NEW YORK — Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., was making little effort to hide his upbeat mood this week after Virginia voters approved a redistricting plan aimed at flipping four Republican seats to Democrats in the fall midterms.

The Brooklyn lawmaker regaled Capitol Hill reporters on bring-your-kid-to-work day with chit-chat about his favorite candy (sugar-free Hershey’s chocolate), childhood career aspirations (New York Knicks point guard or rap superstar) and World Series prediction (it’s the Yankees’ year, at last).

Then, Jeffries moved on to the real message. Quoting boxing champion Mike Tyson, he mocked President Donald Trump’s failed scheme to hold onto control of the House by getting Republicans to further gerrymander states they control.

“Everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the mouth,” said Jeffries, who grew up a couple of stops on the No. 3 train from Iron Mike’s old stomping grounds in Brownsville.

Assuming the Virginia vote survives a court challenge, Jeffries and fellow Democrats can now celebrate seizing an unlikely decisive edge in the mid-decade redistricting war that Trump believed would boost the GOP.

The man who is in line to become the first Black speaker if Democrats retake the House also brashly warned Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis against overplaying his hand as Sunshine State lawmakers consider retaliating with their own map aimed at grabbing a couple of Democratic-held seats.

“Maximum warfare, everywhere,” Jeffries said earlier, dropping the names of several GOP incumbents who could be face tough reelection fights if DeSantis tinkers too much with their districts.

“F around and find out,” Jeffries added.

Those were threats that DeSantis has to take at face value after Jeffries’ record of success in the redistricting chess game.

Even with six months to go before Election Day, Jeffries has every reason to be talking like a confident product of central Brooklyn, where he follows in the footsteps of assertive cultural icons like Tyson, political trailblazer Shirley Chisholm and hip-hop mogul Jay-Z.

Democrats were already favored to retake the House in November; the GOP holds a narrow six-vote majority and the party of the sitting president almost always loses seats. Trump’s historically awful approval ratings have dragged Republicans down even more.

But the backfiring of Trump’s redistricting gambit puts them even more firmly in the driver’s seat, with political analysts and prediction markets now making Democrats overwhelming favorites to take the House, which could put the brakes on Trump’s aggressive second term right-wing agenda.

“Jeffries has projected the tough posture that Democratic activists want to see,” said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political analyst. “He was very, very involved in the Virginia referendum and skunked the White House.”

”Jeffries’ ambitions for the House have a lot of momentum. Polling and enthusiasm favor Democrats,” said Basil Smikle, a Bronx-born Columbia University professor and political strategist.

The race for control of the House is now his to lose — a major political coup for Jeffries, who took the reins of House Democratic leadership from longtime former Speaker Nancy Pelosi after Republicans won the House in the 2022 midterm elections.

Jeffries has endured a torrent of criticism from pundits over his leadership style, especially since Trump returned to the White House in the 2024 election.

Progressives accused Jeffries of failing to meet the moment posed by Trump’s unprecedented threats to democracy.

He has relentlessly stuck to a single-minded focus on kitchen table issues, especially rising costs for healthcare and groceries, which has proven a prescient move as Trump’s approval ratings on his handling of the economy have plunged.

“The American people voted for a president that would lower costs and stop reckless wars in the Middle East,” Jeffries told the Daily News. “Donald Trump delivered the exact opposite.”

Moderates whispered that he and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer were taking a big political risk by bulldozing ahead with last year’s government shutdown, which put the spotlight on skyrocketing health insurance costs, and the ongoing partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security over Trump’s refusal to negotiate limits on his immigration crackdown.

Polls show more voters blame Trump and Republicans for both shutdowns and agree with the Democratic stance on the key issues at stake, like healthcare costs and the mass deportation campaign.

The political results speak for themselves.

Jeffries quickly jumped into action when Trump moved to transform the math of House control by ordering Texas Republicans to redraw the state’s congressional map in what he hoped would gain three seats. Texas Democrats say they believe the map will only pick up two or three seats, especially given the Democratic lead in polls.

He moved to frame the redistricting war as a national battle and committed tens of millions in campaign funds to the fight, a savvy decision that won critical support from key blue state Democrats like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Pelosi and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.

California countered the Texas move by pushing ahead with a map to flip five GOP-held seats. A few red states followed Texas’ lead, but Virginia effectively dropped the mic with its vote to transform a 6-5 map to a 10-1 Democratic advantage.

Even if Florida enacts a GOP-friendlier map in a special legislative session set for April 28, the worst possible outcome from the redistricting fight now looks like a national dead heat.

That outcome would still leave Democrats favored to win the House and force House Speaker Mike Johnson to surrender the gavel to Jeffries.

Closer to home, many New York City pundits and Democratic activists cried foul when Jeffries slow-walked an endorsement of Mayor Zohran Mamdani even as the charismatic progressive won the Democratic primary and lined up support of other key Democrats like Gov. Hochul.

But the move apparently caused no lasting political damage to Jeffries with the new team in City Hall.

A planned 2026 progressive primary challenge in his NY-08 district fizzled when Mamdani’s leftist allies backed away from supporting Councilmember Chi Osse, who then dropped the race.

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