AP Photo/John McDonnell
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) reportedly expressed frustration with liberal groups during a private meeting of House Democrats.
Many activists in the party do not believe Jeffries, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and other top Democrats are doing enough to stop or at least slow down President Donald Trump’s agenda.
“A closed-door meeting for House Democrats this week included a gripe-fest directed at liberal grassroots organizations,” Axios reported on Tuesday, citing sources familiar with the meeting. At issue is a pressure campaign initiated by groups such as Indivisible and MoveOn, which have urged citizens to call their representatives to ask them to do whatever they can to obstruct Trump. The campaign has yielded thousands of phone calls to lawmakers’ offices.
Axios reported the following takeaways from the gathering:
“People are pissed,” a senior House Democrat who was at the meeting said of lawmakers’ reaction to the calls.
The Democrat said Jeffries himself is “very frustrated” at the groups, who are trying to stir up a more confrontational opposition to Trump.
A Jeffries spokesperson noted to Axios that their office regularly engages with dozens of stakeholder groups, including MoveOn and Indivisible, including as recently as Monday.
Indivisible co-founder Leah Greenberg said Democrats should be prepared to vote in unison against a looming spending bill “when Republicans inevitably fail to pass a bill on their own” in the razor-thin House.
During a press conference on Friday, Jeffries lamented, “[Republicans] control the House, the Senate, and the presidency. It’s their government. What leverage do we have? We are going to try to find bipartisan common ground on any issue.”
