{"id":21772,"date":"2026-04-23T16:17:55","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T16:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/junior-reporters-pepper-hakeem-jeffries-with-tough-questions\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T16:17:55","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T16:17:55","slug":"junior-reporters-pepper-hakeem-jeffries-with-tough-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/junior-reporters-pepper-hakeem-jeffries-with-tough-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Junior reporters\u2019 pepper Hakeem Jeffries with tough questions"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Hakeem Jeffries celebrated Take Your Child to Work Day by taking questions from the children of the Capitol Hill press corps, but it got heavy fast.<\/p>\n<p>The first question: \u201cWhy do voters view Democrats so poorly?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jeffries responded with a lengthy explanation of broad voter distrust in institutions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere&#8217;s a great frustration that applies to every organized institution in this country, and Democrats are not immune from that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>But, Jeffries added, \u201cConsistently in state after state and race after race and contest after contest, irrefutably, the American people are choosing the Democratic Party.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He fielded other tough questions from the \u201cjunior reporters\u201d in the room, including if he would have voted to expel Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick if she hadn\u2019t resigned earlier this week.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe did the right thing in stepping down,\u201d Jeffries said.<\/p>\n<p>Other questions from kids in the room did tackle lighter subjects.<\/p>\n<p>Jeffries\u2019 favorite candy? Sugar-free Hershey&#8217;s chocolate.<\/p>\n<p>What did he want to be when he grew up? A point guard for the Knicks or a hip-hop star.<\/p>\n<p>Does he think the Yankees will win the World Series? \u201cHope springs eternal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And, simply, \u201cWhat\u2019s next?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To that Jeffries said: \u201cAs Democrats, we&#8217;re fighting one battle after another, pushing back against the extremism that we believe is being released on the American people by Donald Trump and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hakeem Jeffries celebrated Take Your Child to Work Day by taking questions from the children of the Capitol Hill press corps, but it got heavy fast. The first question: \u201cWhy do voters view Democrats so poorly?\u201d Jeffries responded with a lengthy explanation of broad voter distrust in institutions. \u201cThere&#8217;s a great frustration that applies to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21772\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}