A Far-Left Freedom Caucus Would Be a Nightmare for Jeffries

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-New York) has a message for the far-left Democrats who won in Tuesday’s primaries and are all but guaranteed to join Congress in January: tone it down.

But Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), the liberal icon whose 2018 upset win inspired this movement, had a very different message directed at the old-line Democrats: welcome these incoming progressives with open arms, or else they’ll spark ideological clashes.

These competing visions for who’s responsible for modifying their approach could go a long way toward determining how Democrats will rule the House of Representatives, should they win the majority in November.

There’s a growing fear about what happens if Democrats end up with a narrow majority similar to the current Republican edge. Will they have any greater success at governing the House than Kevin McCarthy or the current speaker, Mike Johnson, have had the past three-and-a-half years in clashes with the far-right House Freedom Caucus?

“So, if you come here and try to be the [liberal] Freedom Caucus, that’s a problem,” Meeks told NOTUS on Wednesday. “If you come here because you have some real concerns and you want to fight for people, you want to make a difference in their lives and you understand how you do that, then we don’t have a problem.”

But Ocasio-Cortez argued it’s the responsibility of veteran lawmakers to make the effort to help new members.

“It takes two to tango, right? I think these relationships and dynamics are not just determined by these new folks that are coming in, but they are also determined by how they are received,” she told NOTUS.

Ocasio-Cortez said that if fellow Democrats treated the newcomers as they treated her in 2019, then the caucus will be consumed with factionalism.

“My hope is that they are not met with the hostility and the cruelty, frankly, that I experienced, and I think that a lot of that can inform what happens afterwards,” she added, noting that they should be respected for having won their districts just like everyone else.

The last House election ended with 220 Republicans and 215 Democrats, the narrowest margin in more than 90 years. The political environment has gone from bad to worse for Republicans over the last year, with inflation spiking amid President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the Iran war pushing gas prices up.

But the redrawing of congressional districts has shored up Republican defenses enough that, according to the Cook Political Report, there are currently 204 “solid” or “likely” Republican seats, even in this climate.

Republicans are starting to talk about Democrats possibly nominating enough too-liberal-for-swing-district nominees that it could help them retain the majority. They point to the victories of two progressive candidates in northern Maine and California’s Central Valley over more moderate candidates supported by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

This coming Tuesday, the more liberal faction of the party is rallying behind a candidate the DCCC deemed too far to the left to win Colorado’s 8th District, giving Republicans some additional hope.

“Democrats are making our job easier. Nominating unelectable candidates in three of the country’s top battleground districts only strengthens our path to growing the House majority,” Mike Marinella, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, told NOTUS.

Democrats contend they remain in good shape to compete in plenty of districts. They point to the resounding victory Tuesday of Cait Conley, a West Point graduate who served in overseas combat zones, in a Hudson Valley swing district as more important than the three candidates aligned with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani winning in deep-blue seats.

Still, at this point, with so few competitive races in play, a good November for Democrats would be a net gain of 10 seats up to about 225 total seats, and a fantastic election would be gaining 15 seats to reach 230 in the House.

That type of margin would be smaller than in 2019, when then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi started with 235 Democrats and could lose 17 and still pass legislation from just her side of the aisle. With a smaller majority, the Democrats would also have a group of potential antagonists to leadership that is double or triple the size of the four-member “Squad” that Ocasio-Cortez led seven years ago.

Without naming Darializa Avila Chevalier, Meeks noted how the pro-Palestinian doctoral student, during her campaign to defeat Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-New York), had deleted an old social media account that had posts about abolishing the police and borders, seizing private property and nationalizing industries.

“I can only go by what they’ve said previously,” Meeks, a close ally of Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, said. “If that’s the mode that they take when they get here, then I have a problem.”

Another Jeffries ally predicted that his very collaborative approach would smooth over the ideological cracks in the caucus’ foundation next year.

“Hakeem Jeffries has a way of reaching out and listening to and holding together the most diverse caucus in the history of the world, and that’s the Democratic Party, and so there’s bound to be differences within the party,” Rep. John Larson (D-Connecticut) told reporters Thursday.

All sides agree that it will be different than 2019, when Pelosi came with a ton of institutional gravitas and respect from all corners of the caucus.

Despite some early clashes with Ocasio-Cortez over health care and immigration policy, the younger Democrat understood Pelosi’s grip on the caucus.

“There’s just absolutely no doubting the tremendous power that she built on her own — sophistication, guts, tenacity — and I think that that transcends any personal relationship,” Ocasio-Cortez said during a brief interview, in which Pelosi passed by and the two gave a cordial nod to each other.

By January 2027, however, roughly half the House’s members will have been elected in the 2022, 2024 or 2026 election cycles, meaning they have no idea what it was like to serve in a mostly normally functioning House.

For these lawmakers, failed procedural votes and prolonged internal party feuds over electing a speaker is the only House they know.

Far-left Democrats want leadership and senior Democrats to treat them with the honor they feel every member deserves, having won their elections fair and square.

And Ocasio-Cortez, who some progressives want to take the mantle from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and run for the 2028 presidential nomination, said party elders never really gave her the respect she felt she deserved.

“I don’t think [respect] was ever given to me freely. I had to earn it through my survival,” she said, pointing to how some Democrats thought she would flame out after one term. “I had to build a fundraising machine that outraised most members of the House. I had to support other people because I don’t think respect is about being liked. I think it’s about what you build.”

The Squad never did blow things up in the four years that Democrats had the majority — not the way the Freedom Caucus has repeatedly been an obstructive force against House Republican leaders.

Meeks said he wants the self-proclaimed democratic socialists to learn what not to do from the HFC and other MAGA Republicans, to avoid tactics that have helped turn the House into a dysfunctional mess.

“We could figure out a way to work together to get those things. We also could figure out a way to get individuals nothing, and that is to go into gridlock, so that nothing happens,” he warned.

But Ocasio-Cortez reiterated her desire to have both sides of the Democratic divide work together, including party elders.

“My hope is that it’ll be different because we’ve learned that we get further together than we do apart,” she said.