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Republican Senator John Thune spoke to reporters after winning the election for majority leader by a vote of 29 to 24.
He and other lawmakers discuss growth in the Republican Party, their priorities, and addressing the biggest issues for Americans in the 2024 election.
At the start of the 119th Congress, Senator Thune will replace Mitch McConnell, who served as the leader of the GOP for 18 years, the longest in history.
We have the team assembled.
Good afternoon, and thank you all for being here.
It's a new day in the United States Senate, and it's a new day in America.
The American people have loudly rejected the failed policies of the Biden-Harris-Schumer agenda.
And this Republican team is united.
We are on one team.
We are excited to reclaim the majority and to get to work with our colleagues in the House to enact President Trump's agenda.
We have a mandate from the American people, a mandate not only to clean up the mess left by the Biden-Harris-Schumer agenda, but also to deliver on President Trump's priorities.
We will make sure that the President and his team have the tools and the support that they need to enforce border security laws and to remove the violent criminals who are wreaking havoc in every one of our states.
We will work to make America prosperous again by streamlining the bureaucratic machine and overturning costly Biden-Harris regulations.
And we will work to restore American energy dominance.
Not just our energy security, but energy dominance, which will lower costs and bolster our national security.
I'm excited to get to work with this team right away.
And I want to thank my colleagues who placed their faith in me to serve as leader and to those who were supporting another candidate.
I promise to be a leader who serves the entire Republican conference.
We will have an ambitious agenda and will take each and every Republican working together to be successful.
With that, I want to turn things over to Senator John Barroso, the newly elected Republican whip.
Thank you.
On election night, America saw the remaking of the Republican Party for the better.
This was election was about the answering to the question of, are you better off now than you were four years ago?
And the American people said no.
Only one in four Americans thought that the country was heading in the right direction.
And you've seen the Republican Party grow in terms of hardworking middle-class families, in terms of minorities, in terms of young people, in terms of families struggling to get by.
The last three weeks before the election, I was all over the country with President Trump, with JD Vance, as well as a number of our Senate candidates.
One of the stories that stuck with me was a woman in Michigan who talked about the fact that she was embarrassed to let her husband know that she had to go to the local food bank in order to get by.
Republicans listened to those stories.
Democrats were focused on President Trump.
Republicans were focused on the needs of the American people.
People who wanted to get prices down, wanted to secure the border, wanted us to unleash American energy.
People wanted to make America look and be strong once again around the world.
That's what the Republicans listened to.
That's what we're responding to.
And we are now working together to make sure we can put America back on track.
The newly elected Republican Conference Chair is the Senator from Arkansas, Senator Tom Cotton.
Thank you, Senator Thune.
I'm looking forward to working with Senator Thune and the rest of this leadership team.
I'm very grateful for the confidence that my peers placed in me.
We all remember what it was like when President Trump was in office and we had Republicans in charge of the Senate.
We had low prices, we had high wages, we had a secure border, we had a strong military, we had a peaceful, stable world.
Starting on January 3rd, that's what we'll all be working to build again with President Trump, with Mike Johnson, and the rest of the House Republicans on behalf of the American people.
Thank you all.
Thanks, Tom.
The newly elected Republican policy chair is the Senator from West Virginia, Senator Shelley Moore Capital.
Thank you, and congratulations to our new leader, John Thune.
He will be a strong voice as he has been in the past as the WIP.
I look forward to serving with him and with all of our leadership team.
I want to thank the others that ran.
We had a really strong, healthy discussion, and we've all come out united and friends.
And one of the people that was in our discussion is one of the people that is going to, although he didn't say anything, his presence was very much felt, and that is the Vice President-elect, JD Vance.
I think the fact that he not only was a voting member of our conference, but also in there with us every step of the way to make sure that the direction that we're going to go is a united conference, and with me leading the policy issues and all of us working together, that we're going to have a united voice.
And I'll say one thing about the election, I've said this on all my local stations.
What I think the biggest issue was, and there are big ones, border and national security and others, it is literally the American family, the mom and the dad, the grandmother, whoever it is, going to the grocery store.
We do it all the time, every week, and we could see, all of us could see, the escalating costs of something so very basic to us, just the cost of food, and hearing from the vice president in her campaign, the economy's doing great, don't worry.
And so we hear those voices, we hear them loud and clear, and those are the voices that we're going to respond to along with President Trump through the next several years.
Thanks, Shelly.
The newly elected Senate Republican Conference Vice Chair is the Senator from Oklahoma, Senator James Langford.
Hey, congratulations to John Thune.
We're looking forward to his great leadership there.
Republicans were asked a very simple thing: can you get us back on track?
Over 70% of the country right now believes the country is on the wrong track.
Our task is going to be very, very simple, to defend our values, to be able to strengthen us as a nation, and to be able to bring prosperity to people that are really struggling right now.
That's a primary issue for us.
And all of those things are things that we're going to get onto immediately because the American people have spoken and said we do not like the direction that the country is going.
So let's get us back on a better direction.
So this leadership team, President Trump, JD Vance, we're headed in a direction to be able to get the country back on the track that she is looking for.
Thanks, James.
And the newly elected chairman of the Senate National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair is the senator from South Carolina, and he is already planning on expanding our majority in 2026.
So Senator Tim Scott.
Hey, brother.
Without any question, President Trump set out to make sure that Americans felt like this country and the American dream was alive and well and there for them.
From the border to fixing the economy to solving the issue of crime and restoring confidence on the global stage, President Trump has been very clear on his agenda.
Our goal with our leader, John Thune, is to make sure that we achieve those objectives.
My passion is making sure that we defend our current seats and expand the map and expand our majority so that President Trump does not have two years with a Republican majority in the Senate.
He has four years in control of making sure that America's agenda comes home to each and every household.
Thanks, Tim.
A couple quick questions.
Do you have any concerns about President Trump's cabinet fix so far and what advice will you give him when it comes to choosing nominees who will pass Senate confirmations?
Well, as you know, the Senate has an advise and consent role under the Constitution, so we will do everything we can to process his noms quickly, get them installed in their position so they can begin to implement his agenda.
Leader Thun, you said that recess appointments are on the table.
That's a key demand from President-elect Donald Trump.
Will you move forward with that?
Well, what we're going to do is make sure that we are processing his nominees in a way that gets them into those positions so they can implement his agenda.
How that happens remains to be seen.
You know, obviously, we want to make sure our committees have confirmation hearings like they typically do and that these nominees report it out to the floor.
But I've said this, and I mean it, that we expect a level of cooperation from the Democrats to work with us to get these folks installed.
And obviously, we're going to look at explore all options to make sure that they get moved and that they get moved quickly.
Will the legislative filibuster remain unchanged under your tenure?
Yes.
How do you intend to balance maintaining the independence of the Senate with passing the president-elect's agenda?
Well, I mean, the Senate, as you know, is a, by the founders' design, a place where the minority has a voice in our process.
And we will do the job that the founders intended us to do, the United States Senate, and that the American people intend us to do.
And that right now, after this mandate election coming out of the American people, is to work with this president on an agenda that unwinds a lot of the damage of the Biden-Harris-Schumer agenda and puts in place new policies that will move our country forward in a different direction.
House and Senate Republicans elected their new leaders for the 119th Congress, which begins in January.
Louisiana Republican Congressman Mike Johnson was re-elected by House Republicans as their nominee again for House Speaker.
The full House will vote on his nomination on January 3rd.
Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Majority Whip Tom Emmer were also both re-elected to their leadership posts.
Michigan Congresswoman Lisa McClain won the Republican Conference Chair Race over Florida Congresswoman Kat Kamek and replaces outgoing chair Elise Stefanik, who is President-elect Trump's pick for U.N. Ambassador.
Oklahoma Congressman Kevin Hearn won the policy committee chair post over current chair Alabama Congressman Gary Palmer.
And North Carolina Congressman Richard Hudson was re-elected to chair the National Republican Congressional Committee for the 2026 election cycle.
Over in the Senate, Republicans elected South Dakota Senator John Thune as their new leader in the 119th Congress, succeeding their longest-serving party leader Mitch McConnell.
Senator Thune, who currently serves as minority whip, defeated Texas Senator John Cornyn and Florida Senator Rick Scott for majority leader 29 to 24 on a second ballot.
Current Republican Conference Chair John Barasa was unanimously elected as whip, the number two leadership post.
And Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton was elected Republican Conference Chair for the next Congress over Iowa's Joni Ernst.
West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito will serve as Republican Policy Committee Chair and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott as chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee for the 2026 election cycle.
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