Reported by Al Jazeera
Likely to become the first Black House Speaker, Jeffries faces pressure from progressives over Trump and Israel.
With Democrats’ decisive victory in the United States’ midterm elections on Tuesday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York is on the verge of making history as the first Black speaker of the US House of Representatives.
For the 56-year-old congressman, it would be the culmination of almost two decades in office, giving him a central role in Democrats’ efforts to rein in Republican US President Donald Trump in the final two years of his presidency.
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But as Jeffries celebrated the “blue tsunami” that swept Democrats back into power the day after the election, some within the party were not convinced that the congressman, known for his cautious approach to politics and longstanding support for Israel, was the right man for the moment.
An online petition on Change.org calling on lawmakers to choose another speaker had collected more than 980,000 signatures by Saturday morning, while several newly elected progressive lawmakers have not said whether they will support him.
“We believe the Speaker should represent the Democratic voters, not just the Democratic establishment,” the petition reads.
“This is not a foregone conclusion,” it continues, urging others to run for the job.
Jeffries, who has spent years cultivating relationships within the Democratic caucus, now finds himself at the centre of a bigger fight within the party, as its growing progressive wing pushes for a more confrontational approach to Trump and a break with some of the ideas that have defined the Democrats for decades.
Jeffries grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in the 1970s and 1980s, as the neighbourhood was grappling with the crack cocaine epidemic.
“There was a lot of dysfunction and pain that surrounded the communities that I was raised in, but also a lot of love and compassion from family and friends, and community folks,” he told NYU Law in 2019.
The son of two social workers, Jeffries eventually became a lawyer, tracing his decision to pursue a career in law back to the 1992 riots that erupted in Los Angeles…