Jeffries, Kushner Held Secret Talks Amid Midterm Feud

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., who is in line to become speaker if Democrats retake the chamber this November, held a private meeting in recent weeks with Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law and an informal adviser to the president.

The two discussed potential common ground on housing, immigration, and the cost of living, according to The New York Times, which cited five people with knowledge of the session.

Neither Jeffries' office nor a representative for Kushner confirmed the meeting as of Sunday, even as Trump and Jeffries traded personal attacks ahead of the midterm elections.

The sit-down took place in a private New York City space offered by a mutual friend and amounted to a broad conversation rather than a negotiation, one person familiar with it told the Times.

Kushner and Jeffries have stayed in touch since collaborating on a criminal justice measure during Trump's first term. Kushner suggested Jeffries also meet White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

The outreach contrasts with the public feud between Trump and Jeffries.

Trump has branded Jeffries a "low-IQ thug," writing in a Truth Social post in May that he is "a danger to our Country."

Jeffries, who calls Trump corrupt, has vowed on the campaign trail that Democrats will "hold the crooks accountable" if they win back the House majority, a pledge The Washington Post first reported from a Pennsylvania campaign stop in July.

Significant obstacles to a policy compromise remain.

Trump declined to sign a bipartisan housing measure this summer in protest of the Senate's failure to pass the SAVE America Act. The housing measure became law without his signature.

Asked this month by Punchbowl News, a Capitol Hill-focused outlet, about a possible Jeffries speakership, he said, "I'd probably get along with him very well," pointing to their only in-person meeting of his second term, an Oval Office session last fall on the government shutdown.

In a statement to the Times, Jeffries did not confirm the Kushner meeting but accused Republicans of taking a my-way-or-the-highway approach to governing and said Democrats want transformational change on the cost of living.

Jeffries has remained noncommittal about a third impeachment push, telling the Times last month that Democrats have "not ruled anything in and not ruled anything out in terms of accountability."

A Democrat-led House would leave Jeffries balancing government funding fights with pressure from the party's base to confront Trump at every turn.