The new Empire State of Mind atop the Tri-Caucus
Three New Yorkers will lead the influential trio of affinity caucuses in the next Congress, bolstering the power of an already formidable congressional delegation.
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👋🏾 Hi, hey, hello! Welcome back to Once Upon a Hill. The Democratic Women’s Caucus will elect Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-N.M.) to be its next chair this afternoon. I’m told the election won’t be finalized until the vote closes after 24 hours, but Leger Fernandez is running unopposed.
Leger Fernandez, who currently serves as the DWC’s vice chair, will replace outgoing chair Lois Frankel, who led the DWC to record membership with 95 Democratic women serving in the House simultaneously last month following the election of Rep. Erica Lee Carter (D-Texas) to fill the seat of her mother, the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas).
The DWC will elect its two vice chairs on Dec. 18 with additional appointments to policy and communications positions to be announced at a later date.
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The Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus elected Reps. Yvette Clarke and Grace Meng as their respective chairs on Wednesday afternoon as the various blocs across the two parties and chambers organize ahead of the start of the new Congress next month.
Clarke and Meng joined Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who was elected late last month to lead the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, to ensure the Congressional Tri-Caucus will be led by three New Yorkers for the next two years.
It’s a meaningful development considering the Empire State was a side spot just two years ago when House Democrats lost four seats due in part to Kathy Hochul’s underperformance in the governor’s race and heavy Republican turnout. The 11 seats Republicans held at the start of this Congress were the most won by the GOP since 2000, notching the party its best popular vote performance in two decades.
But with House Democrats flipping four Republican-held seats in the past year, including three in last month’s election, Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) is expected to wield even more power in his second term as the top House Democrat in what will be a virtually evenly divided House through the first few months of 2025
and three New Yorkers atop the Tri-Caucus, the Empire State has reestablished itself as a formidable legislative power center.
“They are great members of Congress, great leaders and great friends,” Jeffries told me of Clarke, Espaillat and Meng in a brief interview on Wednesday. “And we look forward to working together collectively for the American people.”
While each chair agreed their simultaneous ascension to the top spot was coincidental, they’re clear-eyed about the work ahead and they believe their familiarity with each other will only bolster their impact.
“We’re go-getters. And for all of us, our districts went through hell when Donald Trump was last in office. I think it’s just one of those kismet moments that we're all ascending to the leadership of these affinity groups at the same time, and that Leader Jeffries is now Leader Jeffries,” Clarke told me after a press conference following the CBC election. “But I think our lived experiences will bring another dynamic to not only how we work within our caucus, but how we work as a Tri-Caucus.”
Meng, who has served as CAPAC’s vice chair for the past three terms, said that their new roles expand their responsibilities beyond their districts to the entire country.
“I think, from a positive perspective, we all know each other and work together very well,” she said. “And we’re going to make sure that we are reaching out to all corners of the country—red, blue, purple areas—making sure that our communities know that our caucuses and Congress is here for them and what we can do to make their quality of lives better and a more inclusive Congress.”
Although they hail from the same city, each chair represents constituencies across four diverse boroughs
with Espaillat in Manhattan and the Bronx, Clarke in Brooklyn and Meng in Queens.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for the three of us to work towards a common goal to lower costs for all Americans, not just New Yorkers, and let them know that we’re listening to their concerns and fighting for our shared values,” Espaillat told me on Wednesday evening.
New York’s influence extends past the Jeffries and Tri-Caucus to committee leadership.
Rep. Greg Meeks, who chairs the CBC’s political arm, will remain the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Rep. Nydia Velazquez will add to her 26-year tenure as the number-one Dem on the House Small Business Committee next term. Rep. Joe Morelle will remain the ranking member of the House Administration Committee. And although Rep. Jerry Nadler, announced he will step down as the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee to make way for Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), rising star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is expected to run to replace Raskin as the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee. Across the Capitol, Chuck Schumer, a loud-and-proud Brooklynite, was just elected as the top Senate Democrat. New York’s other senator—Kirsten Gillibrand—is expected to be tapped to lead the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm for the 2026 midterm cycle.
Clarke told me that she or her colleagues aren’t resting on their laurels after the election proved that enacting popular policies is no longer enough in a fractured media environment.
“I think we have to take [our message to] them. I don’t think that we can assume that because we’re in these positions, people will give a sigh of relief,” she said. “I think it’s important for us to get out of these halls and speak directly to the people because there is so much misinformation, so much disinformation being peddled and consumed by people in our communities that we’ve got a lot to debunk, but we got a touch ground. They have to see the earnestness by which we work.”
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The Senate confirmed on Wednesday the 228th judge nominated by Joe Biden, leaving the president and Senate Democrats six short of nominees confirmed to the federal bench during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term.
People for the American Way is leading a digital day of action with reproductive rights, environmental rights and civil rights organizations, and other progressive groups to spend the day pressing senators to confirm the remaining Biden judicial nominees before the end of the term.
“We work with a number of organizations who understand why our communities need fair-minded judges on our courts to strategize the best ways to help make that possible. These include organizations from across the progressive community, like the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, National Women's Law Center, and Alliance For Justice. We worked together on this action and will send it out to a broader coalition of organizations to encourage them to participate,” Meg Simons, digital manager at People For, told me in an email. “We know time is running out to get these nominees confirmed, and that’s why we're calling on our senators to do everything they can—including staying late, working weekends, and pushing back when they’re leaving for the holidays—to get these confirmations done.
People For regularly leads digital days of action, social takeovers, congressional call-ins and petitions and is part of a working group that creates and shares toolkits to help organize and activate its community. The last call-in related to Biden’s judicial nominees was before Thanksgiving. The last social storm, also late last month, pushed for the swift confirmations of three nominees who were approved by the Senate.
Beyond lobbying for Biden’s judges, People For is also leading the resistance against President-elect Trump’s cabinet nominees. More than 5,000 people have signed a petition opposing Trump Attorney General pick Pam Bondi, and another petition condemning Trump loyalist Kash Patel’s nomination as FBI director was released on Wednesday, with more to come in the days ahead.
Do you have questions about the lame-duck session or the incoming Trump presidency? Drop me a line at michael@onceuponahill.com or send me a message below to get in touch and I’ll report back with answers.
Happenings
The House will meet at 10 a.m. with first and last votes at 4:45 p.m. on a measure to start debate on legislation to require government agencies to assess the impact that proposed regulations would have on small businesses. Members will also vote on several suspension bills and two separate Democratic-led resolutions to direct the House Ethics Committee to release its report on the committee’s investigation into the alleged misconduct of former Rep. Matt Gaetz.
The Senate will meet at 10 a.m. and take two votes at 11:30 a.m. to confirm Sarah Davenport to be a district judge for New Mexico and to end debate on the nomination of Tiffany Johnson to be US District Judge for Northern Georgia. The Senate will vote at 1:45 p.m. to end debate on the nomination of Keli Neary to be US District Judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
Read All About It
“Everyday purchases” by Jaed Coffin: “Their 7-Eleven store was a Maine town’s lifeline. Then came the shooting.”
“Human interaction is now a luxury good” by Jessica Grose: “We’re increasingly becoming a society in which very wealthy people get human care, like concierge medicine and private schools with tiny class sizes.”
“The creep cabinet is no accident” by Sarah Jones: “In Trump’s inner circle, misogyny is still the byword.”
“The coming Democratic revolution by Franklin Foer: “To fight Trump and the GOP, blue states are planning to appropriate a Republican strategy: federalism.”
“The American people deserve DOGE” by Annie Lowery: “America has an efficiency problem, but Elon Musk is not the man to fix it.”
“Watching the media reckoning unfold in a now-shuttered broadcast newsroom” by Abby Vesoulis: “Scripps sought to dominate national breaking news. Instead it became a paradigm of a broken industry.”
“The sound of fear on air” by David Frum: “It is an ominous sign that Morning Joe felt like it had to apologize for something I said.”
“How raw milk could spark a pandemic” by Alex Tey: “With bird flu spreading in dairy farms, now’s a bad time for risky behaviors.”
“How weed won over America” by Marin Cogan: “Land of the free, home of the blazed.”
“Tim Cook wants Apple to literally save your life” by Steven Levy: “Much as the CEO seems awestruck by AI and his just-released Apple Intelligence, he’s more convinced that the tech giant’s health apps will define the company’s legacy.”
“How to get your party guests to leave” by Mia Mercado: “Thanks for coming!”
“Have we reached peak big pants?” by Chantal Fernandez: “Ranking the fashion trends that defined 2024.”
The Bright Side
The House unanimously voted to name a post office in Baltimore after the late Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), who represented a district including over half of Baltimore for more than two decades until he died in 2019.
Cummings served as the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee from 2010 until his death—a role now occupied by Rep. Jamie Raskin, who also hails from Maryland’s congressional delegation.
“I mean, Elijah, to me, embodied the belief that government in our society has to be an instrument for the uplifting of each and every person in the society. Government cannot be the instrument of just the wealthy, the well connected. It’s got to serve everybody,” Raskin told me on Tuesday. “So as Oversight Chair, he pursued that mission every single day. He wanted to make sure the Department of Transportation was serving the people. He wanted to make sure that the Navy was serving the people, that HUD was serving the people, and that Congress was serving the people. So it’s a beautiful mission he had and we have to try to reincorporate that in our ethos today, even in very hard times.”
Raskin acknowledged the challenges of pursuing Cummings’s mission in the current political environment.
“Well, there’s a real effort to tear down government and to tear down federal workers and then to replace it just with the rule of the wealthy and big corporations. That’s what it's all about. That's what plutocracy means,” he said. “So we’ve got to defend government and the people who work for it, against this attack from the outside. It’s not coming from anarchists who say, no government. They just want government that works for the billionaires and the big corporations.”
The Elijah E. Cummings Post Office Building is located at 340 South Loudon Avenue, Baltimore, Md., 21229.