The elected Democrat 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 elected official, who has held positions of responsibility in the Democratic staff since 2019, expressed his “tremendous pride” in having been appointed to this position, following a vote behind closed doors. .
The election of Hakeem Jeffries marks a significant generational change in the American Congress: the New York elected official 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,” she applauded.
Nancy Pelosi had announced in mid-November to renounce the post of leader of the Democrats in the future House of Representatives. She will continue to sit in the lower house, as a simple elected from California.
As leader of the Democrats, Hakeem Jeffries will navigate in January in a House where his party will no longer have a majority. Republicans won control of that chamber in November’s midterm elections.
Even though their majority will be slimmer than expected, Republicans will have substantial inspection power, which they have promised to use for a host of investigations into President Biden’s handling of the pandemic or the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Joe Biden’s camp, however, made sure to keep 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 major projects. But neither does the other side.
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