Jeffries accepts challenge, says he wants to debate Speaker Johnson on C-SPAN [View all]
Source: The Hill
10/15/25 8:17 AM ET
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said this week that he’s ready for a public debate with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) amid the government shutdown, now in its third week.
“I look forward to that,” Jeffries told a small group of reporters on Tuesday in his office in the Capitol. “We’re going to try to get it scheduled, absolutely.”
Johnson had earlier declined a challenge from Jeffries to debate on the House floor, saying the time to debate the Republicans’ spending bill had come and gone. But in a rare appearance on C-SPAN last week, the Speaker said he wanted to sit down with Jeffries on the network’s new program, “CeaseFire,” which aims to bring together figures of opposing viewpoints to discuss the issues of the day.
“I’ll sit down with Hakeem Jeffries, my counterpart. I’d love to,” Johnson said last Thursday on the network’s “Washington Journal” program. “Sometime we’ll get that done.” The latest remarks from Jeffries come weeks into a government shutdown that’s found both parties digging into their positions without giving an inch.
Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/5556313-hakeem-jeffries-mike-johnson-debate/
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