BY SARAH O’CONNELL
Months after House minority leader and New York Congressman Hakeem Jeffries’ 8-hour speech in July failed to prevent Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill from being passed – in what has been seen as a failure of moderate Democrats to prevent disastrous federal spending cuts – he addressed audiences during a livestreamed press conference on Sept. 2.
Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill”- which Jeffries refers to as the “Big Ugly Bill”- was passed in July of 2025. According to the Fiscal Policy Institute, the bill will cause 1.5 million New York State residents to lose health insurance coverage and one million to lose food stamp benefits. The bill has been reported as the largest rollback in federal healthcare spending in history.
Even after the Big Beautiful Bill was signed into law, Wall Street Journal polling of registered voters found the Democratic Party’s favorability has reached a 35-year low, with 63% of respondents holding an unfavorable view of the party. The party’s failure to win over voters, despite the unpopularity of the bill, has called the future of the party into question. Some are even calling for moderate Democrats such as Jefferies to resign.
Jeffries stated that Americans “deserve better” and that Democrats intended to “deliver a country of the people, by the people and for the people, as opposed to the type of country that we’re seeing under Republican complete control of government, which is a country of the billionaires, by the billionaires and for e billionaires.”
During the 2023-2024 fundraising period, Jeffries received a total of $866,550 from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and has faced recent criticism regarding his ties to the pro-Israel Lobby as favorability towards Israel continues to plummet amongst Americans. Jefferies also received $814,661 in contributions from the real estate industry, and tens of thousands from corporate donors such as BlackRock and Lockheed Martin.
Jeffries also stated that while Democrats were willing to collaborate with the Trump administration to pass a spending bill that would meet the needs of everyday Americans, they would not support a partisan spending bill that harms everyday Americans, adding that the House Democrats would not “fall in line” to Trump’s agenda. With a Sept 30th deadline pending for Congress to fund the federal government and prevent a shutdown, Jeffries warned that until Republicans can find a bipartisan path forward, they risk a that government shutdown.
Jeffries was questioned about his lack of endorsement thus far for Democratic nominee in the soon-approaching NYC mayoral election, Zohran Mamdani, whose progressive policies aiming to fight back against high healthcare and housing costs won him a double-digit victory in the mayoral primary. His answer: “stay tuned.”