Jeffries Bids for Speaker With a 100-Day Plan: Tariffs, Health Care, and Medicaid

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries formally launched his bid to become Speaker of the House on Wednesday, writing to his Democratic colleagues to ask for their support. If elected when the new Congress convenes on January 3, 2027, he would be the first Black Speaker in American history.

Jeffries did not run on a slogan. He laid out a 100-day agenda: eliminate the Trump-era tariffs, restore billions in federal funding for health care and food assistance, and block further cuts to Medicaid. House Democrats will nominate their candidate in a secret-ballot leadership vote later this month, before the full House floor vote in January. His top deputies, Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar, signalled they will seek the No. 2 and No. 3 leadership posts.

The agenda is a statement of intent, not a law. A Democratic House can pass tariff repeal and health-care restoration, but a Democratic Senate still faces the filibuster on most bills, and President Trump holds the veto. The realistic reading of the first 100 days is therefore narrower: oversight and investigations the House can run on its own, must-pass spending fights where Democrats now hold leverage, and a series of votes that force both parties to go on record before 2028.

The other half of the leadership picture is the Senate, where the map is nearly — but not quite — settled. Senator Susan Collins conceded in Maine, ending her bid for a sixth term. Two races remain uncalled, in Alaska and Mississippi, and are covered in the companion piece below.

The conservative take: Judge the 100-day plan by what it costs, not by what it promises. Ending tariffs would lower prices for American families — a goal conservatives should welcome on its merits, even from the other party. Restoring open-ended health-care and food-assistance spending, and using the Speaker’s chair as an investigations platform, is a different matter: that is where the new majority’s priorities will show, and where the conservative case has to be made in public, with numbers, from day one.

Discuss: join the forum thread — Jeffries’ 100 days: what should Republicans fight first?