Congress

Democrats’ new year’s resolution: Reclaim upper hand on the economy and trash the ‘billionaire boys club’

Published

1 year ago

January 9, 2025

NEW YORK — The Democratic Party’s top two congressional leaders — both New Yorkers — agree: The party lost big in the election over voters’ economic fears and must now overhaul its pocketbook messaging to win again.

“Promises to help working people sound nice, but they mean nothing without real results,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in kicking off the new Congress.

“House Democrats will fight hard to protect working-class Americans and the things that matter to them, not the wealthy, the well-off and the well-connected,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries vowed in his own floor speech.

But other New York Democrats in Congress aren’t as sure.

Interviews with nearly every New York House Democrat reveal variations on where they believe their party’s push against incoming President Donald Trump should start, underscoring Jeffries’ challenge in leading a big-tent caucus that ranges from socialists to Blue Dogs. Some House members are less humbled by their party’s election drubbing than others, some blame messaging and others blame culture wars — even if the most consistent theme emerging is the urgent need to wrestle back the economic narrative from the Republicans.

The Empire State will have an outsized role in that mission with Schumer and Jeffries as the highest-ranking Democrats in Washington, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand leading the Senate Dems’ campaign arm, several House New Yorkers as ranking members and caucus chairs and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a national progressive standard-bearer. New York was one of the few bright spots in last year’s election for Democrats, too — with the party picking up three House seats there.

Some of those Democrats are now beginning to build out the case on cost of living. In the two months since Republicans won the White House, Senate and House, Trump has stacked his administration picks with at least 13 billionaires and enabled Musk to meddle with a government shutdown deal with misinformation that dismissed the tangible implications of such an action.

As the House session ended last month, Jeffries flicked at this as his Republican counterparts struggled from self-inflicted wounds, namely Trump and Musk’s 11th-hour torpedoing of a bipartisanship shutdown package and last-minute hedging from House conservatives on supporting Mike Johnson (R-La.) for speaker.

“House Democrats have successfully stopped the billionaire boys club,” the minority leader told reporters.

And while kitchen-table economics will drive the narrative for Democrats, the messaging won’t be a one-size-fits-all approach.

Several of Jeffries’ fellow members from New York say he’s granted them the latitude to approach Trump 2.0 in a way that’s best for them and their districts.

Rep. Tom Suozzi, one of 48 House Democrats who recently voted for the Laken Riley Act cracking down on illegal immigration, commended the leader as “not very heavy handed” and said he believes the border is a key starting point for his party as it prepares for Trump 2.0.

“If you want to actually do something effectively, and not just do it for political purposes … which is to secure the border, which is to fix the broken asylum system, which is to modernize the legal immigration system, you should really be doing it on a bipartisan basis,” Suozzi said in an interview.

Rep. Yvette Clarke, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, said more broadly it’s about combating misinformation: “The bottom line to it is that we have to create an ecosystem of truth.”

Still, others, including Reps. Greg Meeks, Nydia Velázquez and Pat Ryan, said in interviews that Democrats should begin with the economy.

“If there’s one takeaway, in my view, of this last set of elections, it’s us clearly reasserting we are for middle class and working-class people and against big corporations and billionaires,” Ryan, a frontline Democrat in the Hudson Valley, told Blue Light News.

In the Senate, Schumer has argued it’s Republicans — not Democrats — who are the party of the privileged as he used the waning weeks of 2024 to speedily confirm Biden-appointed judges. He led the outgoing majority in confirming 235 of them — more than any administration this century.

“For a very long time, the norm was to prioritize judicial nominees who came from a privileged pool. Most of them were prosecutors or from large, corporate law firms. Most were male, most were white,” the 74-year-old Brooklynite said in a floor speech. “But when Senate Democrats entered the majority, we cast a wider net.”

For Schumer, who was also minority leader when Trump first took office in 2017, the next task ahead will involve determining which of Trump’s Cabinet appointees Democrats should reject and confirm. He has yet to offer specifics publicly about the president-elect’s picks, but he told his majority leader replacement Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) that Democrats plan to fully vet each nominee and signaled Republicans should do the same.

The confirmation hearings set to begin this month will present the next big opportunity for Democrats to show where Republicans’ winning approach to the economy could be more perception than reality, especially because Trump has tapped several billionaires with limited qualifications to join his Cabinet.

Perhaps the biggest chance Democrats will have this year to put the GOP on the defensive about the economy will be the yearlong fight over Trump’s signature tax cuts, which expire in December. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, believes the party’s resources should be focused on that legislation.

“The starting point is the biggest proposals that Trump is going to push that showcase the difference between them and us,” Jayapal said in an interview. “So I think of the Trump tax scam as being No. 1, because I think that when you have a Cabinet full of billionaires, this is an opportunity for Democrats to show how we want the economy to work for poor people and working people.”

Newly reelected GOP Rep. Mike Lawler of New York has said he would work with Democrats, including on restoring the state and local tax deduction, or SALT, but he cautioned: “I do encourage my Democratic colleagues not to do the Resistance 2.0.”

Indeed, a full-time resistance is not Democrats’ plan. Stressing areas primed for bipartisanship, like immigration, and areas where they will stand their ground, like Medicare, is much closer to how their strategy is shaping up.

Jeffries and Schumer, who have a solid working relationship as fellow Brooklynites, albeit from different generations, were unanimously reelected as conference leaders. Jeffries is the son of a social worker and substance abuse counselor. Schumer is the son of an exterminator and homemaker. Meeks said in an interview that their backgrounds will help convince voters ahead of the midterms that Democrats understand their economic struggles “because they have lived it themselves.”

But the two New Yorkers are also members of the political establishment.

“People understand that the Democratic Party and Republican Party, a lot of them get money from a lot of the same people, and the money in our politics is corrupting,” said New York Working Families Party co-director Jasmine Gripper. “So it feels like people are fighting for the billionaires, but not fighting for the everyday voter and the everyday American.”

Despite such perceptions, Democratic Party leaders say they’re better positioned to face off against Trump than when he first occupied the White House. Jeffries has sought to underscore that his minority isn’t all that minor. The government shutdown chaos of last month proved that Johnson needs some Democrats to bail him out on key legislative fights. And Jeffries has repeatedly noted that the GOP’s five-seat advantage is far narrower than their margin of 47, when Trump took office in 2017.

“My prediction is that House Democrats under Leader Jeffries are going to be the most powerful minority that we’ve seen in recent history, because the Republican margin of control is so vanishingly small,” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) said in an interview. “It is unlikely that the Republicans will be able to get anything major done without the buy-in of Leader Jeffries and House Democrats.”

Congress

Senate Republicans want a say on Trump’s Iran deal

Published

7 hours ago

June 16, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump is touting a deal that would end the monthslong war with Iran — and potentially ease some of the political headwinds bearing down on Republicans.

GOP lawmakers still have lots of questions.

The absence of publicly released text for the “memorandum of understanding” Vice President JD Vance reportedly signed with Iranian officials Sunday left an information vacuum on Capitol Hill, where senators of both parties were left airing concerns about what the deal might entail.

Even most Republicans agreed: More information needs to come to Congress soon, and any agreement touching on the future of the Iranian nuclear program would have to eventually be subject to a congressional vote.

“If you want a deal to last, it can’t be an executive agreement,” said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.). “We’ve got to have a vote of Congress to be able to solidify [it] long term.”

The bipartisan scrutiny of the long-brewing agreement is a legacy of the last Iran nuclear deal, consummated more than a decade ago by then-President Barack Obama amid a bipartisan uproar over trading sanctions relief and cash concessions to the Iranian regime in return for curbs on its nuclear ambitions.

Trump withdrew from the deal in his first term, and now he is back with an agreement that — pending release of the text and final negotiations yet to come — could end up looking like Obama’s deal. That has raised the hackles of both defense hawks who despised the original agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and Democrats who believe Trump never should have left it in the first place.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of those defense hawks, told reporters that he was “pulling for a deal,” while also making note of serious discrepancies in the terms that have emerged thus far.

“The MOU being described by us sounds really very good; the MOU being described by Iran sounds awful,” Graham said.

“If they can enrich [uranium] anywhere at all, then it’s the same as JCPOA. If they can’t enrich, then that makes it a good deal,” he continued, adding in a separate conversation that he was “skeptical that Iran will ever go there” to cease enrichment.

The Trump administration said it expects release of the memorandum of understanding no later than Friday.

The possibility that Congress would take any kind of vote on the agreement is also a legacy of the 2015 deal. Amid bipartisan concern about the Obama administration’s pursuit of nuclear talks, the GOP-controlled House and Senate that year passed legislation allowing for congressional review of any agreement dealing with the Iranian nuclear program.

That law, however, does not require Congress to approve a deal — it rather gives it the ability to kill a deal via a disapproval resolution that could be subject to presidential veto. That means each chamber would have to effectively muster a two-thirds majority to block Trump, something it did not come close to doing in 2015.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday there is “probably some expectation” that his chamber would ultimately vote on the agreement while declining to weigh in on the particulars.

“I just don’t know enough about it yet, and I don’t think even the people who follow this stuff closely up here know that much about it,” he said, adding that he expected Vance or other administration officials to brief members on the deal at some point.

The lack of specificity was par for the course on Capitol Hill Monday, with many senators expressing exasperation that text of the signed agreement has not yet been released.

“If it’s a secret deal, then how can I take it seriously?” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told reporters.

The agreement reportedly includes reopening the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping, but it’s not clear to what degree Iran will be required to abandon its nuclear program. Vance indicated in a series of interviews that the administration will attempt to ensure Iran does not develop or obtain a nuclear weapon but left details regarding civilian nuclear facilities and potential uranium enrichment unaddressed.

The White House circulated talking points to Hill Republicans Monday touting the deal including that “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon” and “energy prices … are coming down,” according to a copy of the document reviewed by Blue Light News. The administration also argued in the memo that the agreement “beats” the Obama-era agreement.

In the absence of further details, senators mainly agreed that they wanted a chance to formally review and vote on the deal — even as some Republicans predicted the administration would find a way to avoid that happening.

“I don’t expect that to happen,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said about a vote. “They’ll try to write it around the treaty requirements, so I don’t expect we’ll vote on it.”

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said the administration should send the deal to Congress “if they want it to be something other than a political agreement, like the JCPOA was.”

Most congressional Republicans have been eager for Trump to find a way out of the nearly four-month war, which has driven up energy prices ahead of the November elections. Thune predicted Monday that a deal would “have a very positive impact on the economic situation in the country and that obviously will translate into the political situation in the country.”

Some of Trump’s most vocal allies on Capitol Hill praised the agreement Monday.

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) said has had conversations with senior White House officials and he was “very hopeful.” Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), who is likely the next Senate GOP campaign chair, added on X: “President Trump deserves our trust and support as he works to bring peace to the Middle East.”

Democrats were largely keeping their powder dry Monday on how they would handle a vote on the agreement. Some could find it hard to oppose a deal that ends hostilities on negotiated terms roughly similar to what was secured under a Democratic president in 2015.

But plenty of Democrats questioned what was gained by the conflict.

“We still don’t know the details,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor. “The American people need to know exactly what’s in the deal. … We know this for certain: We are worse off than before Trump began his foolish war of choice.”

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

Congress

Thune is ‘hopeful’ Mitch McConnell will return this week

Published

11 hours ago

June 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday he hopes his predecessor as top Republican, Mitch McConnell, returns this week from a hospitalization.

Thune said he had not yet spoken directly with the 84-year-old Kentuckian but is getting “readouts from his staff.”

Asked about McConnell’s condition or if he knew if he would be back this week, Thune told reporters, “I’m hopeful that he’ll be back this week.”

A McConnell spokesperson said Sunday that he had been admitted to the hospital but did not provide details on his condition or why he was hospitalized — a break from recent prior instances where the seven-term senator was hospitalized.

A former McConnell staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity was told the senator was doing much better Monday without any further details on what put him in the hospital.

Daniel Desrochers contributed to this report.

Congress

Senate to confirm Jay Clayton as soon as Thursday

Published

14 hours ago

June 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Senate could vote as soon as Thursday on Jay Clayton’s nomination to serve as director of national intelligence — a lightning speed pace that will necessitate buy-in from all 100 senators.

Confirming Clayton could help shore up enough votes from Democrats to extend a government surveillance program that expired last Friday over opposition to Trump’s pick for acting director, Bill Pulte.

“He will come out of the committee Thursday, at least hopefully, and then if we get consent, we can move,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in an interview Monday about Clayton, who Trump only nominated for the job late last week.

Democrats “ought to be happy with Clayton,” said Thune, adding that he’s a “good” and “solid” pick.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, floated Sunday to CBS News that Clayton could be confirmed this week if every senator cooperates.

Senate Intelligence will hold a hearing Wednesday on Clayton’s nomination. If every member of the panel agrees, he could then get a committee vote Thursday. Confirming Clayton on the Senate floor hours later would require getting agreement from every senator to speed up the process. Opposition from a single member will punt Clayton’s confirmation to next week.

Confirming Clayton Thursday would, crucially, limit — and potentially circumvent — Pulte from becoming acting director of national intelligence, which Trump has slated to take place Friday, June 19.

The president’s decision to put Pulte in charge after Tulsi Gabbard’s departure at the helm of the Office of National Intelligence sparked bipartisan pushback, with Democrats saying they will withhold support for extending Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act while Pulte is in the acting role. Congress allowed the key government spy authority lapse last Friday without a deal.

Trump threw another curveball into a FISA extension over the weekend when he posted on social media that he was against reauthorizing Section 702 unless a GOP elections bill is attached. That bill, known as the SAVE America Act, does not have the votes to get through Congress.

Thune threw cold water Monday on tying the two issues together.

“Yeah, he’s, as you know, passionate about getting that done and wants to use every opportunity to take a shot at it,” Thune said of Trump and his desire to enact the elections bill.

But, Thune said, “we can’t get FISA done” if the policies are linked.