Representative Hakeem Jeffries is so close to becoming Speaker of the House that he doesn’t even need to measure the drapes.

In the literal office politics that plays out in the halls of Congress, power and seniority correlate directly with the size and grandeur of the space a politician controls, and the suite Jeffries already occupies as leader of the House Democrats is prime real estate, with thick blue carpeting, a fireplace, leather armchairs, a soaring high ceiling, and a giant mirror that makes the already spacious room look vast. It’s the same perch from which Thomas “Tip” O’Neill ran the House during a record-setting ten consecutive years as Speaker, from 1977 to 1987.

If he becomes Speaker, the Brooklyn lawmaker might stay in the current digs, snag one of the coveted, unmarked “hideaway” suits near the House floor, or spend time in the ornate Speaker’s Ceremonial Office, normally reserved for bill signings. The Speaker has the power to choose, and that’s the point. “Like George Jefferson said: Moving on up,” Jeffries wisecracked as we sat down.

Jeffries and the Dems have the wind at their back: Since 1938, the president’s party has lost seats in midterm elections 20 out of 22 times. (The exceptions were in 1998, when Democrats benefited from a backlash against the impeachment of Bill Clinton, and 2002, when Republicans gained seats during the run-up to the Iraq War following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.) If the historical pattern holds, Republicans will lose their razor-thin majority, and control of the House, in November.

“We’ve definitely identified 40 to 45 seats that we believe are in play. And we’re gonna try to win as many of them as we can,” Jeffries told me. “We only have to net three seats in order to take back control of the House of Representatives, because the Republican majority right now is the narrowest that any party has had since 1930.”

Democrats, he said, plan to hammer home the theme of affordability, including the price spikes caused by the attack on Iran: “The problem that we have, among many, with this reckless war of choice in the Middle East is that billions of dollars are being spent by Donald Trump and Republicans to drop bombs in Iran, but they won’t spend a dime to make health care more affordable for the American people.”

Jeffries’s top Democratic “red to blue” targets are rematches like Pennsylavania’s Tenth District, where former TV anchor Janelle Stelson came within 2 percentage points of toppling incumbent Scott Perry in 2024; and Arizona’s Second District, where a former president of the Navajo Nation, Jonathan Nez, an ex–Navy SEAL, is launching a second effort to oust Republican Eli Crane. Democrats are also pushing candidates with a proven record of flipping local seats in Virginia, Tennessee, and Iowa.

But Representative Mike Lawler of Putnam County, one of the suburban Republicans that Jeffries has targeted, isn’t overly worried. “My seat is one that Kamala Harris won, that Joe Biden won, that Hillary Clinton won, that has 80,000 more Democrats than Republicans. And, obviously, Hakeem Jeffries and Kathy Hochul and everybody are focused on trying to defeat me,” Lawler told me. “But I win because I know the people of my district. I’ve held close to 2,000 in-person events in my district in three years. We’ve closed over 8,000 cases and brought back $45 million to constituents.”

Most important, said Lawler, he and other Republicans won a partial restoration of New Yorkers’ ability to deduct state and local taxes (SALT) from federal tax bills “As people are filing their taxes, they’re getting anywhere between a $5,000 to $20,000 refund check. The increase in SALT is the single largest tax deduction in the whole bill,” he said. “We delivered on that. Democrats said they would, and when they had complete control, they failed to do it. So I feel good about where we are, and I think we’ll be in a strong position for reelection.”

Another Republican that Jeffries is trying to unseat, Representative Greg Murphy of coastal North Carolina, is also feeling good about his reelection chances. As the only surgeon in Congress, Murphy has been a loud voice for health-care reform, tearing into insurance executives at a public hearing in January and calling for health conglomerates like United Healthcare to be broken up.

“I think our insurance industry has profited, if not fraudulently, immorally on their prices that they’re gouging Americans with. This is a target-rich environment to make affordable health care in this country,” Murphy told me, sounding for a moment like a progressive champion of universal health care. “I never, despite somebody’s inability to pay, turn anybody down. But it should not be that the No. 1 cause of bankruptcy in this country is health insurance or health issues.”

The main challenge for Murphy, Lawler, and other vulnerable Republicans is overcoming the unpopularity of President Trump, whose plunging approval rating is creating a drag down-ballot. Fifty-six percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s actions in Iran, and an average of recent polls shows that more than roughly the same number think the country is heading in the wrong direction. (Only one in three believe we’re on the right track.) Even more ominously for Republicans, 68 percent disapprove of the job Congress is doing.

Jeffries says the numbers explain why Trump is pushing for passage of the SAVE America Act, currently being debated in the Senate, which would require voters to produce written proof of citizenship in order to vote. The bill, if passed, would create problems for millions of Americans who lack a passport (only about half of all adults have one) or who changed their name from the one on their birth certificate after getting married. Other provisions in the bill would require voters to cast ballots in person, affecting those with disabilities and potentially causing havoc in the eight states (plus the District of Columbia) that conduct all elections by mail.

“Donald Trump is trying to nationalize the election because he knows that if there’s a free and fair election, he’s going to lose,” Jeffries told me. “Republicans are going to get crushed, as we’ve been seeing all across the country.”

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