Jeffries calls effort to kick Pelosi, Hoyer out of hideaway offices ‘petty, partisan and petulant’

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Friday condemned the efforts taken by Republicans to kick two senior Democrats out of their offices in the Capitol.

The decision to remove former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) from their offices was “petty, partisan and petulant,” Jeffries wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post.

Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry’s (R-N.C.) office on Tuesday told Pelosi, who was in California paying tribute to the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), to remove her belongings from her office by Wednesday so McHenry could take over the space.

Hoyer was also booted from his “hideaway office” Wednesday morning.

Jeffries criticized McHenry’s decision in the op-ed. After Congress narrowly avoided a government shutdown and the historic ousting of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the minority leader said “things only deteriorated from there.”

He said Democrats have tried to find bipartisan solutions and a “way out” of the dysfunction House Republicans have created. He said the efforts to remove Pelosi and Hoyer from their office spaces were House Republicans lashing out and trying to shift blame.

Jeffries said House Republicans need to confront “the extremism that has spread unchecked” in their conference, and then Democrats will be willing to proceed with changing the rules regarding how the House governs.

“The House should be restructured to promote governance by consensus and facilitate up-or-down votes on bills that have strong bipartisan support,” Jeffries wrote. “Under the current procedural landscape, a small handful of extreme members on the Rules Committee or in the House Republican conference can prevent common-sense legislation from seeing the light of day.”

Jeffries called upon House Republicans to break ties with the far-right representatives in their party. House Democrats remain committed to finding a bipartisan path forward, he wrote, but Republicans need to be willing to “break with MAGA extremism.”