The News
The government shutdown is giving Donald Trump and Hakeem Jeffries their first real experiences with each other’s styles — and it’s not painting a pretty picture of what Washington could look like if Democrats take back the House next year.
The House minority leader is more visible than ever as he shepherds his party through a fight that it has framed around health care, not the punishing closure of federal agencies.
Despite pressure from Trump and the GOP, Jeffries has kept his members together so far, and many of them say he’s doing well in his first big test ahead of a midterm election they hope will make him speaker.
That doesn’t mean the president is prepared to take him seriously.
If Trump is at all concerned about the prospect that the onetime manager of his impeachment could try again in 2027, he’s not showing it. After Jeffries’ first face-to-face meeting with Trump last week, the president started amplifying cartoonish AI-generated videos of the New York Democrat wearing a sombrero — while not saying his name in public, no matter how much the lawmaker prods him.
Many Republicans are referring to the funding lapse as the “Schumer Shutdown,” an alliteration that manages to erase Jeffries. One senior White House official said the House Democratic leader “doesn’t even cross our minds at all.”
“If Hakeem was celebrated by the media and even by the Democratic Party as ‘the man,’ Trump would definitely deal with him,” said Steve Bannon, a former Trump aide and key ally. “Trump gravitates to power. It’s ‘coach, put me in the game.’ [Jeffries] can’t get in because he just doesn’t have the stroke.”
Of course, Trump can afford to ignore Jeffries because Republicans control all of Washington, and House Speaker Mike Johnson has become adept at passing funding bills without needing Democratic votes.
Comparing Jeffries with the shutdown performances of Nancy Pelosi, who went so viral storming out of the Trump White House during 2018 talks that her overcoat sold out, also isn’t quite accurate — she wielded the power of the speakership at the time.
But some Trump allies are making the comparison anyway to shade Jeffries.
“The House did its job. He’s truly not a player. It’s easy for him to want to inject himself as one, but he’s not,” one person close to the White House told Semafor when asked if Trump takes him seriously. “Now if Nancy [Pelosi] were here, the answer would be yes. Jeffries is a try-hard.”
Trump has taken a similar approach, claiming that he doesn’t “know who to speak to” about the shutdown because Democrats have “no leadership.” The president on Tuesday name-dropped a host of lawmakers, from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, while omitting Jeffries.
Jeffries’ allies counter that, given a fraction of the time Pelosi had in leadership before she squared off with Trump, the House leader will establish himself as an equally formidable political opponent. One early win: forcing Republicans to talk more about health care costs, in part by challenging their emphasis on immigration.
“Having known and worked with Hakeem, you cross him at your own peril,” Sen. Andy Kim, a New Jersey Democrat who served in the House for six years, told Semafor. “If you underestimate him, it’s to your detriment.”
Jeffries sees this shutdown battle as a significant step toward building fellow Democrats’ trust in his leadership, a person familiar with his thinking said, and he anticipates his future successes atop the caucus will be linked to its outcome.
The person added that fellow House Democrats view him as the reason Senate Democrats have yet to cave on the hard lines they’ve drawn during funding talks — like they did in March.
In the meantime, Jeffries continues to come at Trump, including by challenging him and other Republicans to a debate “with the cameras rolling.”
Know More
Jeffries did manage to get a laugh from Trump during their face-to-face sitdown ahead of the shutdown, according to sources briefed on the meeting, by asking Vice President JD Vance about the “Trump 2028” hats that the president decided to present to the Democratic leaders.
What comes next is no laughing matter, though: Any bipartisan compromise to reopen the government will almost surely require Jeffries to cross either the party’s liberals or moderates.
He’s already facing a smaller-scale version of that test in the form of New York mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist whom Jeffries pointedly has yet to endorse.
Asked by Semafor on Tuesday if he would provide House votes for a bipartisan Senate deal that does not match what he’s pushing for, Jeffries responded: “To the extent that anything emerges in terms of bipartisan discussions amongst Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans, with full visibility involving House Democrats, then we’ll have to evaluate anything that’s presented on the merits.
“But the line in the sand has been clear: It has to decisively address the Republican health care crisis,” he added.
And Trump’s White House appears more than ready to drive a wedge between the two congressional Democratic leaders, who have diverged somewhat in terms of what they’re asking for to support a GOP funding bill.
“Hakeem Jeffries has made his priorities very clear: he will put illegal aliens before hardworking Americans every single time,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told Semafor in a statement.
Both Schumer and Jeffries set the bar high at the outset, saying they want to negotiate an extension of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies; a reversal of the health care provisions in the GOP’s megabill; and restrictions on Republicans’ ability to derail congressionally appropriated funds.
But Jeffries went further, saying any deal would have to be enshrined in legislation and, on Tuesday, calling a one-year extension of the health care subsidies a “nonstarter.”
“The Democratic position has been clear: permanent extension, and let’s go from there, in terms of a negotiation,” Jeffries said.
Moderate Democrats, including Reps. Tom Suozzi of New York and Jared Golden of Maine, have backed a one-year extension. Suozzi responded in a statement that while that bill “isn’t perfect,” lawmakers “can’t afford to remain in a stalemate.”
Room for Disagreement
Some Democrats who know Jeffries well dismiss the idea that Trump is deliberately cold-shouldering Jeffries.
Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego, also a former House member, said that “the reason, probably, Trump doesn’t say his name is because he doesn’t remember his name. Trump is losing it.”
The View From Shelby and Eleanor
Jeffries has an uphill battle in convincing the White House to see him as a worthy adversary. It’ll be easier if he becomes House speaker — but not by much.
A GOP trifecta has already delivered Trump his big legislative wins. So even if Republicans lose the House next year, the president would have less of a need to engage Democrats under a hypothetical Jeffries speakership.
That means less motivation to reverse course on his “sorry to this man” energy when it comes to the House Democratic leader.
And the White House’s opinion might not even matter to Jeffries, who gets his sharpest critiques from progressives when they think he could be doing more to resist Trump.
Notable
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Politico reports that Jeffries’ approach to the shutdown has been “more bombastic” than his previous tactics.
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Johnson told Jeffries to ignore Trump’s trolling or it’ll “make it worse,” The Hill reports.
