 "He spoke for 8 hrs and 44 mins on Trump’s ‘one big, beautiful bill’. Who is Hakeem Jeffries?")
On Thursday (July 3) at 4:53 am EDT, US Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries stood up in the US House of Representatives to deliver his remarks during the debate on President Donald Trump’s sweeping policy, the Big Beautiful Bill.
It was at 1:37 pm EDT— a whopping eight hours and 44 minutes later — that Jeffries ended his remarks, bagging him the honour of the longest floor speech.
However, his record-breaking speech couldn’t delay the inevitable — US President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill was passed by the US House, in a 218-214 vote, and now heads to the president’s desk where it is expected to be signed in a law today (July 4) to coincide with July 4th Independence Day.
While Jeffries’ efforts didn’t succeed the way he wanted, he did use his time to enumerate the many ways that Trump’s tax and spending bill would hurt the American people. He criticised criticised the legislation as a “shameful, disgusting, and reckless” giveaway to the wealthy at the expense of America’s most vulnerable.
Who is Hakeem Jeffries?
The current House Minority Leader and leader of the House Democratic Caucus, 54-year-old Hakeem Jeffries represents the Eighth Congressional District of New York and is serving his seventh term in the United States Congress.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Jeffries graduated with a BA in Political Science from Binghamton University, then a Master of Public Policy from Georgetown University, and finally a Juris Doctor from the New York University School of Law.
He worked as a corporate lawyer for several years before he took the political plunge. However, his initial runs for New York State Assembly were unsuccessful. It was finally in 2006 that Jeffries was elected to represent the state’s 57th Assembly District where he gained popularity for pushing a bill to do away with the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk database.
Six years later, he ran for congressional office to represent New York’s 8th District, declaring that “Washington is broken”. He won that election with more than 70 per cent of the vote and was sworn into Congress the following year.
As a US congressman, Jeffries has sponsored bills and focused primarily on criminal justice reform, affordable medication access, and drug policy. He introduced the Eric Garner Excessive Use of Force Prevention in 2015, then later again in 2021 as part of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. He’s also a supporter of gun control measures and of women’s reproductive rights, condemning along with many other congressional Democrats the overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022.
In 2020, he was tapped as one of the impeachment managers in the House’s first impeachment of then-President Donald Trump. Jeffries has been quite vocal and hawkish on Trump.
What did Jeffries says against Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill?
On Thursday, as Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill reached the US House floor for a vote, Jeffries stood up and used his magic minute” − a privilege of leadership that allows him to speak on the floor for an unlimited amount of time − to throw a wrench in the Republicans’ timeline.
“I rise today in strong opposition to Donald Trump’s disgusting abomination…that guts Medicaid, rips food from the mouths of children, seniors and veterans, and rewards billionaires with massive tax breaks,” Jeffries said early in his address.
He then added, “Donald Trump’s deadline may be Independence Day. That ain’t my deadline. You know why? … We don’t work for Donald Trump. We work for the American people. That’s why we’re right here now, on the floor of the House of Representatives, standing up for the American people.”
The Democrat slammed the bill, telling the members of the House, “Republicans are trying to jam this one, big, ugly bill down the throats of the American people.
“Leadership requires courage, conviction, compassion — and yet what we have seen from this administration and co-conspirators on the Republican side of the aisle is cruelty, chaos and corruption,” he said, adding that the bill was “an extraordinary assault on the health care of the American people.”
Repeating Martin Luther King’s quote, he said, “Budgets are moral documents. And in our view, Mr Speaker, budgets should be designed to lift people up. This reckless Republican budget that we are debating right now on the floor of the House of Representatives tears people down. This reckless Republican budget is an amoral document, and everybody should vote no against it because of how it attacks children and seniors and everyday Americans and people with disabilities.”
Here's the moment Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) set the record for longest floor speech in the U.S. House of Representatives. pic.twitter.com/2IT8Hwx2Ax
— CSPAN (@cspan) July 3, 2025
The 54-year-old also invoked the late John Lewis, a civil rights activist in the 1960s and longtime Democratic congressman from Georgia. “Get into good trouble, necessary trouble,” Jeffries said. “We’re going to press on until victory is won.”
Jeffries continued on — aided with small bites of food and drinks. However, he didn’t leave the chamber or his podium knowing that his speech would be over if he did.
While he spent a considerable time attacking the Republicans and the bill through his speech, he also spent time talking on hip-hop, King George III and his own life story.
He concluded his speech with a note of optimism; “I know that there are people concerned with what’s happening in America,” Jeffries said. “But understand what our journey teaches us is that after Project 2025 comes Project 2026. And you will have an opportunity to end this national nightmare.”
And amid raucous applause from his Democratic colleagues, he ended his marathon address. “I yield back.”
What next?
Once Jeffries wrapped up his address, House Speaker Mike Johnson began speaking, hailing the bill and slamming the Democrat.
“This big, beautiful bill fulfills all the promises in the America First agenda,” he said. “It is the people’s bill, it is made for and shaped by the most diverse coalition of American voters in American history.”
Criticising Jeffries for his speech, Johnson added that “it makes no difference whether our colleagues only across the chamber speak for 25 minutes or 25 hours, they can’t change the truth.”
“I tell you what Ronald Reagan used to remind us, you can always trust the American people, and we do trust the American people, and they can discern the difference,” Johnson said. “What they saw on display here today is that Democrats deliver performances and Republicans deliver results.”
After this, the bill was put to vote and narrowly passed with a 218-214, marking a huge triumph for Trump. Speaking to reporters, US President Donald Trump said the bill’s passage would supercharge the US economy “into a rocket ship.”
With inputs from agencies
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