Hakeem Jeffries on Winning the House and Defending Democracy Against Another January 6

While Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is intensely focused on November 5, and the opportunity for his party to flip a few seats and retake the House, there’s another consequential date weighing on his mind. “One of the reasons it’s extremely important for House Democrats to win the majority in November,” he told me this past week, “is so that we have the gavel in our hands on January 3 and can certify the results of the presidential election on January 6.”

This coming January 6 will mark four years since then president Donald Trump incited a mob of supporters who stormed the US Capitol to try to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. There was no precedent for the MAGA mob’s attack, which disrupted a constitutionally mandated exercise long treated as a formality. And the trauma remains buried in the living memory of an institution built on precedent and order.

Every lawmaker has a story of that fateful day. Jeffries, for one, was locked inside the House chamber alongside fellow Democrats Colin Allred, Eric Swalwell, and Ruben Gallego as insurrectionists broke into the Capitol and stole from Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership suite. Some rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” due to the vice president’s role as president of the Senate, whose job is to lead the joint session of Congress; it’ll be Kamala Harris in that position this coming January.

If House Democrats are victorious in just over five weeks, it’s expected that Jeffries, 54, will ascend to become Speaker, a position currently held by Mike Johnson, who, as a rank-and-file Louisiana representative, helped advance a discredited legal theory to try to keep Trump in power. He was one of the 147 Republicans who attempted to overturn the results of the election on January 6 in the aftermath of the violent siege on the Capitol.

Johnson still has no regrets about his actions almost four years ago, and Democrats are understandably concerned about how he, as Speaker, would handle certification. Earlier this month, Politico’s “Playbook” ran through the ways Johnson could potentially throw a wrench in the works, from rewriting rules for vote counting to encouraging Republican objections to the results.

Last week I asked Johnson if he would commit to following regular order in the certification process even if Harris beats Trump. “Well, of course,” said Johnson, before adding a broad caveat: “If we have a free, fair, and safe election, we’re gonna follow the Constitution, absolutely.”

That response may sound anodyne—honorable, even—but Democrats have warned that Johnson is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. “His great virtue is his civility and politeness and Southern charm,” Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat who led the argument against Johnson’s push to decertify Biden’s presidency, told me in January, adding: “But he’s a raging theocrat who doesn’t believe in the basic precepts of the Constitution.”

When I later asked Jeffries if he was worried Republicans would find ways to change the rules, he reiterated the importance of controlling the House heading into the new year: “House Republicans have no capacity to change the rules for the 119th Congress in the 118th Congress.”

Jeffries was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, by his mother, Laneda, a social worker, and his father, Marland, a substance abuse counselor. Spurred by a sharp uptick in police brutality cases during the early 1990s, Jeffries attended law school at New York University and later ran to represent Brooklyn in the New York State Assembly, winning a statehouse seat before being elected to represent New York’s 8th District in Congress. After chairing the House Democratic Caucus for four years, from 2019 to 2023, Jeffries was elected by his members to be their party leader, with the representative continuing to serve as minority leader in the 118th Congress.

If Jeffries claims the Speaker’s gavel, he would arguably have the most powerful job in Congress, charged with picking committee chairs and hiring one of the biggest leadership staffs at the onset of a new Congress. He would also have the near-unilateral authority to decide when, which, and how many pieces of legislation are brought to the House floor.

Former Speaker Pelosi, who served as Democratic leader for two decades and preceded Jeffries, went unmentioned when I asked Jeffries to name his mentors in Congress. “The great Jim Clyburn,” he replied when pressed. Clyburn, however, laughed when I asked if he considered Jeffries his mentee. “No, I do not,” said the South Carolina elder of the Congressional Black Caucus. “I’m honored that he feels that way about me,” he added, chuckling as the down-elevator’s doors closed and Clyburn, alongside fellow Congressional Black Caucus Democrat Ilhan Omar, disappeared into the Capitol basement tunnels.

The following day, when I asked if he believed Democrats would win back the House in November, Jeffries offered only top-line Democratic Party talking points. “House Democrats are gonna work hard to communicate our vision to the American people as it relates to lowering costs, growing the middle class, and defending freedom, and then we’ll put it in the hands of the American people to make the most appropriate decision about their future,” he said, entirely avoiding my question—so I repeated it.

“Same answer,” Jeffries shot back, undeterred.

Jeffries’s ability to string together talking points with ease has not gone unnoticed among his Democratic colleagues. “I don’t think he knows what a teleprompter is,” Steve Cohen, a Memphis Democrat and friend of Jeffries, told me. “He doesn’t need one.”

Jeffries is also well-known for his unique sense of calm in the face of chaos. “It’s my view,” said Jeffries, “that calm is an intentional decision when we find ourselves dealing with a serious, extraordinary, and unprecedented event.”

Election Day will almost surely be heavy on all three adjectives—serious, extraordinary, and unprecedented. But if Jeffries holds the gavel on January 6, Democrats will be far better equipped to keep this year’s chaos from boiling over into the calamity of nearly four years ago.