Greene County Democrat

Tag: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries

  • Newswire : Senate passes deal to reopen government after Shutdown

    By Sahil Kapur, Frank Thorp V, Melanie Zanona 
    and Julie Tsirkin, HBCU News

    WASHINGTON — The Senate passed legislation Monday night to reopen the government and end the record-long shutdown after eight Democrats broke with their party and joined Republicans to break the logjam.
    The vote was 60-40, with every Republican except Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky voting in favor of the measure.
    The measure now goes to the House, which could vote as early as Wednesday to pass the package and send it to President Donald Trump, who said Monday that he supports the bipartisan deal.
    Senate passage came after a long vote series to reject several amendments and package the components of a deal into one.
    The legislation includes a “minibus” of three full-year appropriations bills, including a full funding of SNAP benefits through the end of next September, and keeps much of the government open on a short-term basis through Jan. 30.
    But in a major concession for Democrats, the deal does not include an extension of expiring subsidies under Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, after Republicans held firm against continuing those funds. That means more than 20 million Americans could see their premiums spike next year.
    “The American people have now awoken to Trump’s health care crisis,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Monday before voting against the legislation. “Democrats demanded that we find a way to fix this crisis and quickly, but Republicans have refused to move an inch. So, I cannot support the Republican bill that’s on the floor because it fails to do anything of substance to fix America’s health care crisis.”
    The Senate deal with Republicans was struck by Sens. Angus King, I-Maine, Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Maggie Hassan, D-N.H. Joining them to support the measure were Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada; Dick Durbin of Illinois; John Fetterman of Pennsylvania; Tim Kaine of Virginia.
    “This was the only deal on the table,” Shaheen told reporters before the vote. “It was our best chance to reopen the government and immediately begin negotiations to extend the ACA tax credits that tens of millions of Americans rely on to keep costs down.”
    Durbin said that while he shares other Democrats’ misgivings about the Trump administration, he “cannot accept a strategy that wages political battle” at the expense of paychecks for federal workers by keeping the government closed.
    Despite backing down on their main demand during the shutdown, the Democrats walked away with a promise by Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to vote on an ACA funding bill by the end of the second week of December. But there’s no guarantee that will achieve the 60 votes necessary to pass, which is why most Democrats voted against the negotiated bill.
    King said reopening the government boosts the prospects of an ACA funding extension to “maybe 50%,” but he added, “I can’t guarantee a result. Nobody can.”
    And in a bad omen for that cause, all 53 Senate Republicans voted Monday against including a simple one-year extension of the ACA funds, proposed by Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., in the funding bill. That vote came in the run-up to final passage.
    Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., held a conference call with House Republicans on Monday morning and laid out a potential timetable for votes this week after the chamber has been out of session since Sept. 19, according to four sources on the call.
    Johnson said he’s hoping to vote as soon as Wednesday on the Senate’s deal to re-open the government. Still, even though the vote timing is fluid, members were encouraged on the call to start getting back to D.C. as soon as possible given the air travel delays.
    The speaker also vowed that, before the House votes, he will swear in Democratic Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, who won her special election on Sept. 23. The House has been out of session since Sept. 19 in an unusually long and unscheduled recess.
    Following her swearing-in, the House will then vote on a rule for the Senate deal, followed by final passage, and then the House will leave town again, Johnson told members on the call.
    While the House vote is expected to be tight and leadership is still in the process of doing a whip check, Johnson expressed confidence that they’d be able to pass the Senate’s government funding package, the sources said.
    House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said House Democrats are “focused on dealing with the bill that’s coming over from the Senate to the House, and we’re going to fight hard to defeat it.”
    Asked if the shutdown was worth it, Jeffries said Democrats “waged a battle on behalf of the American people.” He added that “the fight lives on.”
    Jeffries deferred to House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., when asked if all Democrats will vote against the bill.

  • Newswire : The lie about immigrants and America’s debt to them  

    By Jason Roberts, NNPA

    There is a lie moving through America. It creeps through congressional halls and across television screens, whispering that undocumented immigrants live freely off the sweat of the American taxpayer. It is a lie told by those who know better and repeated by those who are too ignorant—or too hateful—to care. And while the lie spreads, the truth is being brutalized on the streets.
    According to data from the Cato Institute, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has intensified its war on peaceful people. As of this past summer, ICE was arresting 1,100 percent more noncriminal immigrants than it did in 2017. By June 2025, its agents were seizing nearly 3,800 men, women, and children each week, most with no criminal record at all. They are landscapers, caregivers, construction workers, restaurant staff—the quiet hands that build this nation’s comfort. Yet ICE agents, masked and faceless, now stalk them at bus stops, schools, and home improvement stores. These are not arrests made in the name of safety—they are acts of terror disguised as law.

    The architects of this cruelty justify it with another lie: that these people are bleeding America dry, taking what they have not earned. But every ledger, every study, every dollar collected proves the opposite.

    Undocumented immigrants, forbidden from accessing almost every public benefit, pour billions into the U.S. economy. In 2022 alone, they paid $96.7 billion in taxes—nearly $9,000 each—into the same systems that exclude them. They paid $25.7 billion into Social Security, even though the law bars them from ever receiving a penny of it. Their effective state and local tax rate, 8.9 percent, exceeds that paid by the top 1 percent of U.S. earners. And still, politicians like J.D. Vance and Donald Trump tell America that these workers are stealing from it.
    They insist that Democrats shut down the government to hand health care to “illegal immigrants.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called that accusation what it is: a lie. “Nowhere have Democrats suggested that we’re interested in changing federal law,” Jeffries said. “The question for the president is whether he’s interested in protecting the health care of the American people.”
    NBC News confirmed that the GOP’s narrative was false. So did NPR, which reported plainly: “People living in the U.S. who are undocumented do not qualify for Medicaid. They do not qualify for tax credits on the ACA health care exchanges.” But facts no longer seem to matter. Lies feed fear, and fear feeds votes. While the powerful argue over fiction, the reality on the ground has become unbearable.
    Cato’s research shows that fewer than 6 percent of immigrants detained by ICE had violent convictions. In Los Angeles, more than 70 percent of those taken in early June had no criminal record at all. One senior White House adviser was quoted as asking ICE agents, “Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?”—as if immigrant workers were quarry to be hunted.
    This is what America has become: a nation that criminalizes the hands that feed it. While undocumented families harvest crops, clean hospital rooms, and care for the elderly, their wages are taxed to fund public schools, emergency services, and the very agencies that terrorize them. They pay, but they cannot claim. They build, but they cannot belong. Then came the 2025 tax and budget law—Trump’s latest cruelty written into policy. It stripped 1.4 million lawfully present immigrants, including refugees and asylees, of their health coverage. It punished not only the undocumented but also those who had done everything right. America, it seems, has decided that suffering is the price of entry.

    What the numbers reveal is not an invasion—it is a sacrifice. Undocumented immigrants have become the unacknowledged benefactors of a country that feeds on their labor while denying their humanity. They are propping up Social Security, sustaining state budgets, and fueling industries that would collapse without them. And yet they are chased, detained, and deported under the pretense of justice. The real theft in America is not committed by the undocumented. It is committed by those who steal their dignity, their freedom, and the truth. This is not a debate about borders. It is a reckoning with the lies we tell to justify cruelty. The undocumented are not taking from America—they are keeping it alive.
    And one day, when the history of this era is written, the numbers will still speak. They will tell of millions who worked, paid, and gave everything they could, while a government lied about their worth. They will tell how America, built by the hands of the unfree, once again turned its back on the very people who held it upright. The lie about immigrants is as old as America itself. But the truth endures: they are not our burden—they are our debt.

     

     

  • Newswire : ‘Bloody Sunday’ 60th anniversary marked in Selma with remembrances and concerns about the future

    State troopers swing billy clubs to break up a civil rights voting march in Selma, Ala., on Bloody Sunday.AP files

    By The Associated Press

    SELMA, Ala. — Charles Mauldin was near the front of a line of voting rights marchers walking in pairs across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965.
    The marchers were protesting white officials’ refusal to allow Black Alabamians to register to vote, as well as the killing days earlier of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a minister and voting rights organizer who was shot by a state trooper in nearby Marion.
    At the apex of the span over the Alabama River, they saw what awaited them: a line of state troopers, deputies and men on horseback. After they approached, law enforcement gave a warning to disperse and then unleashed violence.
    “Within about a minute or a half, they took their billy clubs, holding it on both ends, began to push us back, back us up, and then they began to beat men, women and children, and tear gas men, women and children, and cattle prod men, women and children viciously,” said Mauldin, who was 17 at the time.
    Mauldin is the founder of the Saturday morning ‘Footsoldiers Breakfast’ at the Bridge Crossing Jubilee, at which persons who participated in the march tell their stories
    Selma on Sunday marked the 60th anniversary of the clash that became known as Bloody Sunday. The attack shocked the nation and galvanized support for the U.S. Voting Rights Act of 1965. The annual commemoration paid homage to those who fought to secure voting rights for Black Americans and brought calls to recommit to the fight for equality.
    For foot soldiers of the movement, the celebration comes amid concerns about new voting restrictions and the Trump administration’s effort to remake federal agencies they said helped make America a democracy for all.
    “This country was not a democracy for Black folks until that happened,” Mauldin said of voting rights. “And we’re still constantly fighting to make that a more concrete reality for ourselves.”
    Speaking at the pulpit of the city’s historic Tabernacle Baptist Church, the site of the first mass meeting of the voting rights movement, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said what happened in Selma changed the nation. But he said the 60th anniversary comes at a time when there is “trouble all around” and some “want to whitewash our history.” But he said like the marchers of Bloody Sunday, they must keep going.
    “At this moment, faced with trouble on every side, we’ve got to press on,” Jeffries said to the crowd that included the Rev. Jesse Jackson, multiple members of Congress and others gathered for the commemoration.
    U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., said they are gathering in Selma for the 60th anniversary “at a time when the vote is in peril.”

    Sewell noted the number of voting restrictions introduced since the U.S. Supreme Court, in Shelby County vs. Holder, effectively abolished a key part of the Voting Rights Act that required jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination to pre-clear new voting laws with the Justice Department
    Sewell this week reintroduced legislation to restore the requirement. The proposal has repeatedly stalled in Congress. The legislation is named for John Lewis, the late Georgia congressman who was at the lead of the Bloody Sunday march.
    The annual celebration will conclude with a ceremony and march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. At the time, the Bloody Sunday marchers walked in pairs across the Selma bridge. Mauldin was in the third pair of the line led by Lewis and Hosea Williams.
    “We had steeled our nerves to a point where we were so determined that we were willing to confront. It was past being courageous. We were determined, and we were indignant,” Mauldin recalled in an interview with The Associated Press. Mauldin, who took a blow to the head, said he believes law enforcement officers were trying to incite a riot as they attacked marchers.
    Kirk Carrington was just 13 on Bloody Sunday. As the violence erupted, a white man on a horse wielding a stick a chased him all the way back to the public housing projects in Selma where his family lived.
    Carrington said he started marching after witnessing his father get belittled by his white employers when his father returned from service in World War II. Standing in Tabernacle Baptist Church where he was trained in non-violent protest tactics 60 years earlier, he was brought to tears thinking about what the people of his city achieved.
    “When we started marching, we did not know the impact we would have in America. We knew after we got older and got grown that the impact it not only had in Selma, but the impact it had in the entire world,” Carrington said.
    Dr. Verdell Lett Dawson, who grew up in Selma, remembers a time when she was expected to lower her gaze if she passed a white person on the street to avoid making eye contact.
    Dawson and Mauldin said they are concerned about the potential dismantling of the Department of Education and other changes to federal agencies. Trump has pushed to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs within the federal government.
    Support from the federal government “is how Black Americans have been able to get justice, to get some semblance of equality, because left to states’ rights, it is going to be the white majority that’s going to rule,” Dawson said.“That that’s a tragedy of 60 years later: what we are looking at now is a return to the 1950s,” Dawson said.

  • Newswire : House Republican budget plan targets vital services, hits Black and marginalized communities hardest

    Food store with accepting SNAP – food stamps

    By Stacy M. Brown
    NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent


    The House Republican budget passed Tuesday proposes sweeping cuts to health care, food assistance, and education programs, aiming to fund $4.5 trillion in tax breaks over the next decade. The cuts include $880 billion from Medicaid, $230 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and $330 billion from student loan programs through 2034. These reductions come amid a push to extend the 2017 Trump-era tax cuts and other tax relief measures benefiting wealthy households and corporations.
    According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the cost of extending tax breaks for the top 1% of earners—amounting to $1.1 trillion through 2034—mirrors the proposed Medicaid and SNAP cuts. Wealthy households making $743,000 or more annually would receive an average tax cut of $62,000, exceeding the median income of most of the 72 million people covered by Medicaid.
    House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) criticized the proposal, stating, “The House Republican budget resolution will set in motion the largest Medicaid cut in American history.” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) called the plan “a blueprint for American decline” that prioritizes billionaires over working families.
    The proposed cuts would disproportionately affect Black, Latino, Indigenous, and rural communities, which have higher rates of poverty and reliance on programs like Medicaid and SNAP. The Kaiser Family Foundation states that over 80 million Americans are enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP. Cuts to these programs could force states to shoulder more costs, leaving millions uninsured.
    The budget would also end enhancements to the Affordable Care Act’s premium tax credits, raising health care premiums for more than 20 million people. Student loan borrowers face higher repayment costs, further burdening low-income families.
    While the House plan calls for increased border security and military spending, its projected tax cuts—renewing the Trump tax cuts and implementing no taxes on tips, overtime, and Social Security—would swell the federal deficit. Despite these cuts, the budget projects the national debt limit will be reached by November 2026.
    Only Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) voted against the budget, citing concerns over worsening deficits. “If the Republican budget passes, the deficit gets worse, not better,” Massie posted on social media.

  • Newswire : Undeterred, Black Democrats staunchly defend Biden amid calls for him to drop out of race

    President Biden meeting with Congressional Black Caucus in the Oval Office in February 2024

    Editors at NewsOne

    
Black voices are conspicuously missing among the growing voices of prominent House Democrats calling for President Joe Biden to drop out of the race following an unfortunate debate against Donald Trump nearly two weeks ago.
    In fact, Black Democrats are the ones who are most staunchly defending Biden, 81, and urging Party unity amid mainstream media reports amplifying that possibility more than the calls for Trump to also drop out of the race after being convicted of 34 felonies.
    On Monday, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) held a call with Biden to express their confidence as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. “None of the members who attended the virtual meeting expressed any doubts to the president about his electability or said he should step aside,” the New York Times reported. Also on Monday, CBC Chair and Nevada Rep. Steve Horsford said in a statement that “Biden is the nominee.”
    That came one day after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries hosted a similar call with fellow House Democrats to help convince them to keep supporting Biden’s candidacy. Jeffries told the Times that he “has not changed” his opinion about Biden’s candidacy.
    “I made clear publicly, the day after the debate, that I support President Joe Biden and the Democratic ticket,” Jeffries said.
    Over the weekend, longtime California Congresswoman Maxine Waters displayed the type of loyalty to Biden and the Democratic Party that has become emblematic of Black voters for decades.
    “I don’t care what anybody says — it ain’t going to be no other Democratic candidate,” Waters told attendees at the Essence Fest in New Orleans this past weekend. “It’s going to be Biden.”
    South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, largely seen as Biden’s closest adviser who is Black, has also spoken in no uncertain terms about the president’s reelection bid.
    Beyond Congress, Black Democratic leaders like former President Barack Obama and the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus have expressed their support for Biden to remain in the race.
    That same kind of ardent defense contrasts with at least nine House Democrats — all of whom are not Black — reportedly calling for Biden to step aside. Washington State Rep. Adam Smith said on Monday that Biden should drop out “as soon as possible” and that “there would be a huge sigh of relief amongst just about every Democrat in the House” if he did so.
    Biden, for his part, has been adamant about remaining in the race.
    The unwavering support from Black lawmakers for the president comes as a new poll found that Vice President Kamala Harris would fare better in an election against Trump than Biden. The poll also found that other politicians whose names have been floated as potential candidates replacing Biden on the Democratic ticket – Govs. Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom – would lose against Trump. Whitmer has said she wouldn’t run.
    On the flip side, calls have grown for Harris to be the Democratic nominee in the aftermath of the debate late last month.
    Reuters, citing “seven senior sources at the Biden campaign, the White House and the Democratic National Committee with knowledge of current discussions on the topic,” reported last week that Harris, 59, is the “top alternative” presidential candidate if Biden steps aside.
    Former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Julián Castro, who served in President Barack Obama’s administration with Biden, also called on the president to allow a “stronger Democratic candidate” to run for the Party’s nomination.
    “Defeating Donald Trump is too important for Democrats to do nothing,” Castro posted last week in a thread on X, formerly Twitter. “With the understanding that the stakes are so high, President Biden should make the difficult decision to withdraw from the race.” Castro added that now is the time to act, noting that “Time is running out.”
    Castro floated Harris’ name as a possible replacement who he said has “a better chance of winning” against Donald Trump than Biden. That same sentiment was also expressed by Michael Arceneaux, whose new op-ed for NewsOne makes the case for Harris to be the nominee.
    “Biden can spend the next week pleading his case. But if he fails, he should reconsider being the bridge candidate he promised to be and step aside for his running mate,” Arceneaux wrote.
    Concerns remain about Biden’s candidacy regardless, with longtime Democratic strategist James Carville predicting that the president will drop out of the race “Whether he is ready to admit it or not.” Carville recommended in a New York Times op-ed for Democrats to have “a plan” in place when that happens.

  • Newswire : Stamp honoring late Rep. John Lewis unveiled in official ceremony at Capital Hill

     Forever stamp honoring Congressman John Lewis


    By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

    House leaders joined forces with the U.S. Postal Service to reveal a commemorative stamp paying tribute to the late Rep. John Lewis on Wednesday. The unveiling occurred during a special event held at Capitol Hill.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Linda Earley Chastang, Lewis’ former chief of staff, were the prominent figures present.
According to a press release from the Postal Service, the stamp showcases a photograph of Lewis captured by Marco Grob for Time magazine in 2013.
The design also incorporates a 1963 image taken by Steve Schapiro outside a nonviolent protest workshop, featured in the selvage or margin of the stamp pane.
Officials called the combination of photographs a poignant reminder of Lewis’ tireless commitment to civil rights and his instrumental role in the nonviolent protest movement.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, addressing the gathering, announced that the official dedication ceremony for the John Lewis Forever stamp is scheduled for July 21 at Morehouse College in Atlanta.
DeJoy shared plans to rename Atlanta’s main post office in honor of the late congressman, acknowledging Lewis’ immeasurable contributions to the nation.
“Our nation certainly benefited from his fearlessness and his unfailing willingness to get into good trouble,” DeJoy stated.
McCarthy emphasized the significance of Lewis’ actions during the introduction of President Barack Obama at the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Alabama, back in 2015.
McCarthy, a Republican from California, acknowledged the power of Lewis’ words and how they transcended party lines. “I may be in a different party; I may have different views, but I’m an American,” McCarthy asserted.
“I got goosebumps and tears thinking how far we had come and thinking that John Lewis led the march on that bridge and led the introduction that day.”
Jeffries, the Democratic Representative from New York, expressed his belief that the stamp would forever symbolize Lewis’ significant contributions and serve as a tribute to his unwavering dedication as the conscience of Congress. He called Lewis one of the country’s greatest sons and deemed it fitting for such an influential figure to be recognized with a Forever stamp.
Lewis, a Democrat representing Georgia, served in the House of Representatives from 1987 until his passing on July 17, 2020, at 80, after battling stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
Known as the “conscience of Congress,” Lewis dedicated his life to advocating for peaceful protests and equality.
An original member of the Freedom Riders, Lewis played a pivotal role in the civil rights movement, enduring brutal violence when Alabama state troopers fractured his skull during the infamous “Bloody Sunday” incident in Selma in 1965.
In July 2020, Lewis became the first Black lawmaker to lie in state at the Capitol, a testament to his indelible mark on American history.
Even after his passing, his words have continued to inspire and motivate, as evidenced by his 2020 New York Times op-ed, where he urged others to carry the torch and fight for their beliefs.
His famous phrase, “good trouble,” remains a rallying cry for those seeking equality and justice.
Postal officials said the John Lewis Forever stamp is a lasting tribute to a remarkable individual who dedicated his life to making the United States a better place for all its citizens.