House Democrats moved to deescalate lingering tensions between the party's factions on Thursday, in a bid to unify the caucus in its final stretch before a lengthy summer recess.
Leaders of the caucus' moderate and progressive wings released a rare joint statement that reads like a political truce after a weeks-long feud that has frequently spilled into public, including on Twitter.
In an olive branch among all sides, some of the contentious tweets deriding fellow Democratic lawmakers or staff were also deleted.
"We will remain clear-eyed with respect to our unity of purpose. Every single voice within the House Democratic Caucus is an important one," the statement reads. "We have a shared mission. Onward and upward."
The statement was signed by leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus as well as the two moderate groups, the Blue Dog Coalition and the New Democrats Coalition.
While the cautiously worded statement was blasted out late on Thursday, after lawmakers had departed the Capitol for the week, the effort to bury bad feelings and move on from the ideological and generational clash that dominated the Democratic Caucus since late June began in earnest earlier this week.
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) met separately last week with progressive and moderate leaders. Then, earlier this week, Jeffries was approached by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Jayapal — who one source described as "instrumental" to securing the detente — indicated to Jeffries that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and her allies were looking to move on from the controversy that engulfed the last several weeks. Another source said Jeffries was a key "peacemaker" in negotiating the terms of the agreement.
Jeffries and leaders of the caucus' various ideological groups decided that in order for everyone to make peace, a series of controversial tweets from Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, accusing moderate Democrats of enabling "a racist system" must be deleted.
The tweets — sent three weeks ago as Democrats publicly battled each other over a controversial emergency humanitarian aid package — made several members irate and had some lawmakers privately whispering he should be fired.
With Jayapal as the intermediary, it was communicated to Jeffries and others that Chakrabarti's offending tweets would come down, according to sources with knowledge of the deal. Another part of the deal was that a tweet from the official House Democratic Caucus account — responding to Chakrabarti — would be deleted in addition to a tweet from CPC co-chair Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin calling members of the Problem Solvers Caucus "child abusers."
With all of that agreed to, Jeffries, Jayapal and leaders of the other ideological groups got to work.
Chakrabarti's tweets were deleted Wednesday night. And Jeffries was spotted huddling separately with Jayapal, Blue Dog chair Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) and New Democrats chair Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.) on the floor Thursday, showing them a draft of the statement.
The peacemaking will continue into next week. Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to meet Thursday with Ocasio-Cortez after Pelosi dismissed the influence of the freshman New Yorker and her allies, resulting in a high-profile spat between the two that consumed headlines for days.
The public attempt at unity comes after several weeks of tense — and at times head-spinning — infighting that had Democrats trading barbs with their colleagues on the House floor, in the halls of the Capitol and on Twitter.
As Democrats were fighting over a contentious border bill just before the July recess, Chakrabarti started attacking moderate members on Twitter. In his initial tweet, he equated the centrist Democrats to segregationists.
Chakrabarti deleted that message but then quickly posted a series of tweets that essentially made the same point, accusing members, including moderate Rep. Sharice Davids (D-Kansas), of helping to "enable a racist system" by voting with party leaders on the border measure.
At the same time, Pocan further enraged moderates by tweeting that lawmakers in the Problem Solvers Caucus should instead be called the "child abusers caucus" for voting for the Senate's border package. Pocan's tweet resulted in an angry confrontation on the House floor with two centrist freshmen.
Lawmakers then departed the Capitol for the July 4th recess, leaving behind a deluge of headlines about the disorder in the caucus.
But after a week away, Democrats returned with tensions still at a full boil. Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive members were mad that Pelosi dismissed them in a column in the New York Times.
Ocasio-Cortez fired back, accusing Pelosi of singling out women of color within the caucus to criticize. That controversial comment mobilized the Congressional Black Caucus and other Pelosi allies, who began publicly revisiting Chakrabarti's controversial tweets from two weeks earlier.
Then, eyebrows were further raised when the official Twitter account for the House Democratic Caucus account called out Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff in a late-night post last Friday.
The tweet — which began with, "Who is this guy and why is he explicitly singling out a Native American woman of color?" — was deleted Thursday.
Democrats were fully expecting to return to the Capitol this week with the internal quarrel still raging. But President Donald Trump shifted the narrative with a series of racist tweets Sunday morning telling Ocasio-Cortez and fellow progressive congresswomen of color, Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), to "go back" to other countries.
Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and Pressley were born in America and Omar, who emigrated to the U.S. from Somalia as a child, became a citizen in 2000.
Democrats turned inward to support their high-profile freshmen, with an unprecedented vote on the floor to condemn Trump's remarks that they should "go back" to where they came from.
As Democrats moved swiftly to publicly condemn Trump's remarks on Tuesday, Jeffries, Jayapal and others were working behind the scenes to negotiate their own internal peacemaking. The statement was first reported by the Washington Post.
The caucus again stepped up its support Thursday, after Trump supporters targeted Omar with chants of "send her back" at a rally and prompted Democratic leaders to consider new security measures to protect her.
Democratic leaders are looking to present a united front before next week's long-awaited hearing with former special counsel Robert Mueller.
Now lawmakers involved in the peace negotiations are worried that a controversial resolution related to Israel could blow everything up just before the House departs for a six-week recess, according to multiple sources.
The House is set to vote next week to condemn the global boycott of Israel — a bill that is certain to again divide the caucus and could resurface charges of anti-Semitism against Omar and other Democrats who oppose the legislation.
But Democrats are hoping the current harmony within the caucus holds.
"I think there's a real recognition that even when we have differences, there's a constructive way to have those conversations," said Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), a key moderate who has also been part of efforts to unify the caucus.
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