House and Senate Choose Leadership
November 14, 2024 | Washington, D.C.
by Tabitha Walter, Executive Director, Eagle Forum
The U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate have returned to Washington, D.C. after a long recess. After being in the minority since the 2020 elections, Senate Republicans will regain their role in the majority next year with a four-seat lead over the Democrat caucus.
Votes are still being counted in several House races, but Republicans are ahead with 217 seats compared to Democrats’ 210 seats. The House solidified its majority this week with 218 seats, but Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) resigned after being nominated by President Trump to the position of Attorney General. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will call a special election to fill that vacant seat.
Senate Republicans held leadership races on Wednesday to fill the positions of Majority Leader and Majority Whip. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced that he was stepping down from his position earlier this year after nine years of leading Senate Republicans. Senators John Thune (R-SD), John Cornyn (R-TX), and Rick Scott (R-FL) threw their hats into the ring.
Conservatives rallied behind Senator Scott, believing he would most support President Trump’s agenda. Twenty-seven votes were needed to elect the next Majority Leader, but no one reached that on the first ballot. The result was 23 votes for Thune, 15 for Cornyn, and 13 for Scott. Senator Scott was then dropped from the next ballot. The final vote was 29 votes for Senator Thune and 24 for Senator Cornyn. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) was elected Majority Whip, and Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) was elected Chair of the Republican Conference.
The GOP moved forward with leadership races in the House as well. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) secured the top position over a year ago after former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was forced to vacate his post.
President Trump met with the GOP caucus on Wednesday where he praised members of the House Leadership team and confirmed his alliance with Speaker Johnson. He signaled his support for Speaker Johnson by saying, “Mike, you’re going to have a good two years… all of you just stick together.” Shortly after, Johnson was unanimously re-elected to the head position of the House with Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA) remaining as Majority Leader and Representative Tom Emmer as Majority Whip.
With Republicans winning the House, Senate, and White House, the American people have given President Trump the ability to implement the ideas he proposed on the campaign trail. It is up to our elected representatives to enact this conservative agenda into law.
President Trump has released videos of possible policy initiatives for his first 100 days in office. He has pledged to issue executive orders to ban gender mutilation procedures on minors, stop the flow of illegal immigration, and declare war on drug cartels.
One massive potential action that President Trump has promised is eliminating the Department of Education and sending most of its power and money back to the states. This is the root of much of the cultural shift toward communist and Marxist sentiments among young people. In a video from 2023, President Trump made clear what he wanted to do:
“One thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education in Washington, DC, and sending all education and education work it needs back to the states. We want them to run the education of our children because they’ll do a much better job of it. You can’t do worse.”
Former Secretary of Education Betsy Devos agreed with him, noting that “the federal government contributes 9% of funding” for schools in the U.S. yet “imposes 90% of the regulations.” This will give parents more of a voice in what goes on in local public schools as well as give them more of a choice in private schools and homeschooling. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and radical gender ideologies could be eliminated while prayer and critical thinking could be brought back into schools.
Higher education is included in Trump’s agenda as well. President Trump has suggested taxing the endowments of universities that foster antisemitism by allowing pro-Hamas protesters to disrupt the academic campus life. He also wants to clean up college accreditation so that accreditors are not imposing “woke” policies on these institutions.
Even though Donald Trump will not officially be President again until January, he and his team are working hard to ensure these policies can be enacted as swiftly as possible. In the upcoming weeks, we will dive deeper into his Cabinet nominations as well as the various agenda items he plans to move forward with the help of the Republican House and Senate.