(WASHINGTON) — New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the likely incoming House Democratic leader, said Sunday that he anticipates his party will be united in a new minority even amid policy disagreements.

Jeffries, a longtime allay of outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has sometimes been at odds with members of his party’s left flank. However, in an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” he boasted of strong relationships with both liberals and moderates.

“Well, I have great respect for Rep. [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez and every single member of the House Democratic caucus, from Rep. Ocasio-Cortez to Rep. Josh Gottheimer, my good friend, and all points in between,” Jeffries told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

“The thing about us, Jake, is that while we can have some noisy conversations at times about how we can make progress for the American people, what we have seen is that under the leadership of Speaker Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn, we have constantly been able to come together, time and time again,” Jeffries added, referring to the outgoing House majority leader and majority whip.

In the past, Jeffries has argued that others in the party enforce a difference between “progressive Democrats and hard-left democratic socialists,” and he has embraced the former label.

“I’m a Black progressive Democrat concerned with addressing racial and social and economic injustice with the fierce urgency of now. That’s been my career, that’s been my journey, and it will continue to be as I move forward for however long I have an opportunity to serve. There will never be a moment where I bend the knee to hard-left democratic socialism,” he told The Atlantic last year.

Jeffries, who was first elected in 2012, is currently running unopposed to be leader of the House Democrats after Pelosi, Hoyer and Clyburn all said last week they wouldn’t seek to reclaim their positions in the conference’s leadership team. (Clyburn is running for the No. 4 spot in the intraparty elections set for Nov. 30.)

In a speech on Thursday, Pelosi, who like her deputies has been in leadership for years, hailed a “new generation.”

Looking to a House GOP majority come January, Jeffries said on CNN that he would be open to working with Republicans but would not hesitate to confront what he labeled as “extremism.”

House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy has promised to pursue oversight of the Biden White House while challenging Democrats’ past two years of unified rule. Jeffries told Tapper that while he hadn’t “recently” spoken with McCarthy, “I do have, I think, a much warmer relationship with Steve Scalise,” the minority whip.

McCarthy, appearing on Fox News on Sunday, said his slim majority will need to be unified to achieve its priorities, including focusing on China and the southern border.

“We need to work as one because if that continues to move forward, all the investigations we asked to happen, the securing the border, the stopping the movement, none of that can the move forward,” he said.

Jeffries, for his part, said on CNN: “[I] look forward to working whenever and wherever possible … with the entire House Republican conference and the leadership team to find common ground to get things done for everyday Americans to make progress.”

“But, of course, we will fiercely and vigorously oppose any attempts at Republican overreach and any Republican extremism,” he said. “And I’m hopeful that the Republican leadership will take lessons away from the rejection of extremism by the American people all across the land, and not double- and triple-down on it in the next Congress.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Just days after Donald Trump announced his third bid for the White House, former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan denounced the twice-impeached former president’s political future, calling himself a “Never-Again-Trumper.”

“I’m proud of the accomplishments [during the Trump administration] — of the tax reform, the deregulation and criminal justice reform — I’m really excited about the judges we got on the bench, not just the Supreme Court, but throughout the judiciary,” Ryan told ABC News’ chief Washington correspondent and “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl in an exclusive interview that aired Sunday. “But I am a Never-Again-Trumper. Why? Because I want to win, and we lose with Trump. It was really clear to us in ’18, in ’20 and now in 2022.”

While Republicans secured the House with a razor-thin majority, they failed to flip the Senate. The “red wave” that was widely predicted this midterm season did not come to pass. Ryan put the blame directly on the former president.

“I personally think the evidence is really clear,” Ryan said in his first Sunday show interview since he left office in 2019. “The biggest factor was the Trump factor … I think we would have won places like Arizona, places like Pennsylvania, New Hampshire had we had a typical, traditional conservative Republican, not a Trump Republican.”

“With Trump, we lose,” he added.

“We lost the House in ’18,” Ryan continued. “We lost the presidency in ’20. We lost the Senate in ’20. And now in 2022 we should have and could have won the Senate. We didn’t. And we have a much lower majority in the House because of that Trump factor.”

During the interview, Ryan pointed to the Trump-endorsed candidates’ lackluster performance during the midterms. At least 30 of the former president’s hand-picked candidates, including some of the most notable nominees in various states, lost in their general elections after winning their primaries.

“He can get his people through the primaries, but they can’t win general elections,” Ryan said. “We get past Trump, we start winning elections. We stick with Trump, we keep losing elections. That’s just how I see it.”

And if Trump is once again the GOP nominee for president?

“We [will] probably likely lose the White House,” Ryan said, adding that he thinks suburban voters don’t like Trump or the candidates he endorses.

In 2016, Trump managed to hold off a crowded GOP presidential field with only a plurality of the vote in the early primary states. Despite that dynamic, Ryan said he isn’t worried that the same dynamic could play out in 2024 — that a packed field of Republicans would split the vote and once again clear the way for Trump to win the party’s nomination.

“This is my hopeful scenario,” Ryan said. “That we consolidate around somebody that is forged from this primary process capable of winning the general election, and I bet we — I bet that happens.”

Ryan remains hopeful, he said. As long as the nominee is not named Trump, he believes the Republican candidate will win the White House. He’s looking for a “Reagan 2.0.”

“I really believe a Reagan 2.0 conservative is something that will be — that the country will want, I think that our voters will want,” he said. “I think that our voters will want someone that is a good, verifiable conservative, problem solver, but also a unifier and somebody who’s not so polarizing.”

Ryan backs McCarthy on road to speakership

Republicans will have an extraordinarily slim majority come January, which means every vote in the Republican caucus will matter. Ryan believes current House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is the person to lead the House as speaker, saying McCarthy is the “best vote counter” he’s ever worked with.

“There isn’t anybody better suited to running this conference than Kevin McCarthy,” Ryan said, endorsing his former colleague. “He’s been good for conservatives, frankly, but he’s also a person who really understands how to manage a conference.”

When Ryan was speaker, he had a much larger majority in the House than what the Republican party will have in 2023.

“No matter what bill you’re going to bring to the floor, it is almost impossible with that tight [of] a majority to have just only your party passing legislation,” Ryan said.

“Having said that, there’s nothing as unifying as a really razor-thin majority,” he continued. “It makes people realize I can’t get everything I want; I have to be a part of a team; I’m going to have to not negotiate and compromise.”

Ryan said McCarthy understands he needs the entire conference to work with him. He said McCarthy will be able to motivate the different wings within the Republican Party — from more moderate-leaning districts to the Tuesday Group to the Freedom Caucus.

Prior to the midterms, at least nine impeachment resolutions against President Joe Biden and members of his Cabinet were introduced by representatives such as Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene. The basis for the resolutions ranged from the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan to the president’s son Hunter Biden’s business dealings.

“Would it be a mistake for Republicans that instead of getting the ideas you’re talking about — getting into, you know, heavy, heavy investigations?” Karl asked.

“No, they need to do oversight,” Ryan pushed back, adding that he thinks there should be some accountability with Hunter Biden and the other investigations.

“I’m a big Article 1 guy,” he continued. “What that means is I very strongly believe in the legislative branch of government conducting thorough oversight of the executive branch to hold them accountable.”

But he still thinks the Republicans need to push forward an agenda to address the problems every day Americans are facing.

“Can they chew gum and walk at the same time?” Ryan said. “Have investigations, have oversight hearings, hold the executive branch to account, and offer new ideas and solutions to our problems? Yes. That’s what Congress is supposed to do.”

“I think there are important issues in our culture that need to be litigated and we need to preserve our country’s principles, but it’s not enough to just, you know, be really good on Twitter and survive in the entertainment wing of our party,” Ryan added. “You have to offer a country solutions.”

Ryan once again charts his path forward for GOP

Ryan left office in 2019 after spending 20 years in Congress, four of which he was speaker of the House, working under both a Democratic and Republican president. But he said he’s not done trying to find solutions to America’s problems. He’s out with a new book: “American Renewal: A Conservative Plan to Strengthen the Social Contract and Save the Country’s Finances.”

“In this book, we offer very granular solutions to the big problems confronting America,” Ryan said. One of his major concerns, he said, is what he called the unsustainable debt trajectory that America is on. He said his book offers “a conservative plan to help this country get over its enormous challenges.”

Ryan acknowledged that Americans want health and retirement security, but he believes the current programs are unsustainable in the 21st century.

“Medicare trust fund goes bankrupt in this decade,” Ryan said. “The Social Security trust fund goes bankrupt in 2032.”

But Ryan, the self-proclaimed optimist, believes these problems are solvable.

“There are changes that you can make to the Social Security system today that [guarantees] people counting on this program will always have those benefits,” he said. “We’re going to have to reform these programs so that you and I and the next generation on down actually have something. That’s the kind of conversation we have to elevate our debate to I think in our federal, national politics, and I think we can because America has always gotten it right at the end of the process.”

Praise for Pelosi’s legacy

When asked about current Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi stepping down from her leadership role, Ryan complimented her and her legacy.

“Obviously, she and I usually disagree on things, but first woman Speaker — a career to be proud of,” Ryan said. “She broke a glass ceiling, and there’s a lot to be proud about there.”

Addressing the attack on the speaker’s husband, Paul Pelosi, he called it “awful” and said he’s been thinking a lot about it.

Nancy Pelosi cited one reason for her stepping down to spend more time with her family, which Ryan understood. He himself retired from political office to spend more time with his family. He now teaches economics at the University of Notre Dame, has a poverty foundation and works at the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank.

A return to politics?

“You talked about the direction of the party and the direction of the country. Are we ever going to see you back in politics?” Karl asked.

“I like doing it the way I’m doing it now,” Ryan said.

When asked if he would run for president in 2024, Ryan said, “No, I mean, I’m definitely not running in 2024. I don’t think I — it just — I have presidential-sized policy ambition, but I really don’t have presidential-sized personal ambition, so I just don’t see myself doing that.”

“OK, so we can take that as a maybe,” Karl joked.

“No,” Ryan said, laughing. “I don’t think so.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, on Sunday said he expects the incoming Republican majority will give in to its “lowest common denominator” members by pursuing decisions like removing him from his committee assignments.

In an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” Schiff was asked by co-anchor Jonathon Karl about GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s promise to kick Schiff off the intelligence committee, to which Schiff responded that he thinks McCarthy will follow the lead of hardline lawmakers like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.

“Well, I suspect he will do whatever Marjorie Taylor Greene wants him to do. He’s a very weak leader of this conference, meaning that he will adhere to the wishes of the lowest common denominator, and if that lowest common denominator wants to remove people from committees, that’s what they’ll do,” Schiff said.

McCarthy has said that removing lawmakers like Schiff from their committee posts was a precedent set by Democrats when they and some Republicans voted to strip Greene of her committee work as punishment for her history of inflammatory and conspiratorial statements.

McCarthy has also claimed Schiff, who sits on the special House committee investigating last year’s insurrection, used his intelligence chairmanship to politicize his committee.

On “This Week,” Schiff took another view.

“It’s going to be chaos with Republican leadership. And, sadly, the crazy caucus has grown among the Republicans,” he added, noting that some newly elected Republicans representing deep-red districts are bringing firebrand reputations similar to Greene’s.

Karl also asked Schiff if he thought Attorney General Merrick Garland made the right decision by appointing a special prosecutor to oversee the Justice Department’s investigations into former President Donald Trump, who just launched a third presidential campaign.

The department is investigating both Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and his alleged mishandling of sensitive and classified government documents after leaving office. He denies wrongdoing.

“It’s the right thing to do, and most particularly if you ensure that it won’t cause any delay,” Schiff said. “So, if the same prosecutors that have been investigating the former president and others can be moved on to the special prosecutor’s team, then there’s every reason to do it, no reason not to do it.”

Schiff’s “concern,” he said, was on the urgency of the work.

“Leading up to this point … they were very slow at the department to work up the multiple lines of effort to overturn the election. It took them a long time to get started, and the delay has already been baked in. I hope that the special prosecutor will move with alacrity,” he said.

During the final weeks of the House Jan. 6 committee’s work before the Republican majority takes over, Schiff said he and the other committee members were weighing what kind of criminal referral to make about Trump’s actions — “I think the evidence is there,” he said — and what response to make to Trump resisting their subpoena.

“We have very limited options,” Schiff said while calling Trump “cowardly.”

Schiff also lambasted Elon Musk’s decision to let Trump back onto Twitter after the former president’s account was suspended after the insurrection.

“It’s a terrible mistake, Schiff said. “The president used that platform to incite that attack on the Capitol.”

Likewise, Schiff said he disagreed with the Biden administration’s decision to back a claim of legal immunity for Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in connection with the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was a U.S. resident.

“We ought to put our value on life not oil, and I think this is a tragic decision,” Schiff said.

As for 2024 and the next presidential race, Schiff said he was backing Joe Biden, who just turned 80, should Biden run for a second term: “I think he’s extremely capable … If he wants to continue, I’m for him.”

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