Leader Jeffries on MS NOW: “republicans in the House and the Senate ARE in FREE FALL”

May 21st, 2026 | Press Release LEADER JEFFRIES ON MS NOW: “REPUBLICANS IN THE HOUSE AND THE SENATE ARE IN FREE FALL” Today, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries appeared on MS NOW’s All In with Chris Hayes, where he emphasized that while Republicans are scattered as they prioritize the corrupt interests of the Trump administration, House Democrats remain committed to making life better for the American people. CHRIS HAYES: Congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York, of course, is the Democratic Leader in the House, and he joins me now. Well, a wild day today. Take me through what happened today in terms of that War Powers vote. There’s a rowdy scene on the Floor there. What—I was trying to follow it. The procedure can always be a little complicated, and War Powers Resolutions are kind of their own thing procedurally. But what happened today? LEADER JEFFRIES: So, War Powers Resolutions are privileged, and once they’re noticed—and this will be the fourth War Powers Resolution that we will have brought to the Floor of the House of Representatives—the majority does have the discretion to hold that vote within 48 hours, effectively. They can hold it, in this instance, on a Wednesday, a Thursday or a Friday. And so, once they realized that they were going to lose the vote, and then canceled Friday’s session, they were able to take the War Powers Resolution down from the agenda, and now they have to schedule it for when we return in early June. So it was legislative trickery, Chris, because they know that we were going to win the War Powers Resolution, because this is a reckless and costly war of choice. Every single Democrat was going to vote for it, and we had a handful of Republicans that were ready to break from Trump and Johnson and vote with us. CHRIS HAYES: And they were breaking—I saw the one no vote that had been on this, a retiring Democrat named Jared Golden in Maine was going to be a yes, was going to vote with the Democrats, so you had that vote locked up. And the defecting Republicans are new, right? Because you haven’t been able to pass it before. LEADER JEFFRIES: That’s right. The defecting Republicans are new, although, as you may recall, last week, when we brought a War Powers Resolution to the Floor, it was effectively a tie. And when there’s a tie, the legislation doesn’t move forward and pass. But Jared Golden was a no vote, and he was going to be a yes vote. Had he been a yes vote last week, we would have passed it. CHRIS HAYES: So, you’ve also seen what’s happened in the Senate. Obviously, they’re moving first on that reconciliation bill through the Senate, and then they were going to come move it to the House. What’s your reaction to the developments there? They’ve lost a War Powers vote. They’re pulling the reconciliation bill. They pulled the ballroom funding, apparently. And I think Thune sent them home because he’s worried about Democratic amendments that would block the slush fund. LEADER JEFFRIES: That’s absolutely correct. And Republicans right now, in both the House and the Senate, are in free fall. Earlier today, led by Senator Schumer, myself, we gathered in front of the Capitol steps on the Senate side and made clear our uniform opposition to this reckless Republican budget. We believe that taxpayer dollars should be used to make life more affordable for the American people, not to brutalize or kill American citizens , as was done by ICE in the context of what happened in Minneapolis with Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good. And in the face of that uniform opposition and the fact that Senate Democrats were going to be in a position to bring multiple amendments to the Floor today, John Thune clearly adopted the strategy of we better get out of town before sundown, because we don’t want to face the heat. CHRIS HAYES: So something we’ve been covering on this program is it still seems very clear that if you analyze the behavior of Donald Trump, the people around him, and even the Republican Party more broadly, they’re not chasing the median voter, right? Trump seems, couldn’t care less. I mean, he seems to—he cares about his ballroom, and he wants his family to get rich, and wants his slush fund. What they do want to do is essentially try to rig the midterms through this totally unprecedented effort to redistrict right before the election, and in this case, recently, essentially go after an attempt to purge possibly every last Black elected representative in the Old South. Yesterday, the South Carolina House passed a map that would eliminate James Clyburn’s seat in a state that’s, I think, 30% African American. You’ve been very outspoken about this, but how do you see where this is right now, and what do you do about it from your perch? LEADER JEFFRIES: Well, we have ongoing litigation right now in Florida, in Wisconsin and in Alabama. Once those lawsuits conclude, we’ll have a complete sense of where things stand. But it’s important for everybody to know we began this Congress only three seats short, meaning Republicans had the narrowest majority of any party since 1930, the Great Depression. And they were on their way, of course, to losing that majority, so they launched this unprecedented gerrymandering scheme, aided and abetted by the United States Supreme Court in terms of gutting the Voting Rights Act. That said, when it’s all said and done, Republicans are only going to be able to net a handful of additional seats, meaning perhaps it’s the case that we have to flip five or six seats, as opposed to the three where we originally started , given all of the other activity that has happened and the fact that Republicans have engaged in some dummymanders across the country, including in Texas, where they’re not going to get five seats. They’ll be lucky if they get three, and we’re going to go get all five from California. And so, Chris, at the end of the day, in 2018, we needed to win 24 seats in Trump’s first midterm election. We won 40, and 31 of those were in districts that Donald Trump had just won. This time around, we’ll only need to win a fraction of that amount, and we’re going to do it. CHRIS HAYES: I saw today there’s been calls for—the CBC, Congressional Black Caucus, has called for athletes to boycott the SEC Conference, where schools like Ole Miss and Tennessee and the states that are contemplating this, the Gamecocks in South Carolina, the SEC, in sort of opposition to this. It’s a kind of interesting point of leverage. And you echoed that today. Tell me about why you think that makes sense. LEADER JEFFRIES: Well, we are proud to stand with the NAACP that has appropriately called for Black athletes to abandon SEC schools when these schools are in states that are targeting, in an unprecedented fashion, Black political representation. And our view is that if there’s no representation, there should be no athletic or sports participation. And this comes from a long line of African American athletes rising to the occasion. This is a Muhammad Ali moment. This is a Bill Russell moment. It’s a Jackie Robinson moment. We understand that it’s going to require a level of courage and character and conviction. And these are personal decisions that will have to be made. But it certainly is our view that there will be athletes who are going to make a decision based on this racially egregious gerrymandering that’s taking place, a return to Jim Crow-like tactics in the South, that there will be Black athletes who will make a decision to take their talents elsewhere. CHRIS HAYES: House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, after an extremely busy, wild, strange day on Capitol Hill today, thanks for coming on our show tonight. LEADER JEFFRIES: Thank you. Full interview can be watched here . ### Back to News Share: Facebook Twitter