Black Caucus fight over Jeffries tests who gets in

WASHINGTON (MNTV) — Three incoming Black Democrats have asked to join the Congressional Black Caucus without pledging to support House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries for speaker, and some current members say the two should not be separable.

The three are Darializa Avila Chevalier of New York, Pennsylvania state Representative Chris Rabb, and Melat Kiros of Colorado. All want in; none will commit to Jeffries.

Backing him is not a written rule, but one senior member said it has become an expectation, and others have signaled privately that refusing it could complicate entry.

The caucus — the bloc of Black members of Congress, long one of the most powerful voting groups among House Democrats — has never demanded ideological conformity.

It has held progressives, moderates, and, in the past, Republicans. Making loyalty to one leader the price of admission would break with that, and it collides with where the incoming members sit: all three ran to the left of the party establishment, two of them close to the Democratic Socialists of America, and their whole pitch was that they answer to voters rather than leadership.

A Democratic leadership source disputed that membership hinges on the speaker vote, saying every applicant goes through the same review after the election.

The caucus said it would settle its next-Congress membership then, and that its focus for now is voting rights and policy for Black communities. What the standoff measures is narrow but real: whether a group built on delivering Black political power now runs on loyalty to the leader who wields it, or on the independence its newest members were elected to bring.