Hakeem Jeffries
Role at the time: House Democratic Leader and U.S. Representative for New York's 8th congressional district, answering a reporter's question at a House Democratic leadership press conference in Washington
Statement summary
At a House Democratic leadership press conference in Washington on September 17, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries was asked about a photograph of President Trump that the reporter said suggested the Kennedy Center could be demolished, and about what Congress could do if the administration moved forward. He said legislative action was needed through the appropriations process for action not authorized by Congress, and that he was confident that 'one way or the other' Democrats would 'stop the president from another vanity project and waste of taxpayer resources in the context of the Kennedy Center.'
“I'm confident that one way or the other, whether it's legislatively or whether it's legally in the courts, we're going to stop the president from another vanity project and waste of taxpayer resources in the context of the Kennedy Center.”
Full livestream of the House Democratic leadership press availability (Jeffries, Whip Katherine Clark, Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar) on the Rep. Jeffries YouTube channel, linked from the Democratic Leader's 2026-09-17 press release. YouTube shows the stream starting 14:36 UTC (10:36 AM ET) on 2026-09-17 and lists the upload date as 2026-09-18. The quotation was checked against the recording. The reporter is not identified on the recording, and Jeffries's press release does not cover this exchange.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Why we used this label
Asked on September 17 about a photograph suggesting the center could be demolished, Jeffries called the president's Kennedy Center effort 'another vanity project and waste of taxpayer resources' and said Democrats would stop it legislatively or in the courts, which criticizes and opposes the course the conduct under scrutiny describes. The closest competing label is “Mixed or conditional”, because he frames stopping the project as depending on a legislative or judicial route ('one way or the other'). That loses because the condition concerns the means, not whether the project is acceptable, and his evaluation of it is uniformly critical.