Dear Leader Jeffries,
As your constituent in Bed-Stuy, I congratulate you on this historic victory and on standing poised to become our nation’s first Black Speaker of the House. In the past, I have criticized your caution and deference to racists and called for your replacement. I still stand by those words, but with a commanding majority and the Speaker’s gavel in hand, I am willing to give you another chance to see if you will rise to meet this moment.
White nationalist Steve Bannon once laid bare the authoritarian playbook: “Flood the zone with shit.” For twenty-four months, the Trump regime executed that strategy through cruelty, corruption, and lawlessness. The only legitimate response from an opposition party worthy of the name is to flood the zone with justice.
Let’s be honest, Democrats were not handed this majority because we love them so much, nor will the speaker’s gavel be delivered to you out of any sense of personal affection. You hold this mandate for one reason, we the people want the nightmare to stop. We want the cruelty ended, the looting halted, and this two year orgy of lawless desecration answered with unflinching accountability.
Here is what we expect to see from your speakership:
Priority One: Impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
Pete Hegseth is an amoral, dangerously unqualified defense secretary whose documented pattern of incompetence and recklessness threatens national security. The Pentagon Inspector General found he leaked Yemen strike plans over Signal and stonewalled investigators. Under his watch, service members have died, munitions stockpiles have eroded, and civilians have been killed without transparency. He has purged top brass, targeted Black and female officers, and aligned with extremists who defend slavery and oppose women voting.
Now that you have signaled support for holding Hegseth accountable through impeachment, do not waver. Subpoena his records, strip funding from his "Department of War" rebrand, and introduce articles of impeachment on day one.
Priority Two: Dismantle ICE
Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and Duran Guerrero were killed in encounters with federal agents as immigration operations have escalated into deadly encounters nationwide with zero accountability. This agency cannot be reformed at the margins; it must be abolished and rebuilt from the ground up under strict constitutional and statutory limits.
Until then, unmask every agent. No federal officer should patrol American streets in ski masks without visible names, badge numbers, and body cameras. Require independent investigations into every use of deadly force and guarantee lawmakers immediate, unannounced access to detention facilities. An agency that conceals its faces and investigates its own killings belongs to a police state, not a republic.
Priority Three: Force Republicans on Record with an Unapologetic Agenda
Stop playing procedural defense. Pass the bills working families demand in the blinding light of day: ironclad voting rights, taxes on billionaires, getting money out of politics, Medicare for All, an immediate end to tariffs that raise costs on all of us, and an end to rubber-stamping blank checks for war and genocide.
Force Donald Trump to veto them in full view of the public. Force swing-district Republicans home to defend corporate monopolies over their own neighbors, then fight for the overrides. Let the nation see who stands with the powerful, and who stands with the people.
Priority Four: Subpoena DOGE, Rein in Elon Musk, and Break Big Tech
Subpoena Elon Musk. The reports document how DOGE operatives infiltrated sensitive citizen records while carrying out mass purges of civil servants (most of whom were Black). Demand immediate public hearings under oath. Drag them before committees, break up the Big Tech monopolies strangling our commerce, impose binding rules on AI, and make corporate data centers pay for the public power grids they strain. Then pass a zero-tolerance ban on congressional insider trading: if any official trades stocks on confidential intelligence, send them straight to federal prison.
Priority Five: Reassert the Inherent Enforcement Power of Congress
The era of polite requests and timid committee letters is over. Subpoena the documents, follow the money trail, and place witnesses under oath across every agency of this government.
For two years, Trump appointees have sneered at congressional oversight, lied to committees, and mocked the rule of law. When they stonewall, hold them in inherent contempt. When subpoenas are defied, dispatch the Sergeant at Arms to enforce the law. Congress possesses the constitutional tools to compel compliance. Stop asking nicely. Use them.
Priority Six: Release the Unredacted Epstein Files
We will not tolerate another cover-up masquerading as a Justice Department press release.
Pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act II. Order the immediate release of every unclassified page, with redactions strictly limited to protecting the identities of victims. Compel Tod Blanche, Pam Bondi and every Justice Department official who suppressed these files to answer under oath. Where federal statutes of limitations have lapsed, lay the evidence bare so state prosecutors can act. No child predator, and no enabler who protected them, regardless of their wealth, political standing, or pedigree, deserves the shelter of our government.
Hold the Line
Investigate Donald Trump’s foreign emoluments, starting with the luxury Boeing 747-8 accepted from the Qatari government in direct violation of the Constitution. Halt the conversion of the People's House into a private vanity project, from demolishing the East Wing for a ballroom to the triumphal arch monstrosity casting shadows across Arlington Cemetery and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Draft articles of impeachment against Attorney General Todd Blanche for weaponizing the Department of Justice in retaliatory prosecutions of elected critics and independent journalists, and hold FCC Chairman Brendan Carr accountable for using federal regulatory power to intimidate broadcasters.
Finally, end the farce of self-policing on the Supreme Court. Decades of undisclosed luxury gifts and travel documented by investigative reporters have shattered public trust. Pass a binding statutory code of ethics overseen by an independent inspector general, strip justices of the right to grade their own recusal conflicts, and expand the bench to break a stacked majority that refuses to honor the Constitution.
Leader Jeffries, your constituents are politically sophisticated and we understand that there will be times that the demands of the speakership (the fundraising, the fractious caucus and the painful legislative compromises) will sometimes be at odds with what the grass roots advocates in your district would like to see. That is politics.
What we will not accept is a Speaker who surrenders to corporate cash, cowers before executive bullies, or mistakes institutional paralysis for statesmanship. If you fail to fight, you will face a ferocious primary challenge here in Brooklyn, and you will have earned it.
Our ancestors did not survive the slave ship, the auction block, and the terror of Jim Crow so that their descendants could watch the most powerful Black congressional leader in American history flinch before lawless men. Power is not a ceremonial trophy; it is a constitutional weapon of justice and accountability.
The moment has arrived. Pick up the gavel and meet it.
Reginald Richardson
Brooklyn, New York
Reginald Richardson, a Brooklyn resident, is a constituent of New York's 8th Congressional District.
