The New York Times reported Sunday that House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump and one of his closest advisers, held a private meeting in recent weeks. It took place, according to the Times, in “a private space in New York City, offered up by a mutual friend of the two men.”
The Times account, which amounts to an orchestrated “leak” on behalf of Jeffries, Kushner or both, claimed that domestic issues like housing, immigration and the cost of living were “potential areas of common ground.” But it is more than likely that the discussion was focused on foreign policy.
But whatever the agenda, Jeffries was meeting the man who, as the Times noted, “has been deeply involved in the president’s efforts to resolve the war with Iran that Mr. Trump began, to enforce a cease-fire in Gaza and to bring an end to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.” Kushner meets with Netanyahu, Hamas, the Saudi Crown Prince and the Iranians. Jeffries has now been added to the list.
The Jeffries-Kushner meeting confirms the underlying class unity of the two corporate parties. The real differences between the Democratic Party leadership and Trump have always related to foreign policy priorities, particularly the war in Ukraine, which Trump has downplayed, and the war in Iran, which the Democrats criticize as mistaken or poorly executed, although they support the goal of US domination of the region and destruction of the regime in Tehran.
The Times portrayed the meeting as an indication “that those around Mr. Trump were well aware of the likelihood of a Democratic-led House, and trying to foster as much of a working relationship as possible before any change. Mr. Jeffries is in line to be the speaker, were Democrats to win the majority.”
As always with Trump, however, he is keeping his options open. While he dispatches his son-in-law to sound out the Democrats on post-election collaboration, he is preparing to rig the elections by conducting them at gunpoint, with National Guard troops and immigration agents at polling places, or to stage a provocation that would be the pretext for declaring a national emergency and putting off the election entirely. Earlier this month, appearing on the radio program of fascist Wayne Allyn Root, Trump was asked about his “right to declare a national security emergency” to unilaterally enforce new voting restrictions. “Stranger things have happened,” he responded.
Senator Adam Schiff (Democrat-Calif) told the Los Angeles Times that he is “most concerned” about a scenario in which unrest is provoked in major cities to “give the president a pretext, Reichstag fire-like, to call out the military or invoke the Insurrection Act or call out ICE or Border Patrol.” This was a reference to the provocation staged by Hitler a month after taking office as chancellor, which became the pretext for suspending civil liberties and outlawing the Communist Party, the first step toward the Nazi dictatorship.
For all their anti-Trump rhetoric, and even the alarm bells about possible suspension of the vote, the Democrats are preparing to do business with this fascist administration after the election, should they regain control of the House, or even of Congress as a whole.
They would be happy to make a deal with Trump that involves more money and weapons for Ukraine. In return they will support full funding of the military and go along with the cuts in social spending already incorporated in the One Big Beautiful Bill and further cuts that will be “necessary” because of the deepening financial crisis as the federal debt has surpassed the $40 trillion mark.
The Jeffries-Kushner meeting demonstrates the completely phony character of the claims by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) that the Democratic Party can be pushed to the left or even “taken over.” The DSA is seeking to provide a left cover for a corporate-controlled capitalist party, irrevocably committed to the defense of Wall Street and American imperialism.
This is further demonstrated by the ongoing recruitment of Democratic congressional candidates from the US national-security apparatus. When the World Socialist Web Site first exposed the rise of what we called the “CIA Democrats” in 2018, they accounted for 30 of the Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives, 11 of whom won seats. Similar numbers ran as Democrats in the next three elections.
But in 2026 that figure has doubled to at least 60 Democratic congressional nominees whose political campaigns are based on careers in the military-intelligence field. This includes two admirals, two generals, military intelligence operatives and special forces soldiers, paratroopers, military police, electronic warfare specialists and combat veterans of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
They also include former members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, State Department, National Security Council, Defense Intelligence Agency and FBI. These are not short-term enlistees—At least half have careers of 20 years or longer, and many have served in top positions in the global military operations of American imperialism.
In the event of a “wave” election in which the Democrats take many Republican House seats, the contingent of military-intelligence Democrats could rise from the present 10 to 20 or even 30, dwarfing the relative handful of supposed “democratic socialists” promoted by the DSA.
The DSA is not an obstacle to this orientation but a component of it. DSA-backed candidates provide a “left” image to attract radicalizing workers and youth and deliver them to a party that is placing admirals, generals and intelligence agents on its ballot line to wage war and suppress that radicalization.
The DSA leaders understand their role. That explains why New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the most prominent elected member of the DSA, blocked a primary challenge to Hakeem Jeffries in his Brooklyn-based congressional district. The man who is now in line to be Speaker, and who meets privately with Trump’s son-in-law, owes his unopposed renomination in part to the DSA’s leading elected official. This comports with Mamdani’s own meetings with Trump at the White House, his retention of billionaire heiress Jessica Tisch as police commissioner and his abandonment of left-wing gestures, such as free bus fares.
None of this is a departure from the DSA’s origins. As heirs of a tradition long and accurately described as “State Department socialism,” the DSA shares the counter-revolutionary, imperialist foreign policy outlook of the CIA Democrats. The claim that the Democratic Party can be converted into a left-wing, pro-worker party is not just a pipedream but a deliberate lie, and its purpose is to keep the growing opposition to war and austerity within the confines of the two-party system.
The Jeffries-Kushner meeting is a warning. Whatever the result in November, the working class will confront a government committed to war abroad and austerity at home, administered by Trump and the Republicans with tacit Democratic support, as at present, or by an open coalition of the two capitalist parties against the working class.
Workers and young people moving into struggle need organizations of their own: rank-and-file committees in the workplaces, linked internationally through the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) and a party fighting for socialism, the Socialist Equality Party, US section of the International Committee of the Fourth International. The oligarchy has two parties. The working class must build its own.