As Trump and the Republicans try to take stock of their midterm losses, Hakeem Jeffries is asking House Democrats to elect him speaker. His proposed first 100 days include reversing the Medicaid cuts, restoring food-assistance funding, extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits, ending Trump’s tariffs, stopping the Iran war and banning members of Congress from trading stocks. As of late Wednesday, Jeffries said he hadn’t spoken with Trump or House Republican leaders since the election.
The question is how much Democrats were elected because voters believe in Democratic leadership and how much they were elected because voters wanted a check on the Trump administration. If you listen to Jeffries, what Democrats essentially want to do is restore the funding that was removed to pay for the Big Beautiful Bill’s tax cuts.
That gets back to the problem Democrats have whenever they talk about affordability and why people don’t tend to trust them on the economy. It’s not that they’re proposing tax increases here. They want to restore cuts that were made to fund tax cuts. Whether voters read that distinction into it, we don’t know. Democrats will have a large enough majority to move what they want through the House. The question is whether any of it gets signed, beginning with the December 11 government-funding deadline.
On the other side of the aisle, Mike Johnson won’t seek the House Republican leadership job in the next Congress. Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan are competing to lead Republicans in the minority after both unsuccessfully pursued the speakership in 2023, before Johnson emerged as the compromise choice. Austin Pfluger is also challenging Tom Emmer for whip as Republicans prepare for their November 10 leadership election.
There’s jockeying on the Senate side too. Chuck Schumer appears to have the votes to remain leader, but Elizabeth Warren may try to move into the number-three position and become whip. Other Democratic senators could use the moment to extract guarantees from Schumer, including whether he’ll let them eliminate the filibuster. If Hawaii and Mississippi hold as they currently stand, Democrats would only need four Republicans to reach 60 votes.
Finally, the first — but almost certainly not the last — Trump administration official has resigned. Harmeet Dhillon is leaving the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, saying she made the decision weeks ago but was asked by the White House to wait until after the midterms. She says she wasn’t pushed out and wants to return to private practice. There are also rumors around Marco Rubio. I’ve long said he wasn’t leaving the State Department until there was an American flag flying over Havana, but maybe the Iran war has dragged on as far as it’s going to and he no longer has the juice to do anything in Cuba. We’ll wait and see.
Chapters
00:00:00 - Intro
00:01:55 - Interview with Kirk Bado
00:26:10 - Update
00:27:18 - GOP Leadership
00:28:59 - Democrats
00:30:18 - Vance
00:31:56 - Interview with Kirk Bado, con’t
00:58:46 - Wrap-up
