Hakeem Jeffries leads prayer event over shutdown after passing on Charlie Kirk vigil

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., organized a prayer vigil for the federal government on the ninth day of the ongoing shutdown.

The House Democratic leader organized the event, called the ‘Interfaith Rally and Faith Vigil for Health Justice,’ outside a church in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, featuring Christian, Jewish and Muslim faith leaders alongside other Democratic lawmakers.

They pushed congressional Republican leaders to find a bipartisan route to fund the federal government that also includes concessions from Republicans on healthcare policy.

House Democratic leaders’ appearance is a contrast to their absence from the Capitol Hill vigil held by GOP lawmakers last month in honor of assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Several rank-and-file Democrats did attend that vigil, but when reporters asked Jeffries at the time why he was not there, he answered simply, ‘I had a meeting.’

At his event Thursday, Jeffries said, ‘I grew up in church learning, of course, that what the Bible teaches us is to stand up for the least amongst us — the lost, the left behind, those whose stations in life may not have always dealt them the best of hands.’

‘And unfortunately, what we’re dealing with right now in the United States Congress is a group of people who we sometimes say they go to church, and they pray on Sunday. But then they come to Washington, D.C., and they prey — p-r-e-y — on the American people for the rest of the week, prey on the poor, prey on the sick, prey on the afflicted.’

He referenced a verse from the New Testament, ‘We are troubled on every side, but not distressed, perplexed, but never in despair,’ to further hammer Republicans’ resistance to Democrats’ demands.

‘I think it’s fair to say that we’ve got trouble all around us. A hater in the White House, haters in the Congress, haters throughout the Cabinet, trouble all around us. But we’re not distressed because we believe in the resilience and the goodness of the American people,’ Jeffries said.

Other lawmakers who spoke included House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

The government shut down at midnight on Oct. 1, the beginning of fiscal year (FY) 2026, after Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on a spending deal.

The House passed a bill last month to keep the federal government funded at FY2025 levels through Nov. 21. It was largely free of policy riders, save for an added $88 million in security spending for lawmakers, the White House, and the judicial branch. 

That measure, called a continuing resolution (CR), was aimed at giving congressional negotiators more time to strike a longer-term deal for FY2026.

But Democrats in the House and Senate were infuriated by being sidelined in federal funding talks. They have been pushing for an extension of Obamacare subsidies enhanced during the COVID-19 pandemic that are set to expire at the end of 2025.

Democrats have also introduced a counter-proposal for a CR that would keep the government funded through Oct. 31 while reversing the GOP’s cuts to Medicaid made in their ‘one big, beautiful bill.’

The counter-proposal would have also restored federal funding to NPR and PBS that was cut by the Trump administration earlier this year.

Republicans have panned that plan as a nonstarter full of partisan demands, while pointing out that Democrats have voted for a ‘clean’ measure similar to the GOP proposal 13 times during former President Joe Biden’s time in office.

Another speaker, the Rev. Leslie Copeland-Tune of the National Council of Churches, criticized Republicans’ policy bill during her remarks at the rally.

‘I declare to you today, not having healthcare for 24 million people so that rich people can be richer is terror on the Earth. I declare to you today that cutting food stamps and SNAP and other food programs is terror on the Earth,’ she said. 

‘We pray, Oh God, that you would turn stony hearts to flesh and turn those who would do wrong to make them do right. God, we pray that you would help us to meet this moment, to do our assignment, and to be courageous while we do it.’

Senate Democrats have now sunk the GOP’s plan in six separate votes and are poised to do so again on Thursday.