Join Book TV this weekend for the Texas Book Festival live from Austin.
Our coverage begins Saturday at 11 a.m. Eastern and Sunday at noon.
Highlights include PBS's Ray Suarez with his book, We Are Home, on immigration and the process of becoming an American, The Washington Post's Liza Mundy discussing her book, The Sisterhood on Women in the CIA, former DOD and DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine and his book, Watch Dogs, on the role of an inspector general, and Elizabeth Diaz dossing her book, The Fall of Roe, on Post-Row America.
Watch the Texas Book Festival live this weekend on Book TV on C-SPAN2.
To see the full Texas Book Festival schedule, visit our website, booktv.org.
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House Republican leaders held a press conference on the steps of the U.S. Capitol just before Congress returned for its first session since the election.
They spoke about the incoming Congress and highlighted that President-elect Donald Trump will be meeting with House Republicans on Capitol Hill before a scheduled meeting with President Biden at the White House.
This is about 25 minutes.
My name is Richard Hudson.
I'm chairman of the NRCC.
And I'm here to tell you it's morning again in America.
On Election Day, Americans sent a clear message to reject the consequences of Democrat control.
They said they couldn't afford the basics for their families' needs.
They didn't feel safe in their communities.
Their values were under attack.
Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Hakeem Jeffries, and extreme House Democrats were the cause.
Donald Trump and House Republicans are the solution.
That's why voters delivered House Republicans a majority and sent Donald Trump to the White House in a landslide.
I'm proud to have led the NRCC to achieve this victory.
Even after Democrats spent $550 million spreading lies about House Republicans, we went on offense and flipped seats from Pennsylvania to Michigan to Colorado and beyond.
The American people saw through the Democrat lies because Republicans had better candidates and a better message about what we would do to improve their daily lives.
Though it was my honor to lead our successful effort to hold the House at the NRCC, I didn't do it alone.
House Republicans bought into the plan.
We had record member participation from across our conference.
And our entire incredible leadership team worked together to make it happen.
I'm especially grateful of our team leader, Speaker Mike Johnson, whose dauntless energy and hard work are the reason we're here.
Raising $27 million directly to the NRCC and traveling to countless cities and over two dozen states to help our candidates.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
You've earned the gavel, Mr. Speaker, with your long days on the road, little sleep, and relentless optimism.
Now with Donald Trump as president, Mike Johnson as Speaker, and a new Senate majority, Republicans will have unified government in Washington for the first time since the beginning of President Trump's first term.
And what did we do together during that first term?
We passed historic tax cuts that led to the greatest economy in a generation.
We supported border security legislation and building the wall, leading to historically low illegal crossings.
We rebuilt our military and pursued a foreign policy that led to peace and stability around the world.
We had energy independence for the first time.
Kamala and extreme Democrats right on queue broke it.
You broke it.
Now Republicans have a mandate to fix it.
If we deliver on the promises we campaigned on, I'm confident the American people will reward our success.
I'm ready to get back to work.
Let's get it done.
And now I'd like to introduce our majority whip, Mr. Tom Emmer.
I guess he's happy that I'm going to speak.
You don't get that every day, Mike.
Well, actually, I do.
Yeah.
That is true every day.
One week ago today, Americans elected a Republican president, a Republican Senate, and a Republican House with a mandate, a mandate for change.
A mandate for more affordable cost of living, secure borders, less crime in our streets, and a restoration of American dominance on the world stage.
A mandate to put America first and make this country great again.
I've always said we'd run to win and we win to govern.
Voters gave us the wins we asked for.
Now it's time, now the time for governing is here.
The Speaker and the Majority Leader have put together a legislative agenda that will allow us to hit the ground running on day one and begin delivering on President Trump's America First agenda.
As the whip, I will work with every corner of our conference to ensure every voice is heard, every constituent is represented, and that we get these policies across the finish line.
Our members have worked hard over the last two years to show what a House majority is capable of.
We passed legislation to lower costs for families, secure our borders, and reverse the damage the Harris Biden administration has inflicted on our country, all of which collected dust on Chuck Schumer's desk.
But now that we have the trifecta, it's finally time to counteract the Democrats' negligence once and for all by turning our agenda into law.
And I have no doubt that this House Republican team will get it done.
The time for failed policies that have wreaked havoc on hardworking Americans for the last four years is over.
The time for proven leadership is now.
And with that, I turn it over to one of our proven leaders, our majority leader, Steve Scalise.
Thank you, Whip.
Last week, the American people delivered a mandate to this town, to Washington, that they want to fix the problems that have been plaguing families all across this country for the last three and a half years.
You know, I got the opportunity to travel to every single swing district throughout the nation, and I got the opportunity to travel to a number of swing districts with President Trump.
And I saw the same theme come up everywhere we went.
People are furious that there's an open southern border and they want it closed.
People are struggling because they can't afford to buy food or fill up their cars or pay their utility bills.
And the leaders in the White House were not listening.
And what we talked about when we were out on the campaign trail and our candidates talked about were real issues, real solutions to the problems that those families were facing.
We talked about how Republicans, if we get the White House in the House and Senate, would act quickly to get our economy moving again, to lower costs at the grocery store, to lower electricity costs, to secure our southern border and restore America's place in the world.
Those were the issues we actually ran on and talked about in every community in America.
And the American people responded.
And the other side is sitting around trying to blame themselves and assign blame for what the reason was for their failure, but they still will not admit the real problem why Democrats were rejected at the polls last week.
It was because they had no answers.
They had no message to those families who were struggling.
They wanted to double down on the same failed far-left policies that they've been ramming through Washington for the last four years that caused this inflation, that caused the open borders, that caused the problems that families are facing.
And so as we prepare for this unified government, this unique opportunity that the American people have given us, one thing the American people can rest assured in knowing is that President Trump and this Republican majority are already planning to go to work for them on day one in January to start fixing those problems.
We have an agenda we've been planning for the first hundred days to lower food costs, to lower energy costs, to secure America's border, to get this economy moving again so those families who have been struggling can finally get back on their feet, can finally have some savings in their pockets so they can send their kids to college, so they can go on a family vacation, so they can have more take-home pay.
That's an agenda we've been working on with President Trump for months now.
We didn't wait until the day after the election to start planning this.
And this shows the relentless focus of Donald Trump.
He knew that if he had won the election, this would be his last opportunity to serve as President of the United States.
And there will not be a minute to waste.
And you can see his resolve already and how quickly he's making really good, smart picks.
I know he's already pulled a few really talented people out of the House, hopefully no more for a little while until special elections can come.
But it shows you the talent that we have and the ability we have to get this country turned around quickly.
The American people are hungry for it.
And they're going to find a Republican leadership ready to work for them so that they don't have to struggle any longer.
And the man leading that charge, who worked as tirelessly as ever, and I know the WIP and our NRCC chair, Richard Hudson, talked about this.
Nobody's traveled around the globe theoretically more than Mike Johnson to ensure that even though some of the pundits said we couldn't hold the House, we would hold the House so that we could continue delivering those promises.
Our Speaker of the House today and tomorrow, Mike Johnson.
Thank you, Steve, our great majority leader.
Thank you to our whip, Emmer, our NRCC chairman Richard Hudson, all three of these gentlemen, and our whole leadership team, Elise and all the rest, Blake Moore and McClain and Palmer and everyone, did everything possible to ensure that we could come to this moment.
It is a beautiful morning in Washington.
It is a new day in America.
The sun's shining, and that's a reflection about how we all feel.
This is a very, very important moment for the country, and we do not take it lightly.
We did work really hard to bring this day about.
The actual statistics are even harsher than you said, Richard.
My team calculated, they told me last night.
Actually, when it was all said and done, it did more than 360 campaign events in over 250 cities across 40 states.
And I logged enough miles to circumnavigate the globe five and a half times.
But it was worth it.
It was worth it.
And we got extraordinary candidates.
We flipped blue seats to red as we planned, and we kept this majority.
We expect that the majority will be larger than last time.
We still have a number of races outstanding, but we're very optimistic about those.
And we are looking forward to governing in unified government beginning in January.
It's true that on Tuesday, voters rejected what they really felt was the misery of the last four years.
We're moving on and we're turning the page.
And this is something that the American people desperately need and deserve.
We are going to raise an America First banner above this place.
And you saw a demographic shift that I was talking about on the campaign trail for over a year with new demographics, new groups of persons who had not traditionally been with the Republican Party who came on board with us because they believed in what we were saying.
They believed the answers that we were providing for all the great challenges facing the country.
And we made them a commitment to do that.
And we will.
And as the new members return now, we lay the groundwork for the next Congress and we usher in this new day in America.
Republicans in the House and Senate have a mandate.
It's true.
It was a decisive win across the nation.
The American people want us to implement and deliver that America First agenda.
And we have to do that while we have that energy and that excitement beginning on the very first day of the Congress in the new year.
It's clear the American people do want secure borders.
They want to prevent terrorists and criminals from entering the country.
These things are common sense.
They want and deserve lower costs for groceries and gasoline.
They want us to project strength on the world stage again and not the weakness that we have projected for the last four years.
They want an end to the wokeness and the radical gender ideology and a return to common sense in our children's classrooms and corporate boardrooms and government agencies.
And we're going to ensure all that's true.
This leadership will hit the ground running to deliver President Trump's agenda in the 119th Congress.
And we will work closely with him and his administration to turn this country around and unleash, as he says, a new golden age in America.
That's not a campaign slogan.
We believe that that is true.
We believe in our hearts that America's best days are ahead of us.
And we're excited to deliver upon that promise.
The only way we're able to work quickly is because we have unified control of the Congress, both chambers now and the White House, beginning January.
And I want to congratulate all our Republican incumbents who worked so hard to ensure their re-elections and our new members who helped us to keep this House majority, especially a couple of new members that flipped districts from red to blue.
People like Tom Barrett and Ryan McKenzie, Rob Bresnahan, Tim Moore, Addison McDowell, Brad Knott, Gabe Evans from different states around the country who worked really hard to ensure that we could have Republicans return to those seats.
And we have an amazing group of freshmen members who are going to join our conference, the Patriots who are already here and who are ready to implement this agenda on day one.
Now, as we sit here this morning, we're still watching a number of races.
We have races still pending in Alaska, Arizona, California, Maine, Ohio, and Oregon.
And we're going to ensure that every single legal vote is counted in those races.
So while we're completing the work of this Congress, we're shifting gears and preparing for the next Congress.
We're also still in campaign mode in some sense and awaiting the final outcome of these races.
Looking ahead over the past year, I've been working with our committee chairs and our Senate colleagues to lay the groundwork for this America First agenda.
It will grow our economy and reduce inflation.
It will secure our borders.
We will restore America's energy dominance once again.
We'll implement educational freedom and we will drain the swamp.
And that's just the beginning of the agenda.
This leadership team standing behind me has been preparing for this moment, and we are ready to deliver on America's mandate in the next Congress.
When President Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, we all look back and recognize that the Republican Party was not fully prepared for that moment, and precious time was wasted in the beginning of that Congress.
I know it well because that was my freshman year in Congress.
We began in 2017.
We are not going to make those mistakes again.
We will be ready on day one.
We are prepared this time.
And as we wind down the 118th Congress, we'll be ready to take the ball and run full speed in the 119th Congress that begins in January.
With that, if you have a few questions, I'd be happy to answer them.
Ciao.
President Trump and I have talked about this multiple times a day for the last several days.
We have an embarrassment of riches.
We have a really talented Republican conference.
We've got really competent, capable people here.
Many of them could serve in really important positions in the new administration.
But President Trump fully understands and appreciates the math here, and it's just a numbers game.
You know, we believe we're going to have a larger majority than we had last time.
It's too early to handicap it, but we're optimistic about that.
But every single vote will count because if someone gets ill or has a car accident or a late flight on their plane, that it affects the votes on the floor.
So I think he and the administration are well in tune to that.
I don't expect that we will have more members leaving, but I'll leave that up to him.
But yes, are we talking about it?
Yes, all the time.
And he fully appreciates that.
Let me go over here.
Yes, ma'am.
Go ahead.
Have you had discussions with the president-elect since the election about how he wants you to deal with government funding in this Congress?
We talked a little bit about it.
I'll be having further conversations.
My plan is to be at Mar-a-Lago all weekend to iron out details on the plans ahead.
So as you can imagine right now, he has a lot going on.
He has to fill out a cabinet.
He has to appoint his top staff, and he's beginning to do that.
We're delighted with the pick so far.
I think it's a great show-in for the country.
But he and I have both had a lot going on.
So we'll be talking about that and a number of other items over the weekend.
I'll see him, I think, Thursday night, and there are preliminary plans for him to come to Capitol Hill tomorrow.
So we'll have lots of time over the week and in the weekdays ahead.
So we'll stay tuned on all that.
Do you have a favorite in the race?
The question was, do I have a favorite in the race for Senate leader on the Republican side?
They're all my favorites.
How about that?
Look, I think there's some really qualified candidates over there.
All three of these gentlemen are friends.
I'm not going to put my thumb on the scale on that.
I got enough to manage over here.
But whomever is ultimately elected the new leader, we look forward to working with them beginning immediately.
And I have been working for a long time, almost a year now, with the previous Senate leadership and with the leaders of the key committees over there.
Our teams working together methodically, deliberately, consistently to prepare for the eventuality that we now see.
We really believed it wasn't just, oh, they were making fun of the speaker.
Oh, his sunny optimism.
He thinks he's going to win.
I really believed from day one, I believed it in my heart, that we would win unified government.
I knew that the people were disgusted really with the direction of the country.
I was feeling it as I was going out traveling around the country.
I mean, I went coast to coast, north, south, east, west.
That energy was out there.
I don't think the polling was fully measuring that.
And I was gauging that off my own observation everywhere I went in the country.
So this was not a surprise to us, and we've been prepared for it.
And we look forward to whomever's elected leader to go forward.
Newsmax is next.
about the use of the budget reconciliation as a method to achieving some of the desired ends.
We have to fix everything.
I told President Trump many times, and we've all discussed, we believe we could be the most consequential Congress of the modern era and he the most consequential president because we quite literally have to fix almost every metric of public policy.
Everything is a mess.
Everything.
So the budget reconciliation process is a very efficient means to solving a lot of that, everything related to the budget and spending and all the rest, regulatory reform.
So we have lots of very specific plans on how to do that.
And the details of that will come together over the coming weeks.
Yes, ma'am.
Speaker, since you raised this, can you tell us a little bit more about what you expect from the president-elect's visit?
Is he coming here to the Hill?
You know, what's on the agenda in terms of the program?
Well, I'll say the tentative, I didn't intend to break this as news this morning, but since I said it, I invited President Trump is going to meet with President Biden at the White House.
And so it was suggested, in fact, I think he said it first before I did, but that he wanted to come and visit with House Republicans.
So we're working out the details of him gathering with us potentially tomorrow morning before he goes to the White House.
And that would be a great meeting and a moment for all of us.
There's a lot of excitement, a lot of energy here.
We're really grateful for President Trump leaving it all on the field to get re-elected.
He quite literally did.
I mean, they scheduled him almost every hour of every day for months on end.
And he did that.
And that's what inspired his stamina, inspired so many of our candidates and incumbents around the country to go and give more and do more and leave more on the field because he was doing it.
And I think the American people appreciate that.
I think that's reflected in the mandate that he was giving, given winning the popular vote and the Electoral College decisively.
And we're excited about that.
To celebrate that moment with him, he certainly deserves it.
Maybe one more.
Yes, ma'am.
How is this question dropping to get rid of the Department of Education?
Has this been discussed with the president like I suggested on the campaign trail?
We're not going to get any details about any specifics with regard to reforms in specific departments.
Yeah, there's lots of ideas on the table, but we've got to work together, build consensus, work in coordination with the Trump administration on the order of the reforms and how we do it.
So I'm not yet ready to give you details on that, but you can stay tuned.
Maybe one more.
Yes, the only elections you were very concerned about, non-citizen voting, what's your assessment of the impact that non-citizens had on this election?
Well, look, the mantra and what we said at the rallies and what President Trump was apt to say all the time is we had to make it too big to rig.
And we did.
Look, we know for a fact, it is a fact, that non-citizens voted in some places around the country because they were signing up to vote and they were defying federal law, but the states were not enforcing the requirement that there be proof of citizenship before they sign up.
So I am grateful to tell you, and I said this on the campaign trail for a year, that I had confidence that because of the chaos that was related to the 2020 election, most of the states got busy.
To their credit, the legislatures and the states got busy and passed legislation to shore up their systems in states around the country.
I mean, there were hundreds of pieces of legislation that were passed, duly enacted, signed into law by the governors that shored up those systems and made sure they would be more secure.
There were a few states we were still concerned about, but I'll tell you, because of the attention that was given to it, you had eyes on those elections very closely.
You had lawyers ready and prepared to run and file injunctions in district courts when necessary, and they did.
You had poll watchers and precinct captains, and some of those are still working right now.
There'll be recounts in a couple of these races.
They'll be very closely monitored.
I'm happy to report to you that because of all the emphasis we placed on that and because of all the attention the American people put on it, that I think we were able to limit to a high degree the amount of fraud and irregularity and many of the things that concerned all Americans after 2020.
So that's a good sign.
It's another hopeful reason, another thing to celebrate about our new day in America.
So thank you all for being here this morning.
We're really grateful to get to work, and that starts right now.