When people write things complaining about what our leaders represent, you should go see for yourself

[bigtree]

...I haven't been particularily interested in the back and forth of politics lately, but an article posted this morn caught my eye which claimed that the House Democratic leader had a "new slogan for the Democratic Party."

Funny and sad that remark from Jeffries which a journo claimed was some"new slogan" wasn't any part of anything Dem Leader Jeffries actually related in his press conference just a day or so ago, undoubtedly one part of wider remarks.

What's more, unsurprisingly, nearly all of the references in the searches to this supposedly "new slogan for the Democratic Party" lead back to the journo's article. Go figure.

I'm done exploring that journo's projections. Here's what the House Dem Leader has said just recently. In stark contrast to this supposedly well-meaning critic, Jeffries is highlighting republican divisions, not trying to foment Democratic ones.

December 1, 2025
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries Holds News Conference on Legislative Agenda

"They have done nothing over the last 60 days but stumble, fumble and bumble, as it relates to addressing the health care crisis that they've created," said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) when asked if House Democrats were pushing a clean, three-year extension of tax credits related to the Affordable Care Act instead of compromising with Republicans on a health care plan.

The minority leader made the remarks during a press conference on Capitol Hill where he also addressed the rising cost of living as well as military strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug boats and the Trump administration's immigration policy. When asked about the special election in Tennessee to fill the seat of former Rep. Mark Green (R), who retired earlier in the year, Leader Jeffries replied, "Seems to me that it's gonna be an unexpectedly close election. ... That's shocking, in deep, red Tennessee."

(transcript)

Good afternoon everyone. Good afternoon.

House Republicans went on an 8 week taxpayerf funded vacation while shutting the government down and hurting the American people.

During that taxpayerf funded vacation, House Republicans didn't do a single thing to make life better for the American people. We've been back now in session legislatively for two weeks and yet they still have not produced a bill to drive down the high cost of living, to address the Republican health care crisis, or to make life better for everyday Americans. It's clear to us that House Republicans have no intention to do anything other than continue to drive down right-wing extremism through the throats of the American people.

House Republicans promised along with Donald Trump that they were going to lower costs on day one. Costs aren't going down in the United States of America. Costs are going up. Housing costs through the roof, electricity bills through the roof, grocery costs through the roof. And now, as a result of the Republican refusal to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, tens of millions of people are on the verge of experiencing dramatically increased health care costs that will either push them into medical bankruptcy or prevent them from being able to go see a doctor when they need one.

And yet, we still see nothing from the Republican party as it relates to addressing the health care crisis that they've created because they're too busy fighting each other and spending time trying to find different ways to reward their billionaire donors. The American people deserve better.

You deserve better. and House Democrats are going to continue to fight to lower the high cost of living, to fix our broken health care system, and to clean up corruption so we can deliver a country that actually works for working-class Americans. Questions?

Good afternoon. Thank you. They had to pull this NI bill on the House floor this week. Two things. Can you speak to what that means on an issue like that that is seemingly bipartisan? And number two, does it seem like that the issue college sports, money in college sports is a bipartisan issue, but this is now veering off into partisan territory and that's why Congress can't legislate on this.

It's not that Congress can't legislate, it's that House Republicans can't legislate. It's the gang that can't legislate straight. These are individuals who continue to take a my way or the highway approach. First of all, what exactly was the rationale to bring a bill related to college sports to the floor this week at the same time that Republicans refuse to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits?

Shouldn't we put the health care of the American people first, particularly when the votes clearly don't even exist to bring the so-called SCORE Act to the floor? The question that a lot of people are asking this week related to the score rack legislation is who exactly directed Mike Johnson and Steve Scaliz to bring this bill to the floor this week? Was it the big donors connected to LSU? That legislation would not have benefited college athletes. It would hurt college athletes. Take away the antitrust exemption.

It would preempt the ability of states to actually pass legislation that promotes the health, the safety, and the well-being of their own college students. It would take away legal rights to seek redress. The organized labor unions across the country were strongly opposed because it undermined the ability of college athletes. It undermined their freedom to negotiate, took away collective, bargaining rights.

And of course, the players associations across every sports league led by the NFL players association were opposed to it because they concluded when evaluating the bill on the merits that it would actually hurt college athletes, not help them.

Why would Mike Johnson and Steve Scaliz think it was a good idea to bring the Lane Keifin Protection Act to the Florida House of Representatives? legislation that would do nothing to benefit college athletes and everything to benefit coaches like Lane Kein who got out of town, abandoned his players in the middle of a playoff run to go get a hundred million dollar contract from LSU, the home state of Mike Johnson and Steve Scaliz.

People are asking the question, why did you decide to bring this bill this week with all the other issues that the country is demanding that we focus on led by the affordability crisis that they claim is a scam and a hoax, but that the American people know is very real.


Um this morning a bipartisan group of members led by Godheimr and Kiggins announced framework which if the Democrats decided to back it would have enough Republican votes in the House. Are you encouraging Senator Schumer to look at other options oo as opposed to the three-year clean extension that he currently announced which is not expected to get 60 votes in the Senate. The path forward that has the greatest number of votes in both the House and the Senate is a three-year extension of the Affordable Care Act tax credits.

Time has run out. Republicans have been promising all year that they were going to get to addressing the health care crisis that they themselves have created, but clearly they've had no intention to do anything about keeping healthcare affordable, beginning with extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits. This is December. The tax credits expire at the end of this month. What has taken so long?


We started to raise this issue with great urgency in the spring while Republicans were trying to jam the one big ugly bill down the throat of the American people. They somehow found the time to enact the largest cut to Medicaid in American history. Cut $186 billion from SNAP, the largest cut to nutritional assistance in American history.

And then with great urgency, these Republican extremists enacted massive tax breaks for their billionaire donors and skyrocketed the debt by more than $3 trillion. And they made those massive tax breaks permanent. And now there's no viable path forward that Republicans in the House or the Senate have put forth to address the fact that the Affordable Care Act tax credits are expiring.

I mean, the time has long passed to do anything other than move forward with the legislation that will be triggered by the discharge petition that House Democrats have filed that has every single House Democrat on it. 214, which means all we need are four House Republicans out of 219. We only need four to join us and we can get this legislation onto the floor and out of the House. And I'm thankful for the leadership that Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats are showing and triggering an up or down vote on a three-year extension in the Senate.

And the American people will see which party supports the health care of hardworking American taxpayers. That would be Democrats. And which party is continuing to break our health care system? That would be the GOP.


Thank you, Mr. Leader. Earlier this year, you said that your relationship with Speaker Johnson was, I believe, productive and forwardlooking. A lot has happened since then with the shutdown and everything. I'm just curious if your relationship has evolved at all throughout the year and how you characterize it.


Now, it's evolved and not necessarily in a constructive direction.


Thank you, Mr. Leader. Um, just curious, why three years on the ACA tax credits? I mean, doesn't that seem kind of unrealistic if we're being honest? And wouldn't the bipartisan efforts that uh she mentioned in the House, like the common ground framework, be a little bit more realistic path forward in regards to addressing the healthcare issue?

It's my understanding that the common ground framework has a support perhaps of a handful of members of the House of Representatives, less than 10 as far as I can tell. Now, we're open to having good faith discussions with any House Republican who's serious about extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits, but the House Republican leadership is not.

They've repeatedly said they have no interest in addressing the Affordable Care Act tax credit issue. In fact, Donald Trump and his administration were apparently prepared to put forth a proposal that Mike Johnson and House Republican leaders detonated because they have no interest in keeping health care affordable.

The legislation that has the greatest amount of support in the Congress right now, both House and Senate, is a clean three-year extension of the Affordable Care Act tax credits. We believe that the American people deserve a similar level of certainty that Republicans provided to their billionaire donors when they made those massive tax breaks permanent in the one big ugly bill.

Uh given recent interactions between President Trump and female members of the press, calling them piggy, ugly, stupid, do you have any concerns uh about the tone or treatment of journalists so far? And what is your overall view on the role of free press in America?


Well, the tone uh that has consistently been adopted by Donald Trump toward members of the free and fair press generally and specifically most recently directed at female reporters is disgusting. It's unbecoming of a president. It's unconscionable, unacceptable, and unamerican. And this is part of the reason why Donald Trump's approval rating is at 36%. The American people know that Donald

Trump and Republican control of the House and the Senate has been a disaster for them. And instead of actually focusing on the issues that matter, like driving down the high cost of living or fixing our broken health care system, continue to engage in personal attacks against folks, ad hominemum assaults on the character of individuals who are just doing their jobs.

Now, in our democracy, it's clear we have a legislative branch, the House and the Senate, separate and co-equal. We're supposed to provide a check and balance on an outofc control executive branch. James Madison, in fact, one of the original framers of the Constitution said that at its best, Congress should be a rival to the executive branch.

But that's not what Republicans have done. These people are not rivals. They are a reckless rubber stamp for Donald Trump's extreme agenda. Got the article 2 executive rants. We got the article 3 judiciary. But of course, connected to the fabric of our democracy is the free and fair press.

And Donald Trump, of course, is behaving more like a wannabe king who's uninterested in the scrutiny that comes from being part of American democracy. Part of that scrutiny is the Congress. Part of that scrutiny is the judiciary. And part of that scrutiny of course should always be the free and fair press.


Going back to the um Speaker Johnson and the reconciliation law, you know, he said this he told reporters this morning that Americans will start feeling the relief from that bill next year and some of the affordability concerns that they have now will start to subside. I know you've been critical of the Medicaid cuts, the SNAP cuts, but I'm curious how you and House Democrats will speak about some of those uh working class provisions that they that they point to, whether it's on tips, overtime, social security, auto loan, uh interest. How are you all thinking about speaking to the American people about those particular provisions that I it seems will be core to the Republicans's message next year about affordability?


Yeah. House Republicans have no issue as it relates to affordability. They believe that the affordability crisis in the country is a hoax and a scam. That's what their leader has said, Donald Trump, who says he's both the president and the speaker at the same time. Donald Trump's words, not mine. They don't plan to address the high cost of living in this country because they don't even believe that it exists. Now, the interesting thing is that

I agree that the American people will continue to feel the impact of the one big ugly bill that Republicans jam down their throats, but it's going to be an adverse impact because hospitals and nursing homes and community- based health centers are going to continue to close as a result of Republicans enacting the largest cut to Medicaid in American history.

Electricity bills are skyrocketing because of the Republican attack on the clean energy economy. Clean energy is cheaper energy. What they gutted those provisions of the tax code. Republicans did so they could reward big oil and their donors.

But as a result, the American people are seeing their electricity bills skyrocket. And then of course, if you rip $186 billion dollars from SNAP, which Republicans did in their one big ugly bill, they're going to cause everyday Americans to go hungry.

We're talking about 42 million people. 16 million children who are going to be hurt by what Republicans did in their one big ugly bill. 8 million older Americans and over a million veterans who rely on SNAP. And so the adverse impact, the harm that Republicans have done to the American people, actually we're just scratching the surface in terms of the hurt that everyday Americans will experience. And then we have the ongoing Trump tariffs, which of course in real time are increasing costs on the American people by thousands of dollars per year.

And the American people know it in terms of what they're paying now for groceries and for goods. The American people are concerned about the fact that housing is totally out of control. Health care is totally out of control. Child care is totally out of control. And Republicans have no plan to deal with any of it.

Donald Trump is fighting with Marjorie Taylor Green. Marjorie Taylor Green is fighting with the House Republican Conference. Corey Mills is fighting with Nancy Mace. Nancy Mace is fighting with Mike Johnson. Mike Johnson is fighting with Alise Stefonic. Alise Stefonic is fighting with Lisa Mlan.

The whole thing is a mess. The 119th Congress has turned into a bad episode of Republicans gone wild. And here's the problem. Republicans are so busy fighting each other, they can't be bothered to fight for the American people. Big difference between us and them. House Democrats are going to continue to fight for you to drive down the high cost of living and to fix our broken healthare system.

Two-pronger here. One, are are we staring on the possibility that that quite frankly nothing is going to be done on healthcare? I mean, is that kind of your operating assumption? And if so, um are you basically has this whole scenario proven you true from the shutdown? And two, if there was a vote of no confidence in Johnson, which is certainly much more of a live wire than it was a couple weeks ago, what would you tell your members to do?

Well, we'd have to have that discussion. in terms of, you know, what House Democrats might do to the extent there is such a vote, but clearly nothing that the speaker of the house has done over the last several months has endeared himself to Democrats in the Congress.


Congresswoman Luna has filed a discharge petition earlier this week that would force a vote on the stock trading ban bill that uh Congressman Magazine or Congressman Roy been working on. Do you anticipate supporting that and would you anticipate uh Democrats broadly supporting that?


Well, we haven't had uh a caucuswide conversation about the best path forward, but there's overwhelming support for the legislation uh to ban congressional stock trading. It is long past time that that is done. I think part of the challenge again is that Mike Johnson apparently said he's got zero interest in moving the legislation that is actually bipartisan led by Chip Roy and Seth Magazina. Mike Johnson zero interest in banning congressional stock trading. So, we'll evaluate the different vehicles moving forward, and I look forward to having a conversation with many of the stakeholders over the next few days into the early part of next week, including Seth and Primilla and Alex, as well as, of course, Joe Morelli, the top Democrat on House Administration Committee, to figure out the best path forward. We want to clean up corruption in this institution, in the Supreme Court.

And also as it relates to the administration, I think one of the challenges that some members have raised directly with me about the Anna Paulina Luna approach is that apparently she's unwilling to prohibit stock trading within the Trump administration. Unwilling to prohibit stock trading as it relates to Donald Trump, JD Vance, or cabinet secretaries like the Treasury Secretary. That's kind of extraordinary to me since they have concentrated executive power.

We definitely have to deal with the issue of members of Congress trading stock. It should be banned. But it also seems to many of us at the same period of time, there's got to be a path forward to banning stock trading within the administration.

I think Donald Trump literally just purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock in Warner Brothers when his administration is in the middle of a merger review. How is that acceptable? That's corruption in plain sight. And it also seems reasonable to many of us that we've got to find a path forward toward addressing it.


Um, you frame this debate as Democrats fighting to protect millions of people from Republican policies, in this case, the expiration of subsidies. But those same people went to the polls last November, many of them, and voted for Republicans who, you know, they must know by now that Republicans don't like the ACA. They've been fighting for 15 years. So, is this not is the expiration of the subsidies not simply democracy at work? And at what point do you risk, you know, accusations that you're trying to protect voters from themselves, which is sort of inherently undemocratic, small?


Well, many voters were promised that cost would go down on day one. January 20th came and went, and Republicans didn't do a damn thing to lower costs. Donald Trump didn't do a damn thing to lower the high cost of living. Why? Because they don't give a damn about everyday Americans. That's increasingly clear.

Now, the American people have come to that conclusion with a greater degree of intensity cuz they were lied to by Donald Trump and Republicans.

We're giving our Republican colleagues a chance to actually keep your word to the American people. Start by extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits. So, this fight is not over.

And, you know, to Kevin's question as well, this fight is not over. as it relates to the Affordable Care Act tax credits. Let's see what happens on the Senate floor next week.

Thankful that Senate Democrats are bringing legislation that would extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits for three years. And we're going to continue to press our case in the House. Every single House Democrat is on the same page.

Republicans are in the middle of a civil war, which is why they can't even focus, just a handful of them can't focus on keeping their word to the American people and driving down the high cost of living. We still got a couple of weeks for them to change their tune.


Republicans have argued um is aimed at keeping foreign influence out of schools. Could you explain the reasoning for Democrats opposition? Uh the Republicans have not brought a single credible bill to the floor. I think Bobby Scott and others did a good job of explaining our concerns.


We just want to educate our children, focus on reading, writing, and arithmetic. developing a holistic child, giving the ability to them to think critically, and we're not group of Republicans who are dismantling the Department of Education in real time.

Literally, 90% of the Department of Education as it existed last year is now gone. Doesn't exist within the Department of Education. It's been broken into pieces. Republicans are attacking public education just like they're attacking public health and attacking public safety.

And it's the reason why Republicans are either underperforming dramatically across the country electorally or have been crushed as was the case across the country up and down the ballot in the off-year elections in early November.

The American people are through with these extremists. Done. Had enough. The extremists have gone too far.

They've broken all of their promises. They spent the entire year rewarding their billionaire donors and trying to implement the most toxic parts of project 2025, which is a difficult thing cuz the whole thing is toxic. But they've been focused on doing things that they know will harm the American people.

In our view as Democrats, we're just going to continue to fight for a country where when you work hard and play by the rules, you should be able to live an affordable life, a comfortable life.

Live the good life, good paying job, good housing, good healthare, good education for your children, and a good retirement. Not too much for ask for in the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world. Thank you. Thank you.


watch presser:

...now I'm going to turn off my computer and pretend people will actually bother to read, even bother to amplify anything the leader is advocating.

Lol at all of the people who are playing off of the politics of the ACA cuts, which SCHUMER and JEFFRIES advocated into the national discussion over the past months, like the nitpickers and critics amazingly thought of it all by themselves and made that happen.

I'm so fucking sick of people claiming our leaders said this one thing or the other as if it's the complete representation of everything they said and advocate for.

It's a game for rubes, and there seem to be enough of them to keep these demagogues in the public debate; people who have NEVER run elections against republicans and WON as our elected Democrats have, telling us how to beat republicans they failed to do so with their rhetoric against Democrats in the last contest.

But, by all means, continue.

Or, just take the time to listen to what our leaders are actually saying, without the projections from people who have never shown the discilpline to advance their own concerns, much less the party's.

more here:

https://www.youtube.com/@RepJeffries/videos

[mcar]

1. Thanks for the spin free transcript

[betsuni]

2. As always, thank you very much.

[Midnight Writer]

3. So, who was the journalist that we are discussing here?

[bigtree]

4. .

July 7, 2022
Washington Post column wonders if Biden is ‘the wrong president at the wrong time’
Columnist Paul Waldman speculated on whether President Joe Biden has what it takes to heal America and win his next election.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/washington-post-column-wonders-biden-wrong-president-wrong-time?msockid=19c9661de72e6d54127b7055e6a56cb7