Congress
Inside the Jeffries-Schumer Rupture
Year after year, in shutdown fight after shutdown fight, in debt-limit standoff after debt-limit standoff, you could count on this: While Republicans would be bickering and taking potshots at each other, Democratic leaders would stay in lockstep — giving their members a united front to rally behind.
That all exploded in dramatic fashion this week, culminating Friday at a news conference unlike any I have seen in my career covering Congress, where the No. 1 House Democrat repeatedly dodged questions about whether the No. 1 Senate Democrat was fit to lead.
Should Senate Democrats ditch Chuck Schumer? House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, as the kids say, chose violence: “Next question.”
It was the diss heard around the Capitol and in Democratic circles around the country. It marked the end of decades of relative peace atop the Democratic ranks and exposed the friction between two Brooklyn natives who had worked closely together last year to engineer a new presidential ticket. And it sent a worrying signal to their party: In the future, these two leaders won’t necessarily be singing from the same political hymnal.
The stunning breach comes just as President Donald Trump takes a wrecking ball to the federal bureaucracy and pushes the limits of his constitutional powers. And yet the Jeffries-vs-Schumer drama has emerged as the biggest show on Capitol Hill this week — a distraction for Democrats that is yanking the headlines away from Trump’s tough polling and a spiraling stock market.
Ashley Etienne, a former top communications strategist for ex-Speaker Nancy Pelosi who has vocally criticized Hill Democrats agitating for a shutdown, told me it amounted to a “complete meltdown” for Democrats.
“Trump had given the party a gift — the economy is tanking, his tariff wars are devastating Americans’ pocketbooks, and the courts are finally checking his authority — yet we’ve found a way to squander it,” she said, “To beat Trump, we need clarity of purpose, discipline and coordination. It’s clear none of that exists right now.”
While the Democratic base will hold Jeffries up as a hero, even some Jeffries fans are privately questioning his approach. Before the news conference, I heard from several former House Democratic leadership aides who were puzzled by Jeffries’ posture.
One, a Democratic strategist with close ties to Pelosi granted anonymity to speak frankly, texted me out of the blue to say that he’s “afraid Jeffries is letting the Caucus’ emotional response get the best of him and his relationship with his home state counterpart.”
“Sure we’ve had disagreements in the past … but I cannot recall a moment when our bicameral leadership went this hard against each other,” the person added.
So how did two Democrats of different generations but similar politics and a shared Brooklyn upbringing end up so dramatically at odds?
Many of the Democrats I heard from said it was a long time coming and represented a deeper divide between the two leaders that had been obscured during the hothouse of the 2024 campaign.
“Leader Schumer sees Leader Jeffries as a new leader who needs to learn a lot about the nuances of governing and negotiating,” said the Pelosi-linked strategist. “Jeffries sees Schumer as someone who has lost touch with the sentiment of the base and whose tactics and style are a relic of the past.”
Yes, the clash was exacerbated by the different political realities that the two men were inhabiting. With House Republicans able to put up the votes to fund the government, Jeffries didn’t have to make the hard choice about whether he was leading his members into a shutdown. He could instead use the moment to ingratiate himself with the base, and he did.
Schumer, on the other hand, was the last man standing between the lights being shut off and 2 million federal workers being furloughed without pay. Further compounding the dilemma: real fears that Trump and Elon Musk would have even more power in a shutdown than they would otherwise.
Typically in situations like this, leaders graciously give each other space to do what they need to do — even if they privately disagree. Case in point: Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune have vastly different ideas about the size and scope and strategy for Trump’s agenda — and yet we have not seen them spar publicly.
It’s not a difficult line to walk. Here’s Sen. Mark Warner managing to do it just fine: “I’m a ‘no’ on this — but I have total respect for members who are voting yes, because these were both crappy choices,” the Virginia Democrat said after announcing his opposition to the House GOP bill.
That’s not what happened here, however.
Jeffries and his leadership team worked over the course of days to stir up opposition to the House bill even after it passed, loading pressure on Senate Democrats even as many in the party knew they would eventually have to swallow it.
And all came to a head with Jeffries’ curious choice to return to the Capitol for a news conference Friday, after two days holed up with his caucus at a suburban Virginia resort, knowing full well he would be inundated with questions about Schumer — with pat answers at the ready except to indirectly accuse his Senate counterpart of posing a “false choice” between shutdown and surrender.
Jeffries’ comments at the presser, some House Democrats speculate, were the results of a pressure campaign that had been building at the Democratic retreat. As they huddled in Leesburg, members complained to Jeffries about Schumer throwing in the towel. They felt like they had gone out on a limb to vote against government funding, and they felt Schumer was being weak in refusing to follow suit.
Jeffries also felt blindsided by Schumer’s decision, according to someone close to him. While Schumer gave Jeffries a heads up that he would back the GOP’s funding bill just before announcing his intentions publicly, Jeffries had believed for days that Schumer would likely come down on his side on the vote.
Jeffries’ leadership team first put out a joint statement Thursday hours after Schumer announced his decision, in which they said they would “not be complicit” in advancing the funding bill.
Meanwhile, Jeffries privately argued to his members that they were in the right, invoking the words of Martin Luther King Jr., no less: “The time is always right to do what’s right. This week, House Democrats did what was right. We stood up against Donald Trump,” he said at the retreat, according to my colleague Nicholas Wu.
A person close with Jeffries told me he did not mean to cast aspersions on Schumer’s leadership during the press conference, but was dodging the questions to try to keep the focus on Republicans.
Tell that to Schumer. Now with Jeffries keeping mum on Schumer’s future as Senate Democratic leader, he has essentially given Democrats a green light to question whether he should stay at all.
The dynamic is a major break from the relationship Pelosi and Schumer had back in the day. One of the former leadership aides said those two would have been bending each other’s ears daily to strategize — and certainly never would have let their disagreement spill out into the open.
“I don’t know that Pelosi would have ever gotten into an open confrontation with the Senate like this,” said a senior House aide.
The most surprising part of it, these people told me, is that Jeffries pounced even after Schumer explained that he was trying to do what he believed was right — taking the hard position on behalf of what’s best for the party despite knowing he’d take heat from the base.
“This is the [Mitch] McConnell thing, right?” the former House leadership aide said. “He would take the shit and eat the sandwich — and that’s what you do when you are leader. Pelosi did it, too. These guys [in the House], they don’t have the same experience.”
So why create all this chaos for his counterpart across the Rotunda? The immediate political incentives for Jeffries were clear: He was already getting pummeled by the base for the tepid response from Washington Democrats to Trump and Musk’s slash-and-burn campaign. Given the opportunity to reverse that narrative, he took it.
“Look, it takes a lot of heat off our leadership,” said one senior House Democratic aide when asked about why Jeffries was doing this.
Another senior House Democratic aide told my colleague Nick that the situation allowed front-line Democrats to keep the base happy while someone else took out the trash.
But it may have come at the cost of upending the lockstep relationship between leaders that has historically been essential to parties out of power. The usual pattern in Washington is that nothing unites a party quite like being in the minority — witness Kevin McCarthy’s marriage of convenience to the hard-liner Jim Jordan, who once blocked him from the gavel.
The breakup also underscores the continuing divide in the Democratic Party over how to oppose Trump.
A longtime former House Democratic leadership aide, who was also granted anonymity to speak frankly, called it evidence of “the lack of experience by House leaders.” The aide warned that this could have long-term repercussions.
“The cool sexy thing is, ‘fight, fight, fight.’ … But it’s one thing to gin up pressure on [Sens. Kyrsten] Sinema and [Joe] Manchin,” the person said, referring to the retired Senate moderates. “This is different. …This is gonna be terrible for their relationship.”
A lawyer for Rep. Max Miller took responsibility Tuesday for inadvertently releasing sensitive photos of the Ohio Republican’s daughter in a trove of material Miller published Sunday in a bid to defend himself against domestic abuse claims.
The attorney, Aaron Minc, took responsibility for the photo being released and called it “completely unintentional and a mistake” after a lawyer for Miller’s ex-wife, Emily Moreno, accused Miller of disseminating the daughter’s name and one image that “could be considered Child Sexual Abuse Material.”
“I am solely responsible for what happened,” Minc said in a statement. “I was the only person responsible for assembling, creating, reviewing, adding, deleting, redacting, or making any changes to the information and files that were in this folder.”
Minc apologized to Miller, Moreno and their families but also decried Moreno for creating “a media spectacle regarding this unfortunate mistake … as a means to try to gain leverage in court and distract from the underlying evidence that exonerates Mr. Miller from the false allegations he is accused of.”
Miller posted the documents online Sunday after delivering a livestreamed defense against the claims leveled by his former wife, Emily Moreno. He has declined all allegations of wrongdoing, which include pouring hot water on his ex-wife, holding a gun to her head and breaking his daughter’s collarbone.
Moreno’s lawyer Subodh Chandra claimed that the documents left the daughter’s name unredacted and contained “private images,” including one where “the daughter’s genitals appear to be visible,” according to a letter to Minc obtained by Blue Light News. Chandra noted that the photo was later removed.
“The post with the link to the folder — published under your name — garnered over 204,000 views from the time it was posted until this afternoon,” Chandra wrote.
The letter from Chandra asks Minc, “Whose idea was it to share this intimate image of the child?” among other questions, giving a Wednesday close-of-business deadline.
The letter marks the latest escalation in the legal battle between Miller and Moreno, who is the daughter of Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno. After Miller delivered his livestreamed defense Sunday, the GOP senator denounced his former son-in-law, saying he should not serve in the House and needs to seek professional help.
Miller is running for reelection in a competitive Cleveland-area seat. He has until Wednesday to withdraw from the ballot and allow for a crash primary to replace him.
Senate Republicans are facing a put up or shut up moment to move ahead with a party-line bill this week.
Those who want to advance a budget blueprint now will use Tuesday’s GOP closed-door lunch as a last-ditch effort to rally their colleagues behind what’s guaranteed to be a politically heavy lift. But prospects are waning with each passing hour, as lawmakers face a slew of other priorities, including plotting the path for a stopgap funding patch.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday it’s possible members stay through the weekend or return next week to knock out lingering tasks, delaying the start of a five-week recess.
“It looks to me at least like there’s a good possibility that it’ll take us more than Thursday or Friday to get through the things we have to get through,” he told reporters.
Budget Republicans are meeting separately Tuesday morning to talk about advancing a framework in the Senate, but Chair Ron Johnson declined to say Monday whether he would release a budget resolution this week — a necessary step for the chamber to make any movement forward.
Johnson said he’s “working with leadership,” who he acknowledges has been prioritizing government funding.
Meanwhile, Sen. John Kennedy told reporters Monday he didn’t expect any budget resolutions on the floor this week because “I don’t think my leadership wants to do it.”
“As I’ve said before, you got to have the votes to get on it,” Thune said Monday, while stopping short of nixing the possibility of a vote this week.
Thune also may need to deal with GOP hard-liners demanding votes on the SAVE America Act as frustration percolates over whether the budget measure’s election provisions comply with Senate rules for the reconciliation process.
Sen. Roger Marshall joined Sen. Mike Lee Monday in saying the chamber shouldn’t depart without passing the elections bill, and Marshall said he’d be willing to object to adjourning the chamber over it.
What else we’re watching:
— BLANCHE HAS MORE REPUBLICANS TO CONVINCE: Todd Blanche’s prospects for confirmation as attorney general were much improved Monday — but he’s not in the clear yet. The acting attorney general secured votes from the previously reluctant Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis over the weekend, all but certainly giving him the votes he needs to advance out of Judiciary Tuesday morning. But he still needs to get through the full Senate, where he can only lose two Republican votes given likely unified opposition from Senate Democrats and Sen. Mitch McConnell’s absence.
— GOP SENATORS BREAK SILENCE ON MILLER: Multiple Senate Republicans are calling for Rep. Max Miller to step down from office amid domestic abuse allegations. The outcry comes after Sen. Bernie Moreno — father of Miller’s ex-wife, Emily Moreno — said in a statement Sunday Miller should not serve in the House. Miller has denied the allegations. The surge of support from Moreno’s colleagues marks the first significant crack in a wall of GOP silence regarding the claims. Miller has until Wednesday to withdraw from the ballot and allow a crash primary to select a replacement.
Jordain Carney, Chris Marquette, Riley Rogerson and Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.
Senate Republicans are hopeful they will be able to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general by the end of the week. But he’s not in the clear yet, as several undecided GOP senators continue to mull it over.
Blanche’s prospects were nonetheless much improved Monday — less than 24 hours after some GOP senators were predicting he was unlikely to get confirmed as a war of words escalated between President Donald Trump and holdout Republicans.
But then Blanche cut a deal with Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) late Sunday night to clarify a controversial settlement between Trump and the IRS, giving Blanche the votes he needed to get through the Judiciary Committee Tuesday.
He still needs to get through the full Senate, where he can only lose two Republican votes given likely unified opposition from Senate Democrats and Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell’s absence.
Several GOP senators who raised alarms last week about Trump’s public threats to rekindle the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” Cornyn and Tillis worked to kill declined to say Monday how they’d vote on Blanche.But in a positive sign for the acting attorney general, several are looking to Tillis and Cornyn, who are now supporting him, as a lodestar for their own deliberations ahead of likely floor votes later this week.
“I think certainly the fact that he has signed this order, basically disbanding [the fund] — that’s a pretty good step,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), before adding that she would “like to find out a little bit more about the negotiations.”
Murkowski said she plans to speak with Tillis and Cornyn.
“I’m curious about what went on over the weekend,” she said.
Blanche has made efforts to ingratiate himself with Murkowski. In July, he trekked to Alaska, in part at Murkowski’s urging, to better understand public safety and tribal jurisdiction matters. He recently announced a nine-figure settlement benefiting Alaska natives’ health care that Murkowski was pleased with.
“I just appreciated the fact that he went to the state,” Murkowski said. “He was only there for two days, but I had asked him in my initial meeting to go up to the state.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who like Cornyn lost his primary earlier this year to a Trump-backed challenger, declined to discuss Blanche Monday. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) added that she also wanted to talk to Tillis and Cornyn and read the agreement they struck with Blanche.
“Until I do that, I am not going to make a judgement,” Collins said.
Another Republican who hasn’t yet committed to supporting Blanche is Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah). He met with Blanche last week but hasn’t yet weighed in since Sunday night’s agreement. He had indicated before Sunday’s deal that he would be closely tracking Tillis and Cornyn during Tuesday’s Judiciary Committee meeting.
Getting Blanche’s nomination on a trajectory to pass the Senate this week would relieve some of the pressure on Senate Republicans, who are juggling a long to-do list and a shrinking runway to get it done. Trump, amid last week’s standoff, demanded that Senate Republicans confirm Blanche, including warning during a Cabinet meeting that they “will never get anybody like him.”
Tillis told reporters Monday that “the back-and-forth over the weekend was not helpful” but that the talks “ended up at an acceptable place.”
If Blanche gets out of the Judiciary Committee Tuesday as expected, the soonest the Senate could confirm him as attorney general is Saturday unless Democrats unanimously agree to help speed up a final vote.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday that he’s hopeful the Senate will be able to confirm Blanche but didn’t give an ironclad guarantee as the remaining undecided members review the agreement and talk to Tillis and Cornyn.
“I’d like to figure out a way, a path forward to get him done,” Thune said.
Democrats are likely to use Tuesday’s Judiciary Committee meeting, and the days leading up to a full Senate vote, to hammer Republicans over the deal Cornyn and Tillis struck. Many predicted Monday that Trump wouldn’t stick by the agreement that limits the scope of the IRS settlement and nullifies the $1.8 billion payout fund.
“There are so many loopholes. I wouldn’t be surprised if the president went ahead with the program,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) warned the remaining undecided Republicans about the deal: “I don’t think that that commitment is worth what it’s written on.”
While Democrats can drag Blanche’s confirmation into the weekend, they aren’t able to prevent him from being confirmed if at least 50 GOP senators support him. But they are determined to use the debate to hit at one of their central midterm campaign messages — corruption — with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer calling Blanche the “architect of Trump’s grifts.”
Tillis suggested Monday he still has questions about who in Trump’s orbit played a role in the roller coaster negotiations over the past week. While the retiring senator is prepared to support Blanche, he said that he’s “not done analyzing the anatomy of this deal and who played a role in there.”
“I’m not going to speak for other members, but I think that it’ll be a solid vote,” he added about Blanche’s chances of being confirmed.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), who appeared skeptical during a Sunday morning talk show interview that Blanche would get through the Senate, did a 180 Monday when asked whether he would get confirmed: “Yes, I do.”
Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.
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