and local taxes.
“We will work to find bipartisan common ground in a manner consistent with our values but at the same time push back whenever necessary against far-right extremism that will hurt the American people,” Jeffries told reporters following November’s elections.
He and his lieutenants have sketched out additional areas of possible bipartisan compromise, which Jeffries said includes protecting people brought to the United States illegally when they were children from deportation, revamping U.S. asylum law and updating the visa system for immigrant farm workers.
‘CAN’T BE STEAMROLLED’
What remains to be seen is whether Jeffries will manage to forge a working relationship with Trump. The two New York City natives collaborated during Trump’s 2017-2021 term on criminal justice reforms. But since then, Washington partisanship has only deepened and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, had a contentious relationship with Trump.
Last month, when Trump tried to force passage of a controversial debt limit increase as part of a retooled stopgap funding bill, Democrats balked and were joined by about three dozen disgruntled Republicans.
“We showed that we can’t be steamrolled,” veteran Democratic Representative Debbie Dingell said.
The chaos raised questions over whether Trump had needlessly expended post-election capital before his presidency had even begun and now might have to lower his sights.
“I don’t think so. He’s still strong. People still love him back home. That’s all that really matters,” Republican Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee told reporters.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan; editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)
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