House Democrats keep Jeffries, top leadership team in place

House Democrats voted Tuesday to keep their top leadership team in place, voicing overwhelming confidence in Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and his top deputies exactly two weeks after a disappointing Election Day relegated them to the minority for another two years.

In a closed-door meeting in the Capitol basement, rank-and-file Democrats tapped Jeffries to remain the House minority leader, while voting to keep Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) as Democratic whip, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) as caucus chair and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) as the vice chair. They also voted in Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) as assistant Democratic leader.

The results were no surprise. All four leaders had risen to the top of the party in 2023, after former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her top deputies — Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) — stepped out of power after almost two decades together at the helm. The shift marked a generational realignment that many in the caucus had been clamoring for, and the younger leaders are all popular figures who were expected to keep their leadership posts in the 119th Congress. None of them faced a challenger.

In the only real contested race for leadership spots, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) fended off a challenge from Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) to head the Democrats’ messaging arm in the next Congress. The challenge had stirred some controversy within the Caucus because Crockett is just in her first term, and seeking leadership spots with such little experience is practically unheard of in a Caucus that puts a premium on seniority. Dingell’s victory suggests that sentiment remains, despite the recent influx of a younger generation of lawmakers eager to rise quickly through the ranks.

If the roster was no surprise, however, the positions they'll occupy were a disappointment. Heading into the Nov. 5 elections, Democrats had high hopes of flipping the lower chamber after two years without the gavel — a scenario that would have put Jeffries, 54, in line to become the first Black Speaker in U.S. history.

Instead, Republicans — fueled by President-elect Trump's commanding victory over Vice President Harris — clung to power in the lower chamber, repelling tough challenges in a number of battleground districts while picking off several incumbent Democrats to keep their razor-thin majority in the next Congress.

As of Tuesday, Republicans controlled 220 seats in the chamber, while Democrats had secured 213, according to Decision Desk HQ. Two seats remain too close to call in California, where GOP Reps. Michelle Steel and John Duarte are fighting neck-and-neck races for reelection.

The results mean that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and his leadership team again will have little room for GOP defections as they race to move Trump's ambitious legislative agenda in the next Congress. They also put Democrats in striking distance of retaking the House in 2026, a midterm cycle when the party that controls the White House tends to struggle on the congressional ballot.

In the meantime, however, the Democrats will face the uphill climb.

Although Jeffries and his team have two years of experience under their belts, the next two years will pose a much greater challenge with Trump — not President Biden — in the White House, and GOP leaders also controlling the Senate, where Democrats have reigned over the past four years.

Jeffries is not expected to have trouble uniting his Democratic caucus against Trump and his controversial agenda, which includes plans for mass deportations of immigrants lacking permanent legal status and an expansion of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. But from the minority, they'll have little power to block legislation brought to the floor by Johnson and the majority Republicans.

The Democrats' minority status also leaves them powerless, on the committee level, to investigate the incoming Trump administration with the teeth of subpoenas. And it means Trump almost certainly will not face any impeachment efforts over the next two years, when the House is controlled by a Speaker who rose to power largely through demonstrations of loyalty to Trump.

Indeed, what little leverage the Democrats retain will rely heavily on the math in the Senate, where the Republicans will control 53 seats next year — seven short of the 60 needed to sidestep a Democratic filibuster. Their influence will also lean heavily on the prospect that Johnson, who struggled fabulously to unite his feuding GOP conference in the current Congress, will have the same troubles in the next.

Jeffries, since Election Day, has characterized the Democrats' performance as "bitterly disappointing." But while Democrats had a rough election cycle, generally — losing the White House and Senate while failing to flip the House — they vastly outperformed Harris in the lower chamber, where all but a handful of the 31 Democratic "front-liners" won reelection.

The performance has largely insulated Jeffries and his leadership team from the same scrutiny facing Biden, Harris and other Democratic leaders as the party scrambles to decipher what went wrong — and who's to blame — as they head anxiously into Trump's second term.

Jeffries, one of Trump's fiercest critics, is also offering an olive branch to the incoming president. In his first press conference since the Democrats' election losses, Jeffries made clear that he's ready to work with Republicans “to find bipartisan common ground whenever and wherever possible.”

But he also offered a glaring caveat, warning that Democrats will also “always push back whenever necessary against far-right extremism that will hurt the American people.” That, he said, means fighting against any GOP plans to cut funding for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and ObamaCare while battling to protect women’s reproductive rights.

“We will continue to exercise common sense, we will always try to find common ground, but we will also, also vigorously defend the common good,” he said.

Updated at 11:34 a.m.