House, Senate GOP to consider new leadership as Trump administration approaches

House and Senate Republicans will huddle this week to select a new slate of leaders for the next year's Congress, the first step towards legislating in the looming Trump administration.

The moves come as the GOP is on the brink of securing a trifecta in Washington: Trump is headed to the White House, Republicans secured control of the Senate, and the GOP looks poised to retain its majority in the House, which would give the party full control in D.C. for the next two years.

Republicans are two seats away from maintaining control of the House. As of Sunday night, the GOP had secured 216 seats in the chamber, with Democrats trailing at 209 seats, according to Decision Desk HQ. A total of 10 races remain uncalled.

The Senate GOP conference will meet Wednesday, when lawmakers will choose between Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.), John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) to serve as the next GOP leader. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the current Senate GOP leader, is stepping down from his post this month, making way for a new face atop the conference for the first time in nearly two decades.

In the House, members of the GOP conference will also meet on Wednesday for their internal elections, during which they will nominate a candidate for Speaker — even though they have not officially clinched the majority. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is likely to get the nod for the job, but his odds of winning the job on the House floor in January remain unclear.

Senate GOP to select McConnell successor

Senate Republicans will select a new leader of their conference in a secret vote on Wednesday — the first time the group has done so since McConnell won the job in 2007.

Thune, Cornyn and Scott are all vying for the majority leader position, a title that solidified after Republicans won control of the Senate last week.

The three-way race has been ongoing for months, with the candidates working behind the scenes to rally support among their colleagues. Since last week’s elections, however, the contest has heated up, and all eyes are now on Trump to see if he weighs in on the leadership fight.

Trump inched closer to getting involved with the race on Sunday. In a social media post, the president-elect said the next GOP leader “must agree” to moving forward with appointments over weekends, a request that would upend typical procedure in the upper chamber. All three candidates quickly backed the idea.

Questions, however, are still looming about whether Trump will endorse in the contest.

Some senators, including Thune, say he should stay out of it. The Senate GOP whip told CNBC in an interview last week “I think it’s probably in his best interest to stay out of [the race].” His allies have echoed that sentiment.

Those backing Scott, meanwhile, are urging the opposite, publicly suggesting that Trump should wade into the race in support of the Florida Republican.

“Jesse, if you’ve got any influence with President Trump, ask President Trump to come out publicly and say he wants to work with someone as accomplished as Rick Scott to accomplish his agenda,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who has endorsed Scott, told conservative podcast host Jesse Kelly in an interview.

The views from the two respective camps do not come as a surprise. Thune has a complicated history with Trump: The South Dakota Republican opposed an effort to object to the certification of the 2020 election results following President Biden’s victory, prompting Trump to threaten to end his political career through a primary, which did not come to fruition. Thune also endorsed Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) in the 2024 GOP primary over Trump.

Thune, however, has worked to repair the relationship. The pair met at Mar-a-Lago earlier ths year and they have spoken a number of times.

Cornyn, similarly, has a checkered history with Trump. The Texas Republican, for example, negotiated the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act after the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, a move that Trump criticized.

Cornyn allies, however, argue that their ties are closer than that of Thune. The former GOP whip — who served in the position during the first two years of the first Trump administration — spent time with Trump on the campaign trail, was a special guest at Trump-Vance fundraisers in August, and raked in loads of money for the ticket.

Scott, meanwhile, is seen as the candidate with the best relationship with Trump. Scott hails from Florida, Trump’s current state of residence; he traveled to Mar-a-Lago in April 2021, when Trump was still facing controversy from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol; and he was the first senator to attend Trump’s trial in Manhattan earlier this year.

House GOP to huddle for internal leadership elections

House Republicans will huddle behind closed doors on Wednesday to nominate a candidate for Speaker, kicking off what could be a messy process of installing the top lawmaker for the incoming 119th Congress.

Johnson is currently the only declared candidate running for Speaker. The Louisiana Republican — who was elevated to the top job last year, after the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) — wrote in a letter to colleagues last week “I’m ready to take the field with all of you, and I am humbly asking for your support to continue leading this Conference as your Speaker.”

Johnson is expected to win the nomination for Speaker, a feat that requires a simple majority during Wednesday’s secret ballot. His margin of victory, however, will be notable, as the Speaker prepares to take his nomination to the full House floor in January, when a majority vote in the chamber will be needed to win the gavel.

With Republicans poised to have another razor-thin majority, any opposition to Johnson’s bid could imperil his chances of reclaiming the gavel next year. In 2021, a small pocket of GOP resistance to McCarthy’s Speakership effort prevented him from winning the gavel until the 15th ballot of voting.

One prominent Republican said that Johnson is facing some opposition within the GOP conference.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who has not been shy to criticize Johnson in the past, said on Fox News this weekend that there are “a lot of Republicans” who are concerned about his leadership effort, raising questions about how easy of a path the Louisiana lawmaker has to the gavel.

“Mike Johnson is gonna have to demonstrate that he can corral this Republican conference to deliver for the American people and deliver for President Trump. That needs to happen over the next several weeks,” Roy said. “And I’m gonna be sitting down with Mike this week, sitting down with other members of the conference, but we have no choice but to deliver.”

“We’ve got to deliver, no more excuses. That’s what I want to hear out of the Speaker. But he’s got a lot of Republicans who are still concerned,” he added. “We’ve got to figure out how to get everybody on the same page.”

No Republicans have formally announced their opposition to Johnson since last week’s election, though several are keeping their cards close to their chest.

House Republicans are also set to vote on other top leadership positions. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) is running for re-election as House majority leader, Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) is doing the same as House majority whip, and Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) is vying for another term as chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).

House to hold hearing on UAPs

A pair of House Oversight subcommittees are scheduled to hold a joint hearing this week about unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), the second on the topic for the panel.

The hearing, scheduled for Wednesday at 11:30 p.m., is titled “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth.”

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), chair of the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation, and Rep. Glenn Grothman, the chair of the Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, said the hearing will “attempt to further pull back the curtain on secret UAP research programs conducted by the U.S. government,” and look into the Pentagon's “reluctance to appropriately declassify material on UAPs.”

A quartet of witnesses are lined up to testify: Tim Gallaudet, a retired rear admiral in the Navy and the chief executive officer of Ocean STL Consulting, LLC; Luis Elizondo, an author and former Pentagon official; Michael Gold, the chief growth officer of Redwire Corporation and a former associate administrator at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; and Michael Shellenberger, the founder of Public, an online news outlet.

Elizondo has alleged that the Department of Defense has a retrieval program for spacecraft crashes and has recovered nonhuman specimens.

Mace and Grothman in a statement said they want to “bring greater accountability to this issue.”

“Americans deserve to understand what the government has learned about UAP sightings, and the nature of any potential threats these phenomena pose,” they added. “We can only ensure that understanding by providing consistent, systemic transparency.”