Republicans have ‘nothing to run on’ in midterms after Trump failures, Jeffries says

Hakeem Jeffries, the US House minority leader, speaks to reporters at the US Capitol in Washington DC on 23 July. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP View image in fullscreen Hakeem Jeffries, the US House minority leader, speaks to reporters at the US Capitol in Washington DC on 23 July. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP Republicans have ‘nothing to run on’ in midterms after Trump failures, Jeffries says Top House Democrat says US president ‘failed to deliver’ on campaign promises to lower costs and avoid overseas wars Donald Trump ’s Republican party has “nothing to run on” for the congressional midterm elections after the president broke promises to lower costs and avoid starting war overseas, Hakeem Jeffries has said. The House minority leader, a New York congressman, made those comments on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, exactly 100 days from the 3 November midterms, when Jeffries and his fellow Democrats are aiming to take control of the US House and Senate from their Republican opponents. Asked to discuss the elections, Jeffries alluded to how Trump and other Republicans quickly seized on a 21 July announcement from Mike Sherrill, the Democratic New Jersey governor, that 6,600 noncitizens in the state had registered to vote because of a software error. Fewer than 400 of them voted before the identification and correction of the error. But the president and his allies nonetheless used the disclosure to boost false claims that there are scores of noncitizens on voter rolls who could compromise the integrity of the midterms, during which Republicans are predicted to lose seats. Jeffries on Sunday argued that was because it is a more comfortable strategy to adopt rather than confront how the US and Israeli militaries began warring with Iran in February after Trump won a second presidency in 2024 having promised “not to start … endless wars in the Middle East”. How Trump could undermine the midterms Read more The costs of the war have included the deaths of 18 US troop members as of Sunday, along with injuries to hundreds more. Gas and grocery prices have also soared amid the conflict, leaving 95% of Americans believing that the US is suffering an affordability crisis, according to exclusive polling conducted for the Guardian. “Republicans … have failed to actually deliver on making life more affordable for the American people,” Jeffries said to Dana Bash, the State of the Union host. “It was Donald Trump who promised to lower costs on day one. But we know that costs haven’t gone down in this country. Costs have gone up. “It was Donald Trump … who said that he was elected not to start wars, endless wars in the Middle East, but to stop them – and then turned around and has gotten us involved in this reckless war of choice in Iran that has skyrocketed gas prices on the American people.” Jeffries then referred to how Republicans a year earlier cut more than $1tn from Medicaid, the public health insurance program for people in the US who are low-i