Jeffries is an inveterate texter and typically responds to messages within an hour. “Most people, if you ask them, ‘Do you have a good relationship with Hakeem?,’ they’d say, ‘Yeah, I have a great relationship with Hakeem,’ ” Josh Gottheimer, a Democratic House member from New Jersey, said. “Everybody feels like they’re in the inner circle.” Jeffries told me, “The most important words that I can say to any member of Congress on any given issue are ‘What do you think?’ ”
Not every House Democrat is a fan of this approach. “He’s got to listen to people, but then he’s got to say, ‘This is what we should be doing,’ ” one Democratic member told me. Another said, “I think he views his role as entirely oriented around member management, and everything is viewed through the lens of keeping the different caucuses happy with him. I don’t think he’s really here to be a leader. I think he’s here to become Speaker.”
Multiple members pointed to an episode from last September, after the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Mike Johnson introduced a ceremonial measure that hailed Kirk as a “courageous American patriot” and called upon “all Americans—regardless of race, party affiliation, or creed—to reject political violence.” But the resolution also described Kirk—who had claimed that “prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people” and that “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America”—as someone who was known for “engaging in respectful, civil discourse” and “always seeking to elevate truth, foster understanding, and strengthen the Republic.”
Jeffries believed that the resolution was designed as a trap for so-called frontline Democrats—two dozen or so vulnerable incumbents who represent purple or red districts. In a caucus meeting a few hours before the measure came to the floor, Jeffries and his leadership team announced that they would vote for the resolution, to provide cover for the frontliners, but that every member should feel free to “vote their conscience.”
In the end, ninety-five Democrats voted for the Kirk resolution. The majority of Democrats who opposed it—fifty-eight in total—belonged to the Congressional Black Caucus. As the group explained in a statement after the vote, its members considered the measure “an attempt to legitimize Kirk’s worldview—a worldview that includes ideas many Americans find racist, harmful, and fundamentally un-American.” White progressive Democrats who voted for the resolution felt blindsided by the C.B.C.’s opposition; C.B.C. members felt that Jeffries and his leadership team, by failing to provide specific voting instructions, had hung them out to dry. “They need to say, ‘We understand that it’s a gotcha resolution, so there’s no right answer, but here’s the answer,’ ” one Democrat told me.
In a subsequent ninety-minute Zoom call, C.B.C. members vented their frustrations to Jeffries; at least one of them was openly crying. “It became very toxic, volatile, and emotional,” Joyce Beatty, a Democrat from Ohio and a former C.B.C. chair, said. But, she went on, the caucus’s members ultimately felt that Jeffries had understood their concerns: “It takes a stronger and greater leader that can call all those people back together and work through the tears and the emotion and say, ‘I handled it wrong.’ ”
Jeffries’s “light touch,” as several members described his leadership style, has also had some success. On February 26th, two days before Trump launched Operation Epic Fury, a joint assault with Israel on Iran, Jeffries announced that he planned to force a vote on a war-powers resolution that would prohibit further military force against the Islamic Republic without congressional approval. The onset of hostilities was enough to persuade around a hundred and eighty Democrats to support the measure. But there were still as many as thirty Democrats, many of them staunch supporters of Israel, who were not yet on board. On March 3rd, Jeffries invited several of the holdouts, including Gottheimer, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, of Florida, and Greg Landsman, of Ohio, to his office for a meeting. Gottheimer and Wasserman Schultz explained why they were still undecided; Landsman laid out his opposition to the resolution. Jeffries argued that, whatever members thought of Israel, or even of Iran, this was a vote for Congress’s constitutional checks on the President. He later told me, “My view is that the best possible communication with people is to hear their thoughts, concerns, and ideas, if they’re in a different place initially. And then just to make the case.”
The war-powers resolution was ultimately defeated, but only four Democrats, including Landsman, voted against it. Jeffries told me that it was probably his “most aggressive whip effort” as leader. I mentioned that Gottheimer—who, along with Wasserman Schultz, ended up supporting the measure—had said he didn’t feel like he’d been whipped especially hard. (“I walked away feeling heard, not pressured, if that makes sense,” Gottheimer told me.) Jeffries responded, “And how did he vote?”
