Jeffries Says Democrats Will Not Work With Stephen Miller as He Becomes Chief of Staff Monday
The incoming House majority's leader used a Sunday show to draw the line before Stephen Miller's first day: no cooperation with Miller, a 'firewall' in Congress - and a 'hard yes' on impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, possibly this week.
Stephen Miller starts work as White House chief of staff on Monday with the other party's House leader already on record refusing to work with him. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader who is likely to become Speaker when his party assumes the House majority in January, told ABC's 'This Week' on Sunday: 'There's not going to be any opportunity, certainly, to work with Stephen Miller and what he represents.' He called President Trump's choice of Miller 'an awful choice' and 'irresponsible,' and said Democrats will maintain a 'firewall' in Congress against the administration after the November 3 midterms, USA TODAY reports.
Jeffries paired the refusal with the week's other confrontation: impeachment. He said he is a 'hard yes' on outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie's resolution to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, that a vote could come as early as this week, and that it would draw 'incredibly strong' Democratic support. The resolution's eight articles accuse Hegseth of conducting the war on Iran without congressional authorization, seizing Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro without constitutional authority, and killing suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean without judicial authorization. 'Pete Hegseth has got to go,' Jeffries said. Hegseth has vowed to fight the charges and refused calls to resign - and the arithmetic still favors him this month: the lame-duck Republican majority can kill the effort simply by voting to table it, a fact this story states as plainly as the threat itself.
Inside the White House, the transition Miller inherits is already moving. Deputy Chief of Staff Richard Walters - one of Susie Wiles' closest political lieutenants, who ran the legislative, political and public-affairs portfolio - is leaving in the first major departure of the shakeup, Political.org reported Sunday. Miller praised Walters as 'an invaluable member of the White House' who will keep helping from outside the building; no successor for the portfolio has been announced, and the press secretary's chair is still vacant after last week's Dana White episode ended with the president saying he had been joking about the offer.
For Houston, the standoff is not abstract. Miller is the architect of the immigration enforcement policy that Houston's mayor pushed back against on Friday with Executive Order EO 1-74, limiting when city police contact ICE - the local file this station carries in this same cycle. The man who designed the federal policy now runs the White House staff; the leader of the incoming House majority says he will not work with him; and a Texas city's police department has just narrowed its cooperation with that policy. Three of those facts were set before Miller's first day began.
