The Journal. - What a Republican Congress Could Mean for Trump

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

Former president Donald Trump is now president-elect. But that wasn’t the only win this week for the GOP. Republicans have also secured a majority in the Senate, and they’re poised to win the House of Representatives. WSJ’s Siobhan Hughes breaks down what this Republican trifecta could look like. Further Reading: -Republicans Poised to Keep Control of House After Winning Senate  -How Republicans Regained Control of the Senate  Further Listening: -Red, White and Who? It's Trump.  -How Donald Trump Pulled Off a Historic Comeback  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, former President Donald Trump won a decisive victory. And Republicans didn't just win the White House. They've also made gains in Congress. Republicans did far better than expected. Everyone was bracing for Republicans to take control of the Senate, but not necessarily by a lot. Even top Republicans were trying to manage expectations. And the expectation was that Democrats were going to win the House. We would have divided government, maybe an uncertain landscape, but that was the picture

that was coming into view. And at a high level, how would you say that happened? How did Republicans dominate so fully? There isn't any one single factor. A part of it is the dominance of Donald Trump and his message, his message on inflation and his message on the border. And a lot of Republicans rolled into office on those coattails. They mobilized.

There was a big swamp the vote, we have to get out and register. And they had a very good ground game, even by Democrats estimation. While votes are still being counted in some states, Republicans have taken control of the Senate and are poised to keep their majority in the House of Representatives. It's going to be another trifecta. We are right back in 2016 when Donald Trump barged in and had all the levers of government in his fingers.

Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Thursday, November 7th. Coming up on the show, what a Republican Congress could mean for President-elect Donald Trump. How do airplanes fly? What's in this box? What does this thing do? Okay, let's look more closely at the breakdown of Congress. What does the majority look like in the Senate? We're looking at roughly 53 Republicans in the Senate.

That's enough for a majority with, of course, 100 senators. That's Siobhan Hughes, our congressional reporter. Right now, as we speak, we do still have two Senate races that have not yet been called. So far, Republicans have gained four seats in the Senate. One of those seats is in Pennsylvania. That's where Bob Casey, a Democrat, was running for re-election. He's been in office since 2007. And today, he lost his seat.

And this race is really a microcosm of the forces we have seen coursing through this entire election. It has turned out to be an anti-incumbent election, which doesn't help somebody who has been in office for 18 years. So Bob Casey is the son of Pennsylvania's former governor. He's a household name in the state. He really knows how to work that state. I spent a lot of time crisscrossing Pennsylvania.

I went to Erie County and I talked to people who knew he had gotten $48 million for the biggest employer in that area. I met somebody who showed me a picture on her phone of Bob Casey with her spending a day as a home health aid worker in her house. And so this is somebody who delivers for the state. On the campaign trail,

Casey distanced himself from the Biden administration. He promised to protect fracking and supported tariffs on Chinese goods. Polling showed Casey was favored to narrowly win the race, but his Republican opponent, Dave McCormick, beat expectations. McCormick is a former hedge fund manager, an Army veteran. What Dave McCormick did is he talks about the ways

in which life has just become really hard in so many places in Pennsylvania. He talks about how inflation is really high. You know, he also talks a lot about the border, and he runs these ads that show him with these police cars as if he's really out there, a cop on the beat, trying to protect people from this sense they have that there's crime out there and there's too much migration

and really projecting the sense that Bob Casey is just not standing up forcefully enough against either the Democratic Party or a lot of these forces that are making life so hard for people right now. KSK McCormick won by a slim margin, so close that it could trigger a recount. But if the results hold, Casey will be part of a larger trend this cycle of Democratic incumbents who have lost the reelection bids, like in Montana.

John Tester has lost his race. Sherrod Brown, who is a household name in Ohio, has lost his race. Those were the last two Democrats remaining in statewide office in their respective states. Where have Democrats been able to defend their seats? Tammy Baldwin, for example, in Wisconsin was able to hold on to her seat, and so that was certainly a win. In Michigan, Alyssa Slotkin is going to get the seat that was held by Democrat Debbie Stabenow,

and so she made a good defensive play in that state. Those are some examples of the bright spots for Democrats. What would you say worked for Democrats in those cases? So for Tammy Baldwin, a big thing that worked was she was out a lot in the rural areas. She's worked a lot on dairy policy, and that's big in Wisconsin. And so those voters really felt that she delivered

for them. And that's a big constituency. So that's the Senate. What about the House? So right now it looks like Republicans are going to stay in control of the House and their speaker would be likely Mike Johnson, who obviously has had a very, very good election day. And it's really the same issue set that propelled Donald Trump into office. It is the border, it is inflation, it is crime, it is a sense that this country is heading in the wrong direction and just not working for enough people. So this all sounds like a big win for Trump. Trump is going to be in a very, very powerful position to carry forward his agenda.

What's more, this is a new Trump. This is a Trump who now has experience being president. He knows what he wants and he's going to be able to be much more focused. What Trump and the GOP will do with their power? That's next. Okay. So, we've been talking about the races and at this point, we know what Congress will look like, generally speaking.

Could we talk about some of the policy goals that Trump has that might be easier to push through given the makeup of this Congress? So the top one is going to be taxes. Trump engineered tax cuts in 2017 that are due to expire at the end of 2025. And that's an area where Trump is now going to have much greater leverage to get his way because Republicans will be able to turn to this tactic to pass that on a simple majority vote in the Senate. They're going to skirt the filibuster.

That's probably the most important one. Also, though, I would look for Ukraine funding to be an area where Trump was far more able to get his way. But even though Trump will have more support than ever from Republicans in Congress, some of his proposals might still face some pushback. Number one, Trump is a spender. He's never really been shy about spending. And in the past, he has flirted with this idea of a debt default at one point talking about how if the economy crashed perhaps the U.S. should suggest giving back only half

of the money it owed. So that's going to be something that Republicans have to manage. Very different than what the Republican Party has stood for for a very long time. Frankly, than what either party has stood for because lawmakers in both parties know that a debt default would be catastrophic to this country. We have a debt ceiling fight coming up next year and I think it's really gonna test the spine of a lot of Republicans. What are some of the things that you expect him to be spending? Well the big one for him was the border wall. You know, but he now also has this proposal for mass deportation. Logistically, it is not clear how that exactly would work, but one would surmise that that takes a lot of manpower.

So how exactly is he going to pay for this proposal? How much of these policy ideas, how much of this is dependent on Congress? And how much of this can Trump sign off on his own? — You know, I've been thinking a lot about this. When I went back to look at his record, one thing that jumped out at me was how much Donald Trump really tried to thumb his nose at Congress. And he would just plow ahead with what he wanted to do, even when the law didn't allow it, and he actually ended up coming out sort of on top. You know, there was a big fight over

the border wall last time, and Trump just snatched money from the military budget and said he was using it to build a wall. And after multiple court challenges, the Supreme Court ended up siding with Donald Trump on that. He won. Having a solid GOP majority in the Senate also means that Trump's appointments to his cabinet and to federal courts could be easily confirmed. We have to take a moment to talk about the big change in the Senate. Mitch McConnell, longtime Republican leader there, is stepping down from leadership. So who is likely to succeed him?

We're going to have this conversation next week. And the two top contenders are the Johns, the two Johns. John Thune of South Dakota, he is the number two Senate Republican, and John Cornyn of Texas, who used to be the Senate Republican whip. And what can we expect from McConnell's successor, especially in terms of how they might align or not with Trump? So neither John Thune nor John Cornyn is wildly close to Donald Trump, but they have both made their peace with him. They respect him as the party's leader. They respect the voters who sent Donald Trump into power. But both men would be expected to have their work cut out for them in negotiating with

Donald Trump. All that said, Democrats do still hold the presidency and the Senate for a few more weeks. How might they prepare for this new reality that's coming in January? So Democrats do have Congress for a few more weeks, you're exactly right. Democrats could bolster themselves possibly somewhat by stuffing priorities into spending bills. The administration could also work administratively right now to ensure that money that has already been allocated gets shipped out to whatever entities need it. That prevents Republicans from clawing back those funds in a future budget.

The big one to protect would be anything having to do with climate change and environmental policy because Republicans are no fans of Green New Deal spending. And that would be something Democrats would very much want to insulate from political pressure. So we're talking about like the Department of Energy, the EPA, that sort of thing. Exactly. So once Republicans take over, what might the Democratic strategy in Congress look like? There's a really good line that John Boehner used to have, when you're not legislating, you're communicating.

And so they're going to have to have a very, very refined message and figure out who their best communicators are in this moment. So it seems like one of the themes of this election is that voters really wanted a change. And this time that meant putting Republicans, putting Trump back in control. What do you think voters are hoping for from this Congress? You know, people are angry. And you have to understand that people have been through a lot. We're in the middle of a housing crisis where in many places people can't afford shelter. People cannot afford food.

I mean, as a pocketbook matter, voters are hoping that their lives just become more affordable. That when they go to buy a ham sandwich at the store, they can buy a soda to go along with it. You know, I think that's a basic one. I think a feeling of security maybe in a lot of ways, just a feeling that the country is more settled. And what does that mean for both parties? We're in the middle of a very, very big

political realignment where the traditional values, traditional leaders, traditional sentiment of the parties are very much in influx and shifting. And we're going to find out what this new Republican Party looks like. And we're also going to find out if the Democratic Party is going to remake itself in response to these losses. That's all for today, Thursday, November 7th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Katie Stetch-Ferrick. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.