Jeffries Secretly Met With Kushner to Find “Common Ground” on Immigration

An explosive report has revealed that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries held a secret meeting with Trump administration power broker Jared Kushner to find “common ground” with the far right in the past weeks — as he made statements that could isolate the left-wing members of the House Democratic Caucus.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that the two recently met in a space offered by a mutual friend in New York City, citing two people familiar with the meeting and another who was briefed on it. The meeting covered a broad range of topics for the two men who have been in contact since collaborating on a criminal legal system reform bill in Donald Trump’s first term.

The meeting appears to be an acknowledgement that Democrats are expected to win control of the House this November, and that Jeffries is likely to become speaker.

One theme of their conversation was to find “common ground” on issues like housing, the high cost of living, and immigration. On those topics, Kushner suggested that Jeffries meet with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

The report did not specify whether the two came to any agreements on those topics. However, it comes as the Trump administration’s war with Israel on Iran is drastically raising prices across all sectors — a war that Jeffries has opposed, but in a relatively muted way.

It also comes as the Trump administration has pursued extreme policies on immigration. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have arrested and detained a record number of people in Trump’s second term, conducting raids targeted at Democratic-leaning areas, while officials are also meting out harsh punishments for anyone opposed to the mass deportation campaign.

Many Democratic voters oppose ICE and Trump’s raids. But, as outrage spread over the administration’s ICE crackdowns earlier this year, Jeffries only said he would advocate for minor reforms to the agency’s conduct — and refused to whip against the DHS funding bill earlier this year.

Republicans downplayed the meeting after it sparked furor on the right, with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) saying that Kushner is “not really directly involved in the admin, at least in the day-to-day in the White House” — though he has served as a representative of the Trump administration in critical affairs like in negotiations with Israel over colonialist plans for Gaza and the war on Iran.

Facing fierce criticism from the report of the meeting, meanwhile, Jeffries said in a statement that the Republicans’ “extremist approach” to governance in this Congress “will be met with forceful opposition.”

“In every conversation that we have with the Trump administration, we will continue to make it explicitly clear that the affordability crisis is not a hoax and nothing short of transformational policy change is acceptable,” Jeffries said.

However, it is “transformational policy change” that Jeffries has worked to oppose and obstruct from left-wing members of his caucus.

For instance, last week, Jeffries said that, despite his support in previous years, he now opposes Medicare for All during an interview on NBC. He said, instead, that Democrats are working to “make health care affordable” for all, without specifying how. Other priorities that may be championed by progressives — like impeachment of Trump or his cabinet, abolishing ICE, or cutting aid to Israel — have also gotten the cold shoulder from Jeffries in recent weeks.

In the NBC interview, Jeffries would not say whether or not he believes that democratic socialists have a place in the Democratic Party — despite multiple Democratic Socialists of America members holding seats in his caucus and others running for highly contested seats in Congress. In June, Jeffries put distance between himself and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, saying that Mamdani has “work to do” to placate more centrist members of Congress.

Jeffries’s comments reignited calls for him to step down as House Democratic leader. However, unlike Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Jeffries has not faced a major push to be unseated.