WASHINGTON (AP) — Bringing the kind of punch many voters are demanding, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s 100 days in office have been an assault of Americans’ very way of life and promised Democrats in Congress are fighting as hard as they can to stop more ” bad things” from happening.
In a major address on the milestone of Trump’s time at the White House, Jeffries, who could become House speaker if Democrats regain power, also put Republicans in Congress on notice that their days as a “rubber stamp” to Trump’s agenda of “chaos, cruelty and corruption” won’t last.
“The Trump administration has been a disaster,” Jeffries of New York told the packed crowd at a historic theater in Washington.
“Donald Trump and the Republicans thought they could ‘shock and awe’ us into submission,” he said, adding they were wrong. “We’re just getting started.”
The leader’s speech stood as an assessment not only Trump’s return to the White House, but also of the strength of the Democratic resistance. Americans are registering a weariness with the president, with just half saying he’s focused on the right priorities. The Democratic leadership in Congress is being tested over how best to confront the speed, scope and scale of the Trump administration’s unprecedented, and at times unlawful, actions.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has mocked the attempt by Democratic leaders to find their political footing as Trump blazes through the start of his second term at the White House, which the GOP leader celebrated with four words: “Promises made, promises kept.”
Johnson cited the Trump’s achievements in deporting immigrants, reversing the government’s diversity programs and others, arguing the president has as accomplished more during this period than many do “in their entire careers.”
Jeffries has at times been seen a cautious leader, known for his ability to stay cool under enormous pressure. But standing later on the steps of the U.S. Capitol with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, Jeffries and other lawmakers sought to assure Americans, and their own voters, they were up for the job, and ready to fight back.
Schumer chalked up Trump’s first 100 days as defined by “one big F word – failure.”
The leaders warned of more to come. Republicans in Congress, who hold majority control of both the House and Senates, are rushing ahead to deliver on Trump’s priorities, including his “big, beautiful bill” of tax breaks and spending cuts.
Republicans are “complicit,” Schumer said, in failing to hold the president responsible, even when he is breaking the laws.
One Democrat, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, encouraged GOP lawmakers to peel away from Trump, imploring them with a message of the Civil Rights era: “It’s never too late to be on the right side of history.”
Warnock, who also was pastor of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, said Trump and the GOP are trying to “weaponize despair” of the American people.
“They’re trying to so beat us down that we will be too so weary to fight,” Warnock said, “and it’s our job to prove them wrong.”
It may be just 100 days into the new presidential administration, but the congressional leaders are already mapping the political races ahead in the 2026 midterm elections. In the House, where Johnson holds only the slimmest GOP majority, Jeffries is working vigorously to win back the few seats needed to flip control to Democrats.
Jeffries appears increasingly in command of his role, as the leader of the Democratic minority in the House, but also as the rising party leader on the national stage.
He told dad stories, shuttling his family on trips for his son’s to travel baseball game, and of his own understanding of the nation’s tax code seeing his wages on his first paycheck as a teenager in a minimum wage job drawn out for Social Security and the safety net programs he came to appreciate as Americans’ earned benefits.
“You work hard for those benefits, pay into those benefits,” he said, scoffing at Republican efforts to dismiss them as entitlement programs.
Jeffries name-checked billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency for the “cruel” way they are slashing federal spending that halts medical research and cuts employees’ jobs. He said Trump and Musk have failed to make life safer or more affordable.
“Trump’s unconstitutional assault on the American way of life is unprecedented. But the so-called dictator on day one is learning an important lesson: Americans don’t bend the knee to bullies,” Jeffries said.
“We will not rest until we end this national nightmare,” he said.
Jeffries stumbled slightly in his opening remarks about Trump’s first 100 “years” — before quickly correcting himself to “days” — saying the quiet part out loud for many Democrats and allies exhausted by it all.
“Republicans in Congress could put a stop to this insanity at any time,” Jeffries said. “Since they won’t, next November, we will.”
Over the next 100 days, Jeffries says House Democrats will be laying out their own blueprint for what they would do if they were in charge — and it won’t be about Trump but “all about you.”
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Associated Press writer Matt Brown contributed to this report.
