Hakeem Jeffries Seriously Says Trump Deserves Some Credit

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is simply not cut out to lead the Democratic Party in any kind of serious opposition against Trump, as he proved once again on Wednesday. 

The insipid congressman twice made a point to praise the president on two particularly controversial decisions—his crackdown on the southern border and his pardon of Texas Democratic Representative Henry Cuellar, whom the Justice Department charged with accepting around $600,000 in bribes from an oil and gas company owned by Azerbaijan’s government and a Mexican bank.

Jeffries was asked about his response to the Cuellar pardoning by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. 

“Congressman Cuellar is a beloved member of the House of Representatives, loved in his community.... The reality is, this indictment was very thin to begin with, in my view,” Jeffries replied. “The charges were eventually gonna be dismissed.... I think the outcome was exactly the right outcome.” 

While Cuellar was not yet convicted, the charges against him were certainly thick enough for a grand jury to indict him. This could have been an opportunity to denounce Cuellar—a moderate Democrat who is anti-abortion and opposed his party’s agenda in 2024—as a corrupt politician of old. Jeffries could have even tied Cuellar’s corruption charges to how Trump has transformed the presidency to make himself and his family richer. 

Instead, Jeffries is calling a man who the Biden’s Justice Department  charged with bribery, unlawful foreign influence, and money laundering a “beloved” member of Congress, perhaps in an effort to win Cuellar’s vote back to the Democrats if he is to win in 2026.

Later on Wednesday, Jeffries was asked about giving Trump his flowers for the brutal detainment and deportation campaign that he argues has secured the border, and gave a similarly baffling answer.  

“Can you give Trump credit for securing the border?” Jeffries was asked again on CNN. “That was a big issue under the Biden administration when you had record border crossings.” 

“The border is secure, that’s a good thing. It’s happened on his watch. He wants to claim credit for it, of course he’ll get credit for that,” Jeffries replied. “In terms of making sure that we actually deal with the issues that matter, including on immigration … there’s a lot that is left to be desired.” 

Under Trump’s watch, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol, and other federal agencies have flooded local communities, once again ripping families and neighborhoods apart as they detain immigrants regardless of criminal history. And by the time you read this, he’ll have sent National Guard troops to Minneapolis and New Orleans to continue to do just that. What exactly does Jeffries think is left to be desired? 

“I would not get in a car if Hakeem Jeffries was driving. We can’t continue to let him and those like him ‘lead’ a milquetoast opposition to overt fascism,” one Bluesky user wrote. “Primary appeasers. Elect fighters.”

Trump is as unpopular as he’s ever been, the GOP is reeling with internal strife, and their 2026 chances aren’t looking too good. Americans are still struggling to pay rent, buy food, and support their families, and still Trump claims with his full chest that the very word “affordability” is a hoax. Liberal voters are eager for strong leadership, and this would be the exact time for an all out attack. Instead, Jeffries is practically gift-wrapping the president’s positive sound bites. 

Moments like this are the reason the progressive-led Democratic “fight club” even exists in the first place.  

House Speaker Mike Johnson is convinced he has a grip on his caucus, even as reports circulate that his control is slipping.

The chief House Republican rebuked comments made by Representative Elise Stefanik, who told The Wall Street Journal Tuesday that the speaker would not have enough support among his caucus to win the speakership if the vote took place this week.

Speaking with PBS Newshour correspondent Lisa Desjardins Wednesday, Johnson insisted that Republicans in Congress were “united” behind him.

“I’m not sure how to comment on what Elise is doing or what the rationale behind this is, but you can talk to Republicans in Congress, 99.9 percent are united, we’re working together to keep delivering our agenda,” Johnson told PBS.

“I talked to Elise late last night. We talked through what I thought were a misunderstanding of the facts,” he continued, making mention of the National Defense Authorization Act. Stefanik claimed victory regarding the bill Wednesday morning, announcing that a provision she wrote related to congressional disclosures would be included in the act after a “productive” conversation with Johnson and Donald Trump.

“I told her, you could have just picked up the phone and called me initially and not had to do all this other stuff,” Johnson told PBS.

But Desjardins underscored that plenty of other members of the caucus had expressed their discontent with Johnson’s leadership.

Just nine representatives of the majority party are needed to trigger a vote of no confidence against a House speaker. Those lawmakers could include Stefanik, as well as Representative Anna Paulina Luna, who on Tuesday openly defied Johnson by introducing a discharge petition that would bypass his direction on a bipartisan bill regarding insider trading. It could also include Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who announced last month her intention to exit office in early January.

The Trump administration is taking aim at the Somali American community in Minnesota with an immigration crackdown, punctuated by President Trump on Tuesday calling Representative Ilhan Omar, a Somali American herself, “garbage,” along with the rest of her community.

Since then, Trump’s staff have been defending his racism. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin was asked by CNN’s John Berman Wednesday exactly how much of the Somali American community in Minnesota, an estimated 40,000 of whom were born in Somalia, could be considered garbage. Her response was a word salad nowhere near a condemnation.

“John, we’re really looking at the data, the analyses here particularly out of Minneapolis, and other parts of the country where we’re seeing Somalia, there’s widespread fraud, particularly marriage fraud when it comes to immigration, we’re looking at criminality here,” McLaughlin said. Berman then repeated his question.

“My question is, all of them? The president says he doesn’t want them here. He called them ‘garbage.’ Do you consider that to be all of the 40,000 people born in Somalia now living in Minnesota?” Berman asked.

“John, this is not about politics, this is about public safety,” McLaughlin replied, referencing last week’s shooting of two National Guard members, allegedly by an Afghan national, in Washington, D.C.

“That’s what the precipice of this was. That’s why we have to get back to base camp and make sure we are prioritizing the American people’s safety,” McLaughlin added, before criticizing the Biden administration for poor vetting processes.

The Somali community in Minnesota, particularly in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, has nothing to do with last week’s shooting. But, it’s clear that McLaughlin is speaking not just for DHS, but for the entire administration by failing to address the president calling an entire ethnic group and community garbage.

Instead, McLaughlin is using the shooting to justify an immigration crackdown on Somalis in Minnesota, 58 percent of whom were born in the U.S., with 87 percent of those born overseas being naturalized U.S. citizens, according to Census data. But she’s only following the president’s racist lead, and he was inspired by a story full of holes originating from right-wing media.

A bad week has gotten even worse for Pete Hegseth, as a new watchdog report from the Pentagon inspector general’s office finds that the defense secretary directly endangered U.S. troops when he used the Signal messaging app to discuss sensitive plans to bomb the Houthi rebels in Yemen back in March. 

Sources told CNN that the classified report details Hegseth’s lack of urgency and seriousness in speaking freely on the public messaging app about active U.S. war plans, updates, and even when “the first bombs will drop.” 

It is unclear if any of the information was properly declassified before it was put on Signal—and before The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added to the chat. As CNN reported, Hegseth claimed he declassified all the info after the messages became public, but no such documentation exists.

A classified version of the inspector general’s report was sent to Congress on Tuesday, with an unclassified version set to drop on Thursday.  

This report comes in the midst of another controversy for Hegseth in which he is currently attempting to shift blame for a boat bombing double strike that killed two survivors—a potential war crime—away from himself and onto Admiral Frank Bradley. 

At Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, Hegseth claimed that he didn’t know there were survivors after the first strike, adding that the “fog of war” would’ve made it difficult to determine if anyone had survived—a response both the left and right is finding to be insufficient. 

“This week has made it abundantly clear that Pete Hegseth should not be in charge of the most powerful military on Earth,” podcaster Jon Favreau wrote on X. 

A federal judge on Wednesday shredded the Trump administration’s shallow defense for bragging about its rampant, warrantless immigration arrests.

In an 88-page ruling, U.S. Judge Beryl Howell wrote that the Trump administration had illegally lowered the standard for making immigration arrests when it instituted a policy of “arrest now, ask questions later” as part of the federal takeover of Washington, D.C.

Howell documented how the Department of Homeland Security and Trump officials began to insist on using a standard of “reasonable suspicion” to make arrests, and included a laundry list of official comments claiming that the government did not need to demonstrate probable cause. Howell took issue with the government’s attorneys, who claimed the statements had been made by “non-attorneys” who “don’t necessarily understand” legal terms.

“This is a remarkable assertion. On its face, the government’s defense appears to be that the individuals behind these statements are ignorant or incompetent, or both,” Howell wrote.

For example, chief Border Patrol agent Gregory Bovino told the press, “We need reasonable suspicion to make an immigration arrest,” adding, “You notice I did not say probable cause, nor did I say I need a warrant. We need reasonable suspicion of illegal alienage, that’s well grounded within the United States immigration law.”

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller was also cited in the ruling as saying, “Just go out there” and arrest people at Home Depots or 7-Elevens.

In June, Miller reportedly told a meeting of dozens of immigration officers that he didn’t want ICE to narrow its field to just undocumented immigrants with criminal records. “Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?’” an official recalled.

Howell barred the government from making warrantless immigration arrests without obtaining probable cause that the person was in the country illegally and a flight risk.