We Need To Hear From Jeffries

Thursday’s mailbag focused heavily on the question of whether congressional Democrats were prepared for adversarial relations with the Trump administration in a new majority next year.

I argued the outlook was dim, and this reporting from the New York Times, about a secret meeting between House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Jared Kushner, dims it further.

Not only do Democrats seem unprepared for the kinds of escalatory tactics and strategies that will be required to mount proper oversight of a lawless regime, they also seem unprepared to wield legislative power in a way that will trap and expose Donald Trump, opting instead to work collaboratively with Republicans in a manner that will tend to insulate Trump from the political consequences of his malice and incompetence.

These are different realms of Article I power, but they overlap and relate. Strap in, we’re going long on Jeffries’s folly, and what a defensible approach to divided government would look like.

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Jeffries at the very least owes House Democrats and Democratic voters a real readout of his conversation with Kushner.

It is not, as Democratic leadership allies have defensively argued, some kind of masterstroke Jeffries arranged to prove Republicans know they’re headed for defeat in November. If it were, Jeffries would not have tried to keep the meeting secret. And in any case: Tell us something we don’t know! Trump confidants can read polls, too? Wow.

It’s also not, as these same surrogates have argued, analogous to the relationship Zohran Mamdani has forged with Trump himself—including a meeting and photo-op that progressives mostly cheered. Jeffries has met with Trump, too, uncontroversially, and will have to do so regularly as House speaker if Democrats win the midterm elections.

But more to the point:...