President Donald Trump said after Tuesday’s midterm drubbing he wants to “work with” Democrats. Now Hakeem Jeffries has to decide if his party will play ball.
As he prepares to lead a massive House Democratic majority, perhaps the presumptive speaker's toughest call will be how to handle Trump. After years of dismissing and denigrating the president, Jeffries has to weigh varying opinions inside his caucus: Some, including incoming red-district freshmen, want to attempt collaboration, while plenty of others want total war.
Trump is already testing Democrats by appointing Stephen Miller, one of their top administration boogeymen, as his new White House chief of staff — prompting a characteristically fierce reply from Jeffries denouncing Miller as a “dangerous xenophobe and reckless extremist” whose “presence in government should be eradicated like a malignant tumor.”
But members close to Jeffries acknowledge he might soon have to strike a different tone as Democrats pledge to make good on their campaign promises to lower costs ahead of 2028 — or at least be seen trying.
Rep. Greg Meeks of New York, a longtime confidant of the Democratic leader, said in an Election Day interview that Jeffries has “always been willing to sit down and talk and to negotiate.”
“It has been the other side that has rejected us and called names … tweeting nasty things and cussing at folks and not being an individual who can respect the office of the presidency,” he continued. “Hakeem Jeffries will be that individual.”
Meeks is not alone in suggesting Jeffries could enter dealmaker mode. It is one of two potential avenues House Democrats are pitching for how he should navigate Trump.
The other, preferred by many progressives, involves Jeffries leading House Democrats in passing bills without compromising with the White House, then daring the president to veto them — matching the aggressive plan by Jeffries and fellow Democrats to use their new subpoena powers to investigate Trump, his administration and his allies.
In the wake of Democrats’ massive midterm victory — which could secure them as many as 260 seats — Jeffries has previewed elements of both strategies.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Jeffries said Democrats have “consistently made the point that we are ready, willing, and able to find bipartisan common ground with the other side of the aisle as long as we can bring about meaningful change on the issues that matter, and that begins with decisively addressing the affordability crisis.”
But that doesn’t mean there has been proactive outreach: Jeffries had not spoken with Trump as of Sunday morning, he said in an ABC News interview.
A White House spokesperson, Lauren Bis, said Trump is “willing to work with anyone to continue delivering victories for hardworking Americans” but that if “Democrats choose to pursue sham investigations and radical left policies, they are choosing to work against the American people.”
Jeffries tangled with Trump repeatedly as minority leader, with the two frequently trading barbs on social media.
During last year’s funding fight, Jeffries showed his willingness to wage war with the administration by refusing to deliver Democratic votes to fund the government without extensions of Affordable Care Act tax credits or an end to mass deportation funding. At one point, Trump posted a video depicting Jeffries in a sombrero — suggesting he was more interested in protecting undocumented Latino immigrants than Americans. Jeffries called the post “racist” and “bigoted.”
Trump has a much less familiar personal relationship with Jeffries than with Sen. Chuck Schumer — Jeffries’ Senate counterpart as Democratic leader and fellow New Yorker.
“I’ve seen Donald Trump work with his opponents. He will find something that he can do, something that he agrees with them on,” said Michael Caputo, a longtime Trump adviser who added that the president “will surprise people with the way he’s going to try to work positively in the present environment.”
But Friday’s move to elevate Miller sent another message — that Trump has no plans to back off that aggressive agenda that Democrats find toxic, to say nothing of his dramatic expansions of executive power to sidestep opposition in Congress.
Jeffries faces inevitable standoffs with the administration over government spending deadlines — including a fight as soon as Dec. 11 over blocking Iran war funding. He will also have to head off a U.S. debt default, predicted to occur some time between next summer and early 2028.
During Nancy Pelosi’s speakership, the House and the Trump administration did work out some agreements, most notably to raise the debt ceiling in July 2019. But deals were otherwise scarce. In 2019, the House passed about 400 bills that died in the Republican-controlled Senate or at the president’s desk.
Jeffries will have a hefty Senate majority to work with, but a former Democratic aide from that period, who like others in this story was granted anonymity to speak candidly, called the dynamic between a Democratic speaker and Trump “a very challenging, nuanced line to walk,” and post-election comments from lawmakers underscored that challenge.
“We need to compromise, but we're not going to compromise our values,” Rep. Greg Stanton of Arizona, a senior member of the centrist New Democrat Coalition, said in an interview last week. “But we are going to have to reach agreement and meet halfway in order to get things done.”
That’s a sentiment shared by several incoming members who won historically Republican districts and now want to deliver affordability wins to campaign on in 2028. Asked about how House Democrats should navigate the Trump relationship, Rep.-elect Rebecca Cooke of Wisconsin emphasized a need for collaboration on improving people’s livelihoods.
“People are really struggling here and hanging on by a thread, and I think I really worked to build a broad coalition within my candidacy and my campaign, uniting people of all political stripes to vote for me,” she said in a Thursday interview.
But Democrats have shown there is a limit to their appetite for engagement with Trumpworld.
After the New York Times disclosed over the summer that Jeffries accepted a meeting with Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to discuss affordability issues, many Democrats were surprised and upset.
But the cozy-up approach has worked for at least one prominent Democratic leader, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has seemingly charmed the president — even while criticizing his administration — and says he will work with Trump to lower costs.
But several progressives are suggesting a different vision of the relationship with Trump and are reluctant to compromise on their ambitious legislative agenda to accommodate the president or other Republicans.
Hard-left Rep.-elect William Lawrence of Michigan said in an interview, “We’ll have to put the ball in the president’s court to see what he does.”
“We should be putting bills on his desk to lower costs and to end the war,” he said. “And I hope that he will sign those bills, but we should push him to do so and make clear that Democrats are here to legislate on behalf of the American people and advance popular policies.”
The likely next head of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Troy Carter of Louisiana, proposed a similar approach: “We're going to put things on his desk, and we're going to call him out, and we're going to invite the American people to watch,” he said in a post-election interview. “Sign it or veto it, Mr. President. Show the American people where you really stand.”
But other Democrats say they can only game out their strategy so far. As the Miller pick — and the furious Democratic reaction to it — underscored, Trump’s posture toward governing will influence how Jeffries and his party respond.
“That depends on the president, right?” Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado said Wednesday when asked in an interview about navigating Trump. “We have always said that our job is to protect America, to make Americans' lives better, and that we will always have a discussion about how to do that if they're willing to do it. They're the ones that shut the door.”
Lisa Kashinsky, Megan Messerly, Calen Razor and Kelsey Brugger contributed to this report.
