House Democrats re-elect Hakeem Jeffries as leader and others amid GOP control

Nov. 19 (UPI) -- House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Tuesday was re-elected by House Democrats to lead the minority party amid a Republican sweep in both Senate and House chambers along with the White House.

House Democrats re-elected Jeffries, D-N.Y., as minority leader in the 119th Congress to start in January, and likewise kept his counterparts in their respective leadership roles at a closed-door meeting in the basement of the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., was selected by her colleagues to stay as Democratic whip. Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., will be caucus chair and his home-state colleague Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., will be vice chair. Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., was voted in as assistant Democratic leader.

Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., kept her job as chair of the House's Democratic Policy and Communications Committee in a last-minute challenge by Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, in a rare show for a newer lawmaker to make an attempt at a leadership post.

The Republican Party will remain in control of the U.S. House in a supermajority for the next two years under the control of House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. But historically, mid-term elections typically swing to the opposition party as they have in recent years, which in this case would be Democrats come the 2026 midterm elections.

As of Tuesday, Republicans controlled 220 House seats with Democrats at 213. This indicates Johnson will have little room for defections on Trump's agenda in Congress.

Meanwhile, last Wednesday Senate Republicans elected Sen. John Thune to succeed Kentucky's Sen. Mitch McConnell as longtime leader of the Senate GOP and its likely new majority where Republicans will very likely control 53 seats next year.

Jeffries, now 54, whose district encompasses large parts of his native Brooklyn, was first elected to Congress in 2012 and steadily ascended the party ranks.

In November 2022 he first was elected leader in a unanimous vote becoming the first Black lawmaker to lead a political party caucus.

Jeffries' election ushered in a generational shift as then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- now 84 and recently filed to run for re-election to her own House seat in California -- prepared to relinquish control as House Democratic leader in a role she kept since 2003.

News of the House Democrats' leadership election arrived the same day Minnesota Democratic Party Chair Ken Martin said that he will run to be the next chairman of the beleaguered Democratic National Committee.

But while Jeffries pledged to "find bipartisan common ground whenever and wherever possible" with House Republicans, he did warn how the opposing Democrats will "always push back whenever necessary against far-right extremism that will hurt the American people," which he added include fighting against GOP plans to cut Social Security funding, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act and other individual rights as outlined in Project 2025.