'More is more': Hakeem Jeffries pushes Democrats to flood the zone in opposition to Trump

NBC News

2 days ago

WASHINGTON — In the chaotic opening weeks of President Donald Trump 's second administration, Democrats debated whether to push back on every norm-shattering executive action, or pick and choose their spots and hope Trump would prove to be his own worst enemy.
That debate has been settled, with Democrats aggressively taking on Trump in the courts, in the streets and on social media.
At the center of that messaging strategy is House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., who privately has been urging his members to be more visible in their districts and on digital media, and has stepped up his own visibility in recent weeks.
Rather than his regular, once-a-week news conference in the Capitol, Jeffries now holds as many as three press briefings with reporters each week in Washington. He is also making weekly appearances on popular podcasts outside the traditional political media circuit, including those hosted by Stephen A. Smith, Tony Kornheiser, Jon Stewart, Katie Couric and Scott Galloway.
Marking the opening months of the Trump administration, Jeffries delivered a scathing 30-minute rebuke of Trump's '100 days of chaos, 100 days of cruelty and 100 days of corrupt behavior.' He also joined Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., for a 12-hour sit-in on the Capitol steps as they protested Medicaid cuts in Trump's 'big, beautiful bill.'
'We are in a 'more is more' environment. These aren't ordinary times, and they require an extraordinary response,' Jeffries said in a phone interview with NBC News on Tuesday, one of roughly two dozen digitalmedia interviews he has participated in since February.
'House Democrats are rising to the occasion to meet the moment,' he said, 'but more from all of us will continue to be required until we can definitively end this national nightmare that Donald Trump and House Republicans are visiting on the American people.'
After suffering a bruising defeat in the last presidential election and still years out from the next one, Democrats are without a clear national leader. And the party's base has displayed a hunger for a new and younger generation of voices to take charge.
That has opened the door for Jeffries, 54, to assume an even bigger role in the party, even as he is still coming into national prominence and — less than three years removed from succeeding Nancy Pelosi as House Democrats' leader — not yet a household name.
The flood-the-zone strategy is a marked change for a politician with a reputation for being cautious and calculated. But if that game plan pays off and Democrats manage to win control of the House in next year's midterm elections, Jeffries would be the favorite to become speaker — and the party's most powerful member in Washington.
'Hakeem Jeffries gets it. As he says, we're in an environment where more is more. We need to be flooding the zone. And not only is he doing that, he's encouraging every member of Congress to do that,' Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., an influential progressive in the party, told NBC News in an interview.
'He's meeting the moment,' Khanna added, 'and that's why I say he's, right now, the leader of the Democratic Party.'
Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., also praised Jeffries, saying that 'he is out there as much as he possibly can be, while still running a caucus and trying to block horrible legislation that this administration is putting forward.'
Is Democrats' message breaking through?
Jeffries' more aggressive approach comes as the Democratic base has demanded party leaders do more to oppose Trump amid federal layoffs, mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and scores of executive actions that have tested the balance of powers.
But it's not clear to what degree Democrats' throw-everything-at-the-wall strategy is breaking through in a cacophonous political environment — one almost exclusively driven and dominated by Trump. And there are still lingering questions about whether the party's current crop of leaders and their tactics are meeting the moment.
'The strategy of quarter one and quarter two was 'let Trump implode.' But you don't win elections, saying how bad that guy is — you have to win on substance,' said one Democratic strategist, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
Still, Jeffries has notched some key symbolic wins. In March, Jeffries unified House Democrats against a Republican-led government funding bill that included a hike to military spending and cuts to domestic spending. Only a single Democrat voted yes. By comparison, Jeffries' counterpart in the Senate, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., faced significant blowback when he and a band of Democrats in the chamber allowed the bill to pass to avert a shutdown.
As House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., tried to push through the sweeping domestic policy package before Memorial Day, Jeffries and the Democrats threw up roadblocks to make it as politically painful as possible for Republicans. More than 100 Democrats testified against the Trump bill in the Rules Committee, dragging out the meeting for nearly 22 hours and delaying the process. As they stalled, Jeffries' leadership team urged members to record videos and join livestreams to speak out against the bill, which could boot millions of Americans from Medicaid rolls and off food stamps.
Jeffries said he believes Democrats' messaging is breaking through, pointing to polls showing that most Americans disapprove of the way Trump is handling the presidency and a special election victory in Wisconsin in April that allowed liberals to hold their majority on the state Supreme Court.
If 'Democrats as a party are truly on the run,' Jeffries said, 'then we'd be losing special elections, not winning them in the way that we are, including most decisively in Wisconsin.'
An affirmative agenda
In the wake of Trump's inauguration in January, some Democrats privately grumbled that perhaps Jeffries wasn't the right man for the job. Some pined for Pelosi, who famously clashed with Trump during his first term, lecturing the president in a 2019 White House meeting and ripping up a copy of his State of the Union speech the next year.
While not pointing fingers at Jeffries, other Democrats have said the party needs to clearly state what it is for — not just say it's against Trump.
'Voters are turned off by Trump, but they want to know Democrats' affirmative agenda as well,' one Democratic official said.
But few Democrats have chosen to directly challenge Jeffries. Ashley Etienne, who served as a top adviser to both Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris, has been the exception. Etienne, appearing on a Politico podcast last month, said Trump has given Democrats a tremendous political gift and that Jeffries and other leaders were 'squandering' it. She faulted him for failing to coordinate with outside groups and other elected officials around the country.
'If you don't have coordination, you've just got words on a paper that you're calling talking points,' Etienne told Politico. 'It's meaningless. And I think that's where we are right now.'
Jeffries said in his 100-day address that Democrats in the coming months would lay out a 'vision for this country's future that isn't about Donald Trump.' But on Tuesday, he declined to offer any details. Internal discussions on that blueprint are getting underway now, following the House's passage of the massive bill for Trump's agenda.
'There are a variety of issues that distinguish Democrats from Republicans. And as we emerge from the debate around the one big, ugly bill that Donald Trump and his sycophants in Congress are trying to jam down the throat of the American people,' Jeffries said Tuesday, 'we will have the opportunity to draw a clear contrast between our values-based vision for making life better for all Americans and the Republican vision that is designed to benefit their billionaire donors like Elon Musk.'
And a Jeffries aide pushed back on Etienne, saying their office holds a weekly meeting with between 60 and 100 surrogates, advocates and grassroots activists, in addition to pushing out regular talking points. On Sunday, Schumer said he and Jeffries had spoken 'about ways our caucuses can fight back together' against the Trump package as the Senate considers it.
In March, leaders, working closely with House Democrats' messaging arm, also set up space in the Capitol for social media influencers and advocates to rebut a speech Trump gave to a joint session of Congress.
'We need to be messaging on all mediums, for people to see what we're about,' said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., a 35-year-old progressive star.
'As a millennial, I obviously lean on social media. I tend to participate in the mediums that I myself use,' she continued. 'I don't think that's necessarily about what is best for everybody. … I think it makes us better messengers when we are engaging on the platforms that we use ourselves.'
Dean, the Pennsylvania congresswoman who served as one of the Democratic prosecutors in Trump's second impeachment trial, said each lawmaker is figuring out their own unique way to fight back against Trump. A member of the House Judiciary Committee, Dean has held seven town halls this year and said she has focused her messaging on the president's potential ethics violations, including accepting a $400 million jet from Qatar.
'The way I've said it, instead of more is more, is we can't normalize any of this stuff. … This is not normal. I don't want anybody to think that what is going on here is actually normal,' Dean said in an interview. 'The American people are really busy, but they have to be aware of these threats.'