{"id":209624,"date":"2026-04-25T17:41:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T17:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/209624\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T17:41:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T17:41:12","slug":"rep-hakeem-jeffries-seizes-edge-in-house-fight-with-virginia-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/209624\/","title":{"rendered":"Rep. Hakeem Jeffries seizes edge in House fight with Virginia win"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries was making little effort to hide his upbeat mood<\/a> last week after Virginia voters approved a redistricting plan aimed at flipping four Republican seats<\/a> to Democrats in the fall midterms.<\/p>\n

The Brooklyn lawmaker regaled Capitol Hill reporters on bring-your-kid-to-work day<\/a> with chit-chat about his favorite candy (sugar-free Hershey\u2019s chocolate), childhood career aspirations (Knicks point guard or rap superstar) and World Series prediction (it\u2019s the Yankees\u2019 year, at last).<\/p>\n

Then, Jeffries moved on to the real message. Quoting boxing champion Mike Tyson<\/a>, he mocked President Trump\u2019s failed scheme to hold onto control of the House by getting Republicans to further gerrymander states they control.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone has a plan, until they get punched in the mouth,\u201d said Jeffries, who grew up a couple of stops on the No. 3 train from Iron Mike\u2019s old stomping grounds in Brownsville.<\/p>\n

\"HouseHouse Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries speaks to kids after a news conference on Capitol Hill on Thursday. (AP Photo\/Mariam Zuhaib)<\/p>\n

Assuming the Virginia vote survives a court challenge<\/a>, Jeffries and fellow Democrats can now celebrate seizing an unlikely decisive edge in the mid-decade redistricting war that Trump believed would boost the GOP.<\/p>\n

The man who is in line to become the first Black Speaker<\/a> if Democrats retake the House also brashly warned Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis against overplaying his hand as Sunshine State lawmakers consider retaliating with their own map<\/a> aimed at grabbing a couple of Democratic-held seats.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaximum warfare, everywhere,\u201d Jeffries said earlier, dropping the names of several GOP incumbents who could be face tough reelection fights if DeSantis tinkers too much with their districts.<\/p>\n

\u201cF around and find out,\u201d Jeffries added.<\/p>\n

Those were threats that DeSantis has to take at face value after Jeffries\u2019 record of success in the redistricting chess game.<\/a><\/p>\n

Even with six months to go before Election Day, Jeffries has every reason to be talking like a confident product of central Brooklyn<\/a>, where he follows in the footsteps of assertive cultural icons like Tyson, political trailblazer Shirley Chisholm and hip-hop mogul Jay-Z.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"HouseHakeem Jeffries speaks about Virginia’s redistricting vote at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington on April 22. (AP Photo\/Cliff Owen)<\/p>\n

Democrats were already favored to retake the House in November<\/a>; the GOP holds a narrow six-vote majority and the party of the sitting president almost always loses seats. Trump\u2019s historically awful approval ratings have dragged Republicans down even more.<\/p>\n

But the backfiring of Trump\u2019s redistricting gambit puts them even more firmly in the driver\u2019s seat<\/a>, with political analysts and prediction markets now making Democrats overwhelming favorites to take the House, which could put the brakes on Trump\u2019s aggressive second term right-wing agenda.<\/p>\n

\u201cJeffries has projected the tough posture that Democratic activists want to see,\u201d said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political analyst. \u201cHe was very, very involved in the Virginia referendum and skunked the White House.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201dJeffries\u2019 ambitions for the House have a lot of momentum. Polling and enthusiasm favor Democrats,\u201d said Basil Smikle, a Bronx-born Columbia University professor and political strategist.<\/p>\n

\"HakeemHakeem Jeffries speaks during a press conference at the Capitol on March 27. (Photo by Samuel Corum\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The race for control of the House is now his to lose \u2014 a major political coup for Jeffries, who took the reins of House Democratic leadership from longtime former Speaker Nancy Pelosi after Republicans won the House in the 2022 midterm elections.<\/p>\n

Jeffries has endured a torrent of criticism from pundits over his leadership style<\/a>, especially since Trump returned to the White House in the 2024 election.<\/p>\n

Progressives accused Jeffries of failing to meet the moment<\/a> posed by Trump\u2019s unprecedented threats to democracy.<\/p>\n

He has relentlessly stuck to a single-minded focus on kitchen table issues<\/a>, especially rising costs for health care and groceries, which has proven a prescient move as Trump\u2019s approval ratings on his handling of the economy have plunged.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe American people voted for a president that would lower costs and stop reckless wars in the Middle East,\u201d Jeffries told the Daily News. \u201cDonald Trump delivered the exact opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moderates whispered that he and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer were taking a big political risk by bulldozing ahead with last year\u2019s government shutdown<\/a>, which put the spotlight on skyrocketing health insurance costs, and the ongoing partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security over Trump\u2019s refusal to negotiate limits on his immigration crackdown.<\/p>\n

Polls show more voters blame Trump and Republicans for both shutdowns and agree with the Democratic stance on the key issues<\/a> at stake, like health care costs and the mass deportation campaign.<\/p>\n

The political results speak for themselves.<\/a><\/p>\n

Jeffries quickly jumped into action when Trump moved to transform the math of House control<\/a> by ordering Texas Republicans to redraw the state\u2019s congressional map in what he hoped would gain three seats. Texas Democrats say they believe the map will only pick up two or three seats<\/a>, especially given the Democratic lead in polls.<\/p>\n

He moved to frame the redistricting war as a national battle and committed tens of millions in campaign funds to the fight, a savvy decision that won critical support from key blue state Democrats like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Pelosi and Gov. Hochul.<\/p>\n

California countered the Texas move by pushing ahead with a map to flip five GOP-held seats<\/a>. A few red states followed Texas\u2019 lead, but Virginia effectively dropped the mic with its vote to transform a 6-5 map to a 10-1 Democratic advantage.<\/p>\n

Even if Florida enacts a GOP-friendlier map<\/a> in a special legislative session set for April 28, the worst possible outcome from the redistricting fight now looks like a national dead heat.<\/p>\n

That outcome would still leave Democrats favored to win the House and force House Speaker Mike Johnson to surrender the gavel to Jeffries.<\/p>\n

Closer to home, many New York City pundits and Democratic activists cried foul when Jeffries slow-walked an endorsement of Mayor Mamdani<\/a> even as the charismatic progressive won the Democratic primary and lined up support of other key Democrats like Gov. Hochul.<\/p>\n

But the move apparently caused no lasting political damage<\/a> to Jeffries with the new team in City Hall.<\/p>\n

A planned 2026 progressive primary challenge in his NY-08 district fizzled when Mamdani\u2019s leftist allies backed away from supporting Councilmember Chi Osse<\/a>, who then dropped the race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rep. Hakeem Jeffries was making little effort to hide his upbeat mood last week after Virginia voters approved…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,153,12885,4008,859,15240,44078,9,24,63,83085,12994,418],"class_list":["post-209624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-gerrymandering","tag-hakeem-jeffries","tag-house-of-representatives","tag-jay-z","tag-mike-tyson","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-polls-midterms","tag-redistricting","tag-virginia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}