America's Talking - Senate Republicans Elect John Thune Majority Leader

Episode Date: November 16, 2024

U.S. Senate Republicans on Wednesday elected Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., to lead the party in the Senate. Senate Republicans voted via secret ballot to elect a new party leader as longtime Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky,. is stepping down. Sens. Rick Scott of Florida, Thune and John Cornyn of Texas also ran for the position. "I am extremely honored to have earned the support of my colleagues to lead the Senate in the 119th Congress, and I am beyond proud of the work we have done to secure our majority and the White House," Thune said in a statement. "This Republican team is united behind President Trump's agenda, and our work starts today." Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America in Focus powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulib, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. Republicans will once again have a majority control of the U.S. House by the slimmest of margins after a few more races were called this week. House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana will keep his leadership position. In the U.S. Senate, the Republican majority there selected Senator John Thune of South Dakota to be majority leader.

joining me to discuss this today is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief, 40 Center Square. Casey, let's start in the Senate. Thune wasn't the only Republican to seek the majority leader position, but in the end, he won out. Tell us about that. Yeah, that's right. There was an intense three-way race for the Senate Majority Position, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, Rick Scott of Florida, and John Thune of South Dakota. The way the process worked is they had votes this week.

secret ballot on Wednesday. And if nobody got, I believe it was 27 votes, and they dropped off the third candidate on the list who was Rick Scott. And then it was between Cornyn and Thune and Thune won out. Now, there was some hope among a lot of Trump's strongest supporters that Rick Scott, who's by far a lot more conservative than either Thune and Cornyn, was it going to be able to win. Charlie Kirk endorsed him. Elon Musk endorsed him. There was a kind of a grassroots campaign to quickly cobble these votes together, but the Senate would not be pressured, and they don't like to be too pressured in these kinds of things. And so Thune won out. I mean, a little bit about Thune. Thune, he's 63, South Dakota. He's a pretty fit guy. He says he likes pheasant hunting.

He's been in Senate leadership for a long time for several years. He's worked closely with McConnell in that time. I suspect that McConnell may have helped him. I can't prove that. but he has been a kind of a Republican leadership insider for a while. He hasn't been super outspoken against Trump, but he did not really go along with Trump on the whole 2020 election stuff. He was kind of critical of that in around January 6th. Notably, he also endorsed Tim Scott for president in the primary briefly. So that's kind of interesting thing.

So he's not particularly a Trumper, but now he's saying that. he wants to work with the president. He's willing to work on recess appointments, which, by the way, Trump did not endorse anyone, but he said whoever the majority leader is needs to agree to recess appointments so they can quickly get his cabinet in place. So what does that mean, Casey? What does that mean a recess appointments? Yeah, I mean, in some sense, like, who knows, because it's a kind of a complicated legal scholar question, the constitutional lawyers. But the simple version of it is that the founding fathers allowed provision for a president to appoint cabinet members in the event that Congress was out of session. Now, of course, back then, when they went out of session,

I mean, they would, you know, go home. And going home, it could be a long journey, could take a long time. And so they, they didn't have airplanes, of course. And so coming in and out of session, the way we do now was not really an option back then. And so sessions, you know, were longer and then when they when they were out of session that time was longer now Congress goes out of session everybody flies home for a few days they can come back into session so session coming in and out is just different but back then because session could be out for so long they allowed for recess appointments so the president could temporarily appoint a cabinet position it's actually not just cabinet I mean there's like a thousand positions that need

Senate confirmation but he could appoint it and then this position I think would last for one year without Senate approval. So, less than anyone thinks, now fast forward to modern day, less than anyone thinks that Trump is trying to do some legal maneuvering of, you know, emperor-style evil,

you know, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama all used recessed appointments, like over 100 for George Bush and Bill Clinton. And then Obama started doing it. But in 2014, the Supreme Court basically ruled that it was being abused. And that Senate, that Congress had to be out of session for more than 10 days to do a recess appointment. Because, you know, they were trying to like do these recess appointments basically on the weekend when Congress was gone. And so the Supreme Court said that really violates

the spirit of what the founders wanted. If Congress is going to be back in two days, you'd need to wait for them. So ever since then, to avoid letting the president do recess appointments, Congress is never out of session for more than 10 days. Even if they're not really in session, they will create a fake session to, I mean, not fake, it's a real session, but it's not really in the same way a session in the sense that they're going to do a lot. They just create the session to prevent the president from doing recess appointments. So what does that all in for us now? Trump has control of the House and the Senate, and he might be able to finangle getting a time of, you know, more than 10 days of Congress actually being adjourned in just

a point, I don't know, a thousand people. You know, that could probably go to the Supreme Court too. It's going to be interesting to see. It hasn't really been tested to that measure since the 2014 Supreme Court case. Casey, let's switch our focus in the brief time that we have left to the U.S. House. Republicans will maintain their majority in the House under the Biden administration. Republicans had a slight majority. It looks like they'll have a slight majority now.

They needed 218 seats to have the majority. I'm looking at decision desk right now. It's been called for 219 Republicans with a handful of races still outstanding. One, it's still amazing. Well over a week past the election, we still are counting votes in some states. But that's neither here nor there for this conversation. During the Biden administration with House Republicans in the majority, They launched all kinds of investigations into the administration.

They impeached Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, among other things. What do you see a House majority doing with their subpoena power in a Trump administration? You think they'll continue to investigate the Biden administration looking backwards? Or is their focus going to be on Donald Trump's agenda? I think that a lot of Trump supporters want them to follow. focus on the agenda. I'm sure there's plenty of subpoenaing to do, and you already see, I mean, the House Oversight Committee has continued to do that. So, you know, they're going to have

more teeth for some of these investigations. But lately, these congressional investigations haven't gone too far. I think if there are some serious declassification, which is what a lot of, you know, potential cabinet picks and people are talking about, we need to declassify more documents to reveal, you know, what's been going on in the government. And then that, That could lead to some real serious investigations. I think the biggest win for Trump on this is he's going to be able to get, you know, continuing resolutions passed. I mean, I think there could still be a government shut down, you know, here in a few months because the Democrats are going to want to push through some long spending bill. And I think a lot of Republicans are going to say the American people to select Donald Trump and we need to do a temporary funding so that when Trump takes office and the new, you know, House and Senate are in position, they can make a longer term spending.

bill. So I think there's a real fight brewing there. And then also Trump's not going to get impeached probably. So that's a big win for him. If, you know, Democrats had the House that impeachment would probably be coming. Thank you for joining us today, Casey. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecenter square.com.