Meeting with adversaries, in and of itself, is not my problem.
I am a lawyer. Just this week I spent hours negotiating with representatives of the county that killed one of my clients. Sometimes you have to sit across from people you fundamentally disagree with because your clients or your community need something from them. But I do not enter those rooms just to say I was there. There is a demand. There is an objective. And ultimately, there needs to be a result for the people I represent.
That is the standard I thought about when I learned that House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries sat down privately in New York with President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser Jared Kushner. Jeffries defended the meeting as the “reality of governance”.
My questions for Jeffries are simple: What did the American people get? What did Black people get? What concession was won? What became materially different because the meeting happened?
Those questions matter because Democratic leaders, including Jeffries, have spent years warning that Donald Trump and the MAGA movement threaten our rights and institutions, while also accusing Trump, his family, and Kushner of corruption, influence peddling, and potentially unlawful conduct.
And those questions become even more important when you compare Democratic leadership’s willingness to engage people close to Trump with how quickly parts of the Democratic establishment become cautious when someone inside their own party wins power without the establishment’s blessing.
Look at Florida State Rep. Angie Nixon. Nixon pulled off a decisive upset in Florida’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary, defeating establishment favorite Alexander Vindman despite being outspent roughly 16 to 1. The candidate with the money, national profile and institutional advantages lost to the candidate who organized enough actual voters to win. If Nixon wins in November, she will become Florida’s first Black U.S. senator.
Democratic Senate leadership did publicly congratulate her. Chuck Schumer and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Kirsten Gillibrand released a statement after her victory. Obviously they should have, but still that matters. Yet, statements of congratulations are not campaign resources, field infrastructure, advertising dollars, national surrogates or sustained political investment.
