When Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) became the top Democrat in the House, he committed to getting along with Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) better than his predecessor.
It wasn't a tough bar to clear. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) had a famously cold relationship with McCarthy as speaker, even calling him a "moron" at one point for his views on masks.
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McCarthy, who barely tried to hide his own disdain for Pelosi, wanted to avoid a repeat of that relationship and extended an olive branch to Jeffries before he became speaker in January.
Since then, the two have forged a friendship that seems at odds with the polarized politics of Washington.
The leaders text regularly and have found common ground where they can. They released a joint statement in May calling for Russia to release detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.
But the debt ceiling fight, and the finger-pointing that has come to define it, has created a fresh test of their relationship as Jeffries takes a more prominent role in Democrats' messaging war with the GOP.
Jeffries has blasted House Republicans as hostage-takers sending the country off the fiscal cliff. Their insistence on deep spending cuts, he says, is “un-American.”
But what Jeffries has avoided doing is criticizing McCarthy by name. It’s a decision he made early in the new Congress, leveling blistering attacks at Republicans while withholding personal judgment of the speaker.
He insists the two leaders can “disagree without being disagreeable.”
The sentiment stands in stark contrast to Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) approach to McCarthy. The Senate majority leader lays blame for the debt ceiling crisis squarely at McCarthy’s feet, saying the Californian is allowing hard-liners in his conference to “drive the country towards disaster.”
McCarthy has returned the broadsides with taunts that the Senate has done nothing more this year than pass a resolution recognizing “maple syrup month.”
Schumer’s role as the president’s attack dog has faded this week with the Senate on recess ahead of the Memorial Day weekend.
But Jeffries’s own profile has risen in a few short days as House Democrats express frustration with what they see as a failure by the White House to defend Democrats' own negotiating position publicly.
Jeffries has, until recently, taken a back seat in the debt ceiling fight.
All four congressional leaders met with Biden at the White House this month for two sit-downs that marked the beginning of earnest debt ceiling talks.
The meetings were the first time Jeffries and Schumer had been brought to the fore in a negotiation that Washington widely understood must be brokered by Biden and McCarthy.
The president has since pared down the talks to McCarthy and himself, a sign that negotiations were entering a more serious phase ahead of a June 1 deadline to avoid default.
But Jeffries has ramped up his presence on camera this week as counterprogramming to a media offensive by McCarthy.
The speaker has held daily gaggles with reporters, each time making the case that Biden’s monthslong refusal to negotiate on the debt ceiling is why the country is so close to default.
He’s done the same in appearances on Fox News.
Democrats reject his claims, arguing the only reason Washington is in a predicament is because Republicans have demanded steep spending cuts that will harm everyone from the working poor to veterans.
Yet Biden has not made that case as forcefully as they would like. McCarthy held a press conference after he sat down with the president on Monday, while Biden issued a statement.
Jeffries, agreeing to become the public face of Democrats in the standoff, has rebutted McCarthy’s blame-casting in repeated press conferences this week.
He briefed reporters on the House steps after Monday's White House meeting, followed by two other press conferences later in the week. On Thursday, he criticized Republicans for heading home for the Memorial Day weekend without a deal in hand.
Yet Jeffries continues to avoid assigning direct blame to McCarthy in his remarks.
That's not to say he hasn't flirted with outright criticism of the speaker. In January, he lectured Republicans to "clean up your House" following revelations that "serial fraudster" Rep. George Santos (R-NY) had lied about his personal backstory.
And he denounced what he called a "poisonous, toxic double standard" when McCarthy removed Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Yet the political flare-ups have yet to derail their friendship. Asked in March if he considers the speaker to be one of the “extreme MAGA Republicans” he rails against, Jeffries deflected.
“There’s times we argue,” McCarthy told the Washington Post in March. “But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t talk to him as minority leader.”
The two huddle together off the House floor and give each other advance notice before their conferences make politically sensitive moves.
Their decision to chart a bipartisan path on the select committee on China stands in stark contrast to the acrimony seen in choosing members for Pelosi's Jan. 6 committee.
Jeffries has not praised the speaker like Biden, who called McCarthy an “honest man” in a tough situation as members of his right flank demand spending cuts.
But Jeffries has framed a positive working relationship as important to preserving Congress as an institution.
“Speaker McCarthy and myself have, you know, agreed to disagree strongly on a whole host of issues, but try not to be disagreeable for the good of the functioning of the institution and the country,” he told reporters in March. “And I look forward to continuing to try to proceed in that regard.”
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The friendship could still fracture as Jeffries threatens to circumvent McCarthy's control of the floor with a discharge petition that would allow Democrats to lift the debt ceiling with the help of five Republican votes.
But with the White House inching toward a deal and centrist Republicans refusing to break with their party, that relationship may remain intact for another fight.