Home Minority Chief Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) known as on Senate Republicans on Friday to behave as a test on the incoming Trump administration — a response to a handful of controversial Cupboard nominations introduced by the previous president this week.
Jeffries declined to weigh in particularly on President-elect Trump’s checklist of picks, which incorporates two of Jeffries’s former Home colleagues: Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), nominated to change into legal professional normal and director of nationwide intelligence, respectively.
However he strongly recommended they, and different Trump alternatives, are unfit to command the businesses they’ve been tapped to guide, and he urged Senate Republicans — who will management the higher chamber subsequent yr — to not rubber-stamp the nominees out of a blind loyalty for the brand new Republican president.
“The Senate has a job,” Jeffries stated throughout a press briefing within the Capitol. “They need to focus — which means the Senate Republicans — on being a separate and co-equal department of presidency and serving as a test and stability on a very out-of-control, when it emerges, administration. That is their job.
“Advice and consent should mean something,” he continued. “It certainly doesn’t mean rolling over and giving any administration — Democratic or Republican — what they want.”
The feedback add to a storm of controversy surrounding Gaetz, Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist and distinguished conspiracy theorist tapped by Trump to guide the Division of Well being and Human Providers.
Jeffries deflected a number of questions concerning the appropriateness of the Gaetz nomination particularly, maybe essentially the most controversial of Trump’s picks. The Florida Republican has a regulation diploma however has by no means been a prosecutor and has been the topic of a months-long Ethics Committee investigation into allegations of illicit drug use and the intercourse trafficking of a minor — costs Gaetz adamantly denies.
Jeffries is not any fan of Trump loyalists resembling Gaetz. However Friday, the Democratic chief — who’s all however sure to maintain that title within the subsequent Congress — stated he’s not going to take part within the recreation of continually reacting to every controversy popping out of the White Home in Trump’s second time period.
“Here’s what I’m not going to do for the next two years and the next four years. I’m not going to deal with — it’s Tulsi Gabbard one day. Then, an hour later, it’s Matt Gaetz. Then, the next day, it’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And then [Trump] says something on X, or on Truth Social. And then the people connected to him are doing something outrageous,” Jeffries stated. “No. That I’m not doing, because that’s all a distraction.”
Wednesday’s nomination of Gaetz was instantly adopted by his resignation and sparked a maelstrom of controversy about whether or not the Ethics Committee ought to launch its report on him. Gaetz leaving Congress eliminated him from the committee’s jurisdiction, subsequently ending its investigation, however it nonetheless has the facility to publicize the findings, as Democrats — and a few Senate Republicans — are urging.
The Ethics Committee canceled a gathering on the subject that had been slated for Friday morning, resulting in Democratic accusations that Republicans on the panel, led by Rep. Michael Visitor (Miss.), have been burying probably damning findings with a purpose to defend Trump’s legal professional normal choose — and keep away from the wrath of the incoming president.
Home Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) solely fueled these suspicions Friday, when he stated he’ll “strongly request” the Ethics Committee not launch its report.
Whereas Jeffries took pains to keep away from that debate this week, he additionally made clear that he considers at the least a few of Trump’s Cupboard nominees to be unqualified.
“[Is] Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., by way of example, the best that America has to offer? … Are some of these nominations a real path forward to solving problems for everyday Americans?” he requested. “That is the query that I have been grappling with, that the American persons are grappling with.
“And the reply needs to be clear.”
