House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday rejected the idea that voters delivered an Election Day mandate to Donald Trump and the Republicans, arguing that the GOP’s razor-thin majority in the House means that nothing will get done in Washington without Democratic support.
“Despite the claims of some of my Republican colleagues, who have spent a lot of time over the last two weeks talking about some big, massive mandate — I’m looking for it,” Jeffries said during a press briefing in the Capitol.
The comments were a shot at the Republicans who, after winning control of the House, Senate and White House in the next Congress, have asserted broad powers to pursue a starkly conservative policy agenda.
That includes Trump, who used his victory speech on election night to claim “an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who argued Tuesday that voters gave Trump the authority to seat his preferred Cabinet picks — regardless of any controversy swirling around them.
“President Trump is looking for persons who will shake up the status quo, and we got a mandate in this election cycle to do that,” Johnson told reporters in the Capitol. “The status quo is not working for the American people. And so these are persons who will go in and bring real reform — significant reform — to the agencies that they lead.”
Jeffries, who was elected on Tuesday to lead House Democrats again in the next Congress, is vowing to work with the incoming administration on areas of shared interest, while also promising a fight if Republicans seek to slash the Democrats’ sacred cows, including abortion rights and benefits under Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and ObamaCare.
“We will push back against far-right extremism whenever necessary,” Jeffries said.
House Democrats will likely have some leverage in those coming policy fights. While Republicans will control all levers of power in Washington next year, GOP leaders have struggled repeatedly to unite their feuding troops to pass even the most fundamental bills, like funding the federal government.
Those difficulties are expected to continue in the next Congress, even with an ally in the White House, as GOP leaders seek to move Trump’s ambitious — and costly — legislative agenda in the face of expected resistance from conservative deficit hawks. While Republicans kept House control in this month’s elections, their majority will be razor thin, just as it was throughout the current Congress. And the Senate filibuster ensures that Democrats, while relegated to the minority in the next Congress, will also maintain significant influence over most bills that move through the upper chamber.
That combination, Jeffries said Tuesday, means Democrats will have plenty of legislative sway in the next Congress — and belies the GOP’s claims to a mandate.
“The question about this notion of some mandate to make massive far-right extreme policy changes — it doesn’t exist. It doesn’t exist,” Jeffries said.
“And so in the new Congress, for anything to happen — particularly as it relates to an enlightened spending agreement, or ensuring that America does not default on our debt and crash the economy and hurt everyday Americans for the first time in our nation’s history — it’s clear House Republicans cannot do it on their own.”
