Democrat-elect Hakeem Jeffries was nominated Wednesday by his peers to succeed Nancy Pelosi and lead his party in the US House of Representatives.
He becomes the first black man to hold such responsibilities in the United States Congress.
The 52-year-old elect, who has held positions of responsibility on the Democratic campus since 2019, expressed his “tremendous pride” at having been appointed to this position, after a vote behind closed doors.
The election of Hakeem Jeffries marks a significant generational shift in the US Congress: the New Yorker-elect is thirty years younger than Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House.
“This new generation of leaders reflects the dynamism and diversity of our great nation,” he applauded.
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Nancy Pelosi had announced in mid-November that she would resign as leader of the Democrats in the future House of Representatives. She will continue to sit in the lower house, as a simple elect from California.
As leader of the Democrats, Hakeem Jeffries will navigate a House in January where his party will no longer have a majority. Republicans gained control of that chamber in the November midterm elections.
Although their majority will be smaller than expected, Republicans will have substantial scrutiny power, which they have promised to use for a series of investigations into President Biden’s handling of the pandemic or the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The Joe Biden camp, however, made sure to maintain control of the Senate. Now deprived of a Congress that had been entirely his for two years, the party of the Democratic president will no longer be able to vote on important projects. But neither is the other side.
Source: BFM TV
