In this full video, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries speaks to reporters about a range of pressing issues, including Congress’ failure to extend expiring enhanced health care subsidies before the year ends. The fiery attack comes following the release of Trump’s new, shocking Epstein photos, condemning the ongoing controversies and raising pointed questions about accountability.
Watch the full LIVE remarks as Jeffries addresses both policy concerns and high-profile scandals, giving a no-holds-barred perspective from Capitol Hill.
#HakeemJeffries #Trump #EpsteinPhotos #JeffriesLIVE #HouseDemocrats #CapitolHill #HealthCare #Congress #PoliticalNews #BreakingNews #USPolitics #Scandal #Accountability #Epstein #Democrats #PoliticsToday #NewsUpdate #JeffriesVsTrump #LIVEUpdate #PoliticalDebate
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Watch the full LIVE remarks as Jeffries addresses both policy concerns and high-profile scandals, giving a no-holds-barred perspective from Capitol Hill.
#HakeemJeffries #Trump #EpsteinPhotos #JeffriesLIVE #HouseDemocrats #CapitolHill #HealthCare #Congress #PoliticalNews #BreakingNews #USPolitics #Scandal #Accountability #Epstein #Democrats #PoliticsToday #NewsUpdate #JeffriesVsTrump #LIVEUpdate #PoliticalDebate
Also Read
New Epstein Photos Show Trump, Clinton, Gates And Other High-Profile Figures :: https://www.oneindia.com/international/new-epstein-photos-show-trump-clinton-gates-and-other-high-profile-figures-7942782.html?ref=DMDesc
US Poised To Expand Travel Ban To More Than 30 Countries Amid Security Review :: https://www.oneindia.com/international/us-poised-to-expand-travel-ban-to-more-than-30-countries-amid-security-review-7935697.html?ref=DMDesc
Trump Nominates Stuart Levenbach to Direct CFPB Despite No Financial Background :: https://www.oneindia.com/international/trump-nominates-stuart-levenbach-to-lead-cfpb-011-7921553.html?ref=DMDesc
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NewsTranscript
00:00Five legislative days left before the Affordable Care Act tax credits expire.
00:06And we have yet to see a Republican plan to prevent tens of millions of Americans
00:13from experiencing dramatically increased premiums, co-pays, and deductibles.
00:18We know that premium increases, in some cases, will be $1,000 or $2,000 per month.
00:26This is going to make health care unaffordable.
00:30For millions of working-class Americans, middle-class Americans, and everyday Americans.
00:36And yet Republicans are continuing to bury their heads in the sand,
00:43completely and totally uninterested in finding common ground to make life better for the American people,
00:50in this instance, by extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits.
00:54House Democrats remain ready, willing, and able to sit down with our Republican colleagues anytime,
01:02anyplace, and anywhere in order to enact a bipartisan agreement that protects the health care of tens of millions of Americans,
01:11Americans, to fix our broken health care system, and to deal with the Republican health care crisis decisively,
01:18which is crushing the American people.
01:20But Republicans continue to pursue a my way or the highway approach,
01:26which has gotten them nowhere this year, and it's consistently hurt the American people.
01:33All across the country, we are seeing Republican extremism being rejected,
01:39most recently in the city of Miami, a city that is more than 70% Latino,
01:46in a county, Miami-Dade, that Donald Trump just won in 2024.
01:53And a year later, a Democrat was elected as mayor of Miami for the first time in nearly three decades,
02:04by 20 points, by 20 points, and yet Republicans continue to ignore the reality that is unfolding all across the country.
02:17The American people are rejecting your extremism and embracing our focus on driving down the high cost of living,
02:27dealing with the affordability crisis, which is real.
02:29It's not a hoax, and fixing our broken health care system.
02:35And at this point, all we need are four Republicans in the House.
02:41There are 220 of you.
02:42All we need are four Republicans to partner with us.
02:46Let's find a path forward, and we can extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits.
02:52Questions?
02:56Democrats obviously pushed for the extension of these subsidies during the shutdown.
03:01You had the group of Democrats in the Senate.
03:03You said, give us a vote on health care.
03:05You know, we'll reopen the government.
03:08Still no solution.
03:10Where all of those tactics worked.
03:13Donald Trump and Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the presidency.
03:18They made the decision to shut the government down because they'd rather shut the government down than extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits.
03:30That's not simply my perspective.
03:33That's the perspective of the American people who consistently have held Republicans responsible correctly for the government shutdown.
03:45So that's not a question for me to answer.
03:48That's a question for Republicans to answer.
03:50Why do they shut the government down?
03:52We've raised the issue of the Affordable Care Act tax credits.
03:55And by the way, the overwhelming majority of the American people are with us.
03:59That's not just Democrats and independents overwhelmingly.
04:03That's a majority of Republicans who believe that the Affordable Care Act tax credits should be extended.
04:09Five legislative days left before tens of millions of people experience dramatically increased health care premiums.
04:19Why, why, why have we still not seen a plan from Mike Johnson?
04:25He's been promising a health care plan for months.
04:29It's missing because their plan is to rip health care away from the American people.
04:37There's talk of allowing a floor vote on this Fitzpatrick-Swasi-Golden plan.
04:43Does that potentially give you guys an opening to get this done this year?
04:47Is there any hope here from that?
04:49We're all hands on deck to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits.
04:53But Mike Johnson hasn't reached out to us as Democrats to have a conversation about finding a path forward,
04:59which suggests to me that Mike Johnson is not serious about protecting the health care of the American people.
05:06The Indiana Senate stopped President Donald Trump's redistricting push in the state.
05:09Given that development, are Democrats still full speed ahead on redistricting,
05:14or should you guys consider a more reserved approach right now?
05:17Donald Trump launched this unprecedented effort to gerrymander congressional maps all across the country
05:26as part of his scheme to rig the midterm elections.
05:31There were many skeptics and critics out there who argued that our efforts to take back the House was doomed
05:39because of some master plan that Donald Trump concocted that apparently as Democrats,
05:46we were just supposed to unilaterally disarm, roll over and play dead,
05:51and allow Republicans to steal the midterm elections.
05:54We said from the very beginning, that ain't happening.
05:59And now it's obvious to everyone, beginning, of course, with the dramatic actions taken initially by Texas Democrats
06:10to use every tool available to them to either block the Texas scheme to rip five seats away from us
06:19or elevate the issue so that the American people know across the country what Republicans are up to.
06:27And beginning in California, we have responded decisively.
06:32And the reality of the situation is that Republicans may have started this redistricting battle.
06:40We, as Democrats, plan to finish it.
06:44Thank you, Mr. Leader.
06:45The Trump administration earlier this week announced the settlement with some Republican-controlled states
06:51to effectively end the SAVE program, the repayment program that President Biden created during his administration.
06:58It will affect up to 7 million borrowers.
07:01You've been very critical of Republicans saying that they're exacerbating the affordability crisis as you see it.
07:08Do you see the end of this program and what the Education Department is doing
07:13by announcing this proposed settlement as potentially hurting even more Americans
07:19who could be forced into less generous programs, have more trouble paying their student loans back?
07:26How do you see student loan debt within the context of the affordability crisis?
07:31Well, the Trump administration has launched an all-out assault on public education in America.
07:37They have destroyed the Department of Education in real time.
07:41And they're going after hardworking American students, including college students,
07:46who are just simply trying to experience the American dream,
07:50an American dream that is increasingly out of reach for far too many hardworking American taxpayers.
07:58And the American people know it.
08:00And the American people also know that Donald Trump's administration and Republican policies
08:05have been a complete and total disaster.
08:07That's why this guy is at like 36 percent in approval.
08:10They're losing elections all across the country, literally in deep red parts of the country,
08:15including most recently in Miami and in Georgia,
08:19where the Republicans lost a special election for a statehouse seat,
08:25that Donald Trump had just won by more than 12 points.
08:31And so from our vantage point, listen, we want to work with anyone to find the common ground
08:37to actually solve the problems that the American people want us to solve.
08:40And that's lowering the high cost of living and fixing our broken health care system
08:45while cleaning up corruption at the same period of time.
08:48And the assault on all of the things that have been done,
08:52including trying to ease the debt burden that students across this country have confronted,
08:58is irresponsible.
09:01And it's further evidence of the fact that Republicans never intended to keep their promise
09:07to lower costs on day one, because they haven't done a damn thing to make that happen.
09:13Peter Jeffries.
09:14Hold on, hold on.
09:15Mr. Leader.
09:17Who's speaking?
09:18Mr. Leader, can I just ask, yesterday you voted present on this effort,
09:23on the motion to table the impeachment resolution against President Trump.
09:27A number of your Democratic colleagues did as well.
09:29Do you think that the president has committed impeachable offenses?
09:32We issued a statement on that motion to table, and that statement speaks for itself.
09:40Thanks.
09:41Leader Jeffries, thank you very much.
09:43Eric Christine with The Independent.
09:45Just now, the Oversight Committee released more photos and more documents from the Epstein files.
09:51We have seven legislative days until the Department of Justice.
09:55Why was it important to release those documents and those photos?
10:00And what else should happen if the Trump administration doesn't comply?
10:04What can Congress do if Congress doesn't comply with this?
10:07Or if the DOJ doesn't comply with this?
10:08Well, the so-called Department of Justice under the Trump administration needs to comply with the law.
10:13And we as Democrats, led by Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee,
10:20are going to continue to make sure that we're holding this administration accountable.
10:24These people who are part of the Trump administration, including Donald Trump and J.D. Vance himself,
10:30all said for years that they wanted to release the Epstein files.
10:34Then they come into office and do the exact opposite, obstruct and obfuscate, hide stuff from the American people.
10:41All we want is full transparency so that the American people can get the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
10:47That's what the Epstein survivors deserve and have demanded.
10:51And we're going to make sure that the Department of Justice complies.
10:56Thanks, Senator Jeffries.
10:57You say that at least four Republicans are needed to cross the aisle to get health care done.
11:02Well, there are nearly a dozen Republicans who have signed on to the discharge petition for both the Fitzpatrick bill and for the Gottheimer bill.
11:09Why not endorse one of them or both of them and encourage your members to sign on as well to get the ball rolling in that respect?
11:17We're actively reviewing those two discharge petitions, and we'll have more to say about it early next week.
11:23But what is clear, time is running out.
11:26Where were these Republican ideas over the last several months?
11:29You know what?
11:30They were so busy shutting the government down.
11:32Donald Trump's busy playing golf.
11:34They could fine $40 billion to bail out their right-wing dictator friend in Argentina.
11:39They're partnering people like George Santos and Rudolph Giuliani.
11:43And they're running around trying to promote their one big ugly bill, which enacted the largest cut to Medicaid in American history.
11:52That's what got the ball rolling on the Republican health care crisis.
11:55And as a result, hospitals, nursing homes, and community-based health centers are closing all across the country, including in rural America.
12:04They ripped food assistance out of the mouths of hungry children, veterans, and seniors.
12:12And they did all of that with great urgency so they could reward their billionaire donors with massive tax breaks.
12:19And they made those tax breaks permanent.
12:23And now at the 11th hour, they're scrambling.
12:28It still remains the case that the most direct path forward is a straightforward extension of the Affordable Care Act tax credits.
12:38And there's one discharge petition that does that.
12:41And it has 214 signatures.
12:44And all we need are four Republicans to join us.
12:46Just to follow up on that, though, I understand that your ideal path is a clean extension.
12:51But Republicans have made clear that they will not go for a clean extension.
12:54So would you be willing to settle for something that's not a clean extension in the name of saving these subsidies?
13:00We're going to evaluate every single good-faith proposal.
13:04But it has to meaningfully provide certainty to the American people who are at risk of having their health care ripped away from them.
13:14Now, these Republicans made those massive tax breaks for their billionaire donors permanent.
13:24And we've said from the very beginning, we just want to make sure that everyday Americans, middle-class Americans, working-class Americans have a similar level of certainty.
13:34That's not too much to ask for in the wealthiest country in the history of the world.
13:40Thank you, Leader Jeffries.
13:43Yesterday, President Trump signed the executive order on artificial intelligence seeking to block the states from regulating the AI.
13:52Specifically, and I want to ask you about specifics in this EO.
13:57It directs DOJ to create a litigation task force and challenge any state that they view doesn't comply with whatever the national standard is.
14:06It also gives powers to the Secretary of Commerce to impose restrictions on state funding and also aims to regulate total output.
14:15So my questions to you.
14:18I have several.
14:19First, what is your position on the EO?
14:22Should Americans be concerned that the AI policy is being set through executive order and litigation instead of open debate in the Congress?
14:33First, if this approach becomes a standard, what is going to stop any future president from using DOJ to go against and challenge any state law they want?
14:48And finally, is this EO about innovation or is it about expanding presidential powers?
14:57Well, Donald Trump has tried to conduct himself like a wannabe king from the very beginning.
15:01The American people are clearly rejecting that approach.
15:05And on artificial intelligence, this is a complicated thing, a transformative innovation that has the possibility of bringing great societal benefits,
15:17particularly in the areas of medicine and education as it relates to reaching young people who live in historically under-resourced parts of the country.
15:27But at the same period of time, it's our view that this transformative technology in the hands of bad actors presents risks of creating societal harm.
15:40And this is why a thoughtful approach is needed, not in my way or the highway executive order.
15:46And our view related to Donald Trump's most recent action connected to artificial intelligence is that he doesn't have the authority to do it.
15:55And ultimately, it's going to get struck down in court.
15:57Thank you, Mr. Leader.
15:59Some members of your party are calling for the abolition of ICE following the administration's very aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration.
16:09Is that a viewpoint that you believe has a place in your party right now as Democrats strive to take back power?
16:16Who exactly has made that?
16:18Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez has.
16:22Congresswoman Delia Ramirez has.
16:25Also, Patti Garcia, who was running to replace Chuy Garcia.
16:28Graham Plattner as well.
16:30They have said that this should not exist and it should cease.
16:33Yeah, I haven't had a conversation with any of those individuals about their perspective.
16:38What we do know is that the American people believe that Donald Trump's deportation efforts have been completely and totally out of control, unacceptable and un-American.
16:50That's the reality of what Donald Trump has unleashed on law-abiding immigrant communities all across America.
16:59And the American people are rejecting it, which is why Donald Trump is also underwater in terms of public approval on immigration.
17:08Now, we believe, as Democrats broadly, that we need a strong and a secure border consistent with our history and experience as a nation anchored in the rule of law.
17:22Donald Trump doesn't believe in the rule of law, and neither do his sycophants who serve in Congress, who have failed to understand that we're a separate and co-equal branch of government, not a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump cartel, because that's how they behave.
17:38So we believe in the rule of law, and part of that is a strong border.
17:42But at the same period of time, we're a nation of immigrants.
17:46And so we're going to continue to defend dreamers, defend farm workers, defend farm country, defend law-abiding immigrant families and communities across the country who are part of the ingredient of American exceptionalism.
18:04That's our position. And we do have a broken immigration system.
18:09Everybody thoughtful who's taking a look at it understands that.
18:12But the way to solve it is not a my way or the highway approach, and it certainly is not the Trump deportation machine.
18:19He promised that he was going to target violent felons.
18:23No one would have any issues with that.
18:25He's not deporting violent felons.
18:27He's deporting law-abiding immigrants, veterans who serve this country, children who are actually American citizens, grandmothers and grandfathers, gardeners, and communities across the country are rejecting it.
18:44Mr. Leader, as sort of a follow-up to that question, today, Congressman A. Pomade is inviting families who've had family members killed by undocumented immigrants to the Capitol.
18:55Who is that?
18:56A. Pomade of Arizona.
18:58Okay.
18:58And I want to ask about 2026 and how you're encouraging border state Democrats to respond to messaging such as this, because it was a big issue in 2024, and it appears that some Republicans are ready to message on it in 2026.
19:10We'll let border state Democrats speak for themselves, and I've got great confidence in them.
19:17I think I just articulated our view on immigration generally, and that, I believe, is a position that's broadly held by Democrats all across the country.
19:28Listen, Republicans are desperate to try to find a path out of the electoral disaster that they're experiencing right now.
19:37Now, this year has been a complete and total failure for the American people, and Republicans are on the run.
19:45The reason why this whole gerrymandering scheme was launched is because Republicans know that if a free and fair election were held, they're done in the House of Representatives.
19:55It was always a myth and a fantasy that some big mandate was attached to what happened in November of 2024 that we never bought into.
20:05Why?
20:06Because we're only three seats short.
20:09This is the closest majority that any party has had since the Great Depression, and it's all now falling apart, and everybody sees it.
20:17And they can't project this fake strength to the American people anymore, because they failed the American people on the economy, on health care, and the extremism that has been unleashed on the American people is completely and totally unacceptable.
20:32So our view generally, as Democrats, we're going to solve problems for everyday Americans, because we believe in this great country of ours, you work hard, you play by the rules, you should be able to live the good life, an affordable life, a comfortable life, good paying job, good housing, good health care, good education for your children, and a good retirement.
20:56Which means to my Republican colleagues, keep your extreme hands off of Social Security and Medicare, at all times.
21:04And far too many people in this country, wealthiest country in the history of the world, are struggling to live paycheck to paycheck, because there is an affordability crisis.
21:16It's not a scam.
21:17It's not a hoax.
21:19It's a crisis.
21:21And Democrats are committed to doing something about it.
21:23Republicans continue to bury their heads in the sand.
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