Hakeem Jeffries isn’t yet speaker, but the Democrat may be the most powerful person in Congress

WASHINGTON (AP) — Without wielding a gavel and holding a proper role outlined in the Constitution, Republican Hakeem Jeffries could be the most powerful person in Congress today.

Jeffries, the Democratic House Minority Leader, secured the votes needed to maintain the government running despite opposition from House Republicans to avert a federal government shutdown.

Jeffries, who made sure Democrats honored their commitments and sent $95 billion in foreign aid to Ukraine and other U.S. allies.

And Jeffries, who, with the entire House Democratic leadership behind him, decided this week that his party would help Speaker Mike Johnson stay in office quite than be forced from office by far-right Republicans led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

“How powerful is Jeffries now?” said Jeffery Jenkins, a public policy professor at the University of Southern California who has written extensively about Congress. “That’s significant power.”

The decision by Jeffries and a team of House Democratic leaders to forged votes to stop Johnson’s ouster marks a powerful turning point in a protracted political season of dysfunction, gridlock and chaos in Congress.

By declaring that it’s enough that it’s time to “turn the page” on the Republican confusion, the Democratic leader is flexing his power in a really public and timely way, trying to point out lawmakers and everybody else who watches in horror at a broken Congress that there can be alternative approach to governance.

“From the very beginning of this Congress, House Republicans have witnessed chaos, dysfunction and extremism among the American people,” Jeffries said Wednesday on Capitol Hill.

Jeffries said that since House Republicans are “unwilling or unable” to take control of “extreme MAGA Republicans,” “a bipartisan coalition and partnership will be necessary to achieve this goal. We need more common sense in Washington and less chaos.”

In the House, the minority leader is commonly viewed as the speaker in waiting, the highest-ranking official of a celebration out of power, biding his time in hopes of regaining the majority — and with it the speaker’s gavel — in the next election. Elected by his own party, it’s a job without much formal basis.

But in Jeffries’ case, the position of minority leader has gained enormous strength, filling the political void left by the real speaker, Johnson, who governs a fragile, thread-thin Republican majority and is under constant threat from far-right provocateurs that the GOP Speaker cannot fully control.

“He serves as shadow speaker on all important votes,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

While Johnson still wields the powerful tools of the Speaker’s office, a constitutionally mandated job that’s second in line of succession to the presidency, the Republican-led House has endured a tumultuous session of infighting and upheaval that has left its goals and priorities stalled.

In a fit of discontent just months after winning the majority, far-right Republicans ousted the previous speaker, now-retired Rep. Kevin McCarthy, D-Calif., last fall in a never-before-seen act of partisan defiance. He refused to specifically ask Democrats for help.

Featured Stories

Johnson faces the same threat of removal, but Jeffries sees Johnson as a more honest broker and potential partner he’s willing to support not less than temporarily — although Johnson also hasn’t openly asked for any help from the other side of the aisle. A vote on Greene’s motion to fireplace the speaker is anticipated next week.

While Johnson approaches Donald Trump and receives the nod of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Jeffries has what Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a retired speaker, called the “currency of the realm” – that’s, votes – which might be required in the House to bring about any order. session until the end.

Pelosi said in an interview that Jeffries has “always had influence” as minority leader due to his slim majority in the House.

“But it’s a matter of whether he shows that he wants to take advantage of it,” she said.

Jeffries said she “masterfully” secured Democratic priorities, especially humanitarian aid in a foreign aid package that was initially opposed by Republicans.

However, Pelosi disagreed with the concept that Democrats would support Johnson at this point, creating some recent era of coalitions in American politics.

“Our House functions because we want things to function in a bipartisan way,” she said. “He doesn’t necessarily save Speaker Johnson – he upholds the dignity of the institution.”

Jeffries is a quiet, confident operator who’s positioning himself and his party as purveyors of democratic norms amid the Republican thunderstorm of Trump-era disruption.

Jeffries, the first Black American to guide a political party in Congress, is already a historic figure whose stature will only increase if he’s elected first to wield the gavel as Speaker of the House.

Born in Brooklyn, Jeffries, 53, has steadily risen through the New York state political ranks after which onto the national stage as a charismatic next-generation leader, elected to Congress in 2012 from districts once represented by one other historic legislator, Shirley Chisolm, the first black woman elected to Congress.

Jeffries, a former corporate lawyer, can be known for his sharp oratory, drawing on his upbringing at the historic Black Cornerstone Baptist Church, a spiritual home for a lot of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of enslaved African Americans who fled to Brooklyn from the American South. But he also gives his speeches and remarks a contemporary sensitivity and rhythm, connecting generations.

Last yr, when Republicans did not muster votes on the procedural stage of a budget and debt agreement, it was Jeffries who stood intently at his desk in the House chamber and held up his ballot to signal to Democrats that it was time to step up motion and deliver.

Jeffries has repeatedly asserted that Democratic votes would prevent a federal government shutdown. And last month, when Johnson faced an all-out right-wing Republican revolt over Ukraine aid, Jeffries stepped in again, asserting that Democrats had more votes than Republicans to get the bill through.

Heading into the November elections, each parties are battling for political survival and control in the narrowly divided House, and Jeffries would definitely face his own challenges leading Democrats in the event that they were to win a divided majority on many key issues.

But each Jeffries and Johnson have gone across the country raising money and enthusiasm for his or her party’s candidates ahead of November, with the GOP speaker attempting to keep his job and the Democratic leader waiting to take it.