Hakeem Jeffries breaks speech record in bid to delay Trump’s megabill vote
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are ready to vote on President Donald Trump‘s so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill,” but they had to wait for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to wrap things up first.
Jeffries, the Democratic leader, took to the House floor early Thursday morning to rail against the legislation he and other Democrats have warned will pull the social safety net from under millions of Americans and their children — and his speech lasted almost nine hours.
Jeffries began speaking just after 5 a.m. Thursday, delaying the final vote in the chamber. According to ABC News, he picked apart the bill and some Republicans who voted for it, as stacks of binders sat next to the podium.
“I’ve been given 15 minutes each on a bill of such significant magnitude as it relates to the health, the safety and the well-being of the American people and because that debate was so limited, I feel the obligation, Mr. Speaker, to stand on this house floor and take my sweet time to tell the stories and that’s exactly what I intend to do,” Jeffries said, before launching into a speech criticizing Republicans’ deference to Trump, reading through personal accounts of people concerned about losing their health care coverage, and recounting American history.
“People will die. Tens of thousands, perhaps year after year after year, as a result of the Republican assault on the health care of the American people,” Jeffries said, focusing much of his speech on the bill’s potential to impact Medicaid, the federal program that primarily protects senior adults and people with disabilities. “I’m sad. I never thought I would be on the House floor saying this is a crime scene.”
It’s reported that the House stayed up all night debating Trump’s agenda, and Jeffries used a tool known as the “magic minute” that permits leaders to speak for an unlimited time, racking up a total of eight hours and 44 minutes of speaking time.
Jeffries blew past the record for a “magic minute” speech, set by then-House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, who spoke for eight hours and 32 minutes in 2021 when debating then-president Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Act.
Three years before McCarthy’s record-setting speech, Rep. Nancy Pelosi spoke for just over eight hours while serving as minority leader, speaking about undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children.
Jeffries’ speech was reminiscent of a record-setting April speech by Democratic Sen. Cory Booker that accused Trump of “recklessly” challenging the nation’s democratic institutions. After 25 hours and five minutes, Booker broke the record for the longest individual floor speech in Senate history.
Now, Republicans will move to final passage of the bill.
What’s in the One Big Beautiful Bill ActAt some 887 pages, the legislation includes tax breaks, spending cuts, a rollback of solar energy tax credits and new money for national defence and deportations. The bill does not eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits, despite what Trump says.
The bill rolls back past presidential agendas. In many ways, the package is a repudiation of the agendas of the last two Democratic presidents, a chiselling away at the Medicaid expansion from Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, and a pullback of Joe Biden’s climate change strategies in the Inflation Reduction Act.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said Sunday that the bill would pile nearly US$3.3 trillion onto the nation’s debt load from 2025 to 2034, a nearly $1-trillion increase over the House-passed version of the bill. The analysis also found that 11.8 million Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill passed.
Republicans broadly support the bill, which contains most of Trump’s domestic priorities, saying it would spur economic growth and deliver tax breaks to Americans across the economic spectrum.
Democrats are united in opposition to the bill but lack the votes to stop it, as Republicans control both the House and the Senate by slim margins. Republicans can afford no more than three defections in either chamber to get a final bill passed.
The past two weeks have shown deep Republican divides on the bill, and a handful of Republican holdouts have objected to the bill. One, Sen. Thom Tillis, opted not to seek re-election after voting against it.
Nonetheless, Trump has succeeded in getting the votes to advance the legislation at each step. The Senate passed it by the narrowest possible margin on Tuesday.
Votes in the House, which Republicans control by a 220-212 margin, were held open for hours on Wednesday during the day and overnight as House Speaker Mike Johnson and the White House talked with reluctant members.
Republican leaders said Trump made late-night phone calls to win over wavering Republicans, but they predicted that some would still vote against it.
“Nothing has been unanimous in this for process, and that’s going to hold true on the floor,” Rep. Steve Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, told reporters.
During the marathon overnight session, lawmakers cleared a final procedural hurdle needed to begin debate on the bill in a 219-213 vote at around 3:30 a.m. ET Thursday.
“This disgusting abomination is not about improving the quality of life of the American people,” Jeffries said in his speech Thursday. “The focus of this bill, the justification for all of the cuts that will hurt everyday Americans, is to provide massive tax breaks for billionaires.”
— With files from Reuters and The Associated Press
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