House Republicans to Trump: Stop Picking Us

Plus: The Senate is racing to confirm Biden’s judicial nominees.

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Since winning the 2024 election, President-elect Donald Trump has wasted no time in staffing up his new administration. House Republicans have been asked to fill key roles: He tapped Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) to serve as Ambassador to the United Nations and Mike Waltz (R-Fla.)¹ to be his national security advisor, and according to CNN, he’s not done poaching from the lower chamber yet. 

There’s one problem: Taking Republicans out of the House reduces the size of their majority, which is already thin enough to make the designers at Brandy Melville jealous. If Trump keeps it up, there might not even be a Republican House majority anymore.

The possibility that Trump might shave the majority is becoming an urgent concern for top Republicans. In a press conference this morning, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) told reporters:

You can see his resolve already in 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 while, until special elections get held.

House Speaker Mike Johnson also said he and Trump have “talked about this multiple times a day for the last several days,” adding:

We’ve got an embarrassment of riches. We have a really talented Republican Conference. We have really competent and capable people here. Many of them can serve in 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 gonna have a larger majority than we had last time, and it’s too early to handicap it, but we’re optimistic about that. But every single vote will count because if somebody gets ill or has a car accident, or has a late flight on their plane, then that affects 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.

Decision Desk called the House majority for Republicans on Monday. While ballots are still being counted in a few races, even if the GOP catches some good late breaks in the final tallies, their incoming majority will be slight. Each House Republican nominated and confirmed to an administration position will resign and leave a seat open until a special election is held to fill it. (This isn’t like the Senate, where governors can appoint replacements for lawmakers who do not complete their terms.) Special elections for vacated House seats can take anywhere from several weeks to a couple months to be completed. It’s also worth noting that Democrats have had some recent success in specials—and the party out of power tends to do better in them. 

With a small majority, the math of the chamber can be easily thrown off by illnesses, deaths, and even delayed flights, as Johnson mentioned. The 118th Congress had two deaths (Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee and Bill Pascrell), and there were also quite a few illnesses that sidelined lawmakers for weeks at a time. In other words: Trump’s playing with a bit of fire. 

The Chuck stops here

Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is gearing up for what could be the most consequential few weeks of his career. 

Schumer’s last, most important task before the 118th Congress concludes is to push the Senate to confirm Biden’s outstanding judicial nominees as fast as possible. These positions are primarily lifetime appointments that the incoming Trump administration cannot disrupt, and they would serve as a blockade to many of the aggressive and questionable policies the new administration is eager to implement. (Of note: Trump and Senate Republicans did the same at the tail end of 2020, confirming, among other judges, one Aileen Cannon.)

“We are going to get as many done as we can,” Schumer said in a statement. Later this afternoon, the Senate will vote on April Perry to become district judge for the Northern District of Illinois. If confirmed, Perry will serve a lifetime appointment. She was previously nominated to be U.S. attorney in the same district, but Vice President–elect JD Vance blocked her confirmation in September.

In an op-ed for Time, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) outlined ways Democrats and others can use the final weeks of the year to preemptively limit the authoritarian excesses of the incoming administration:

While still in charge of the Senate and the White House, we must do all we can to safeguard our democracy. To resist Trump’s threats to abuse state power against what he calls “the enemy within,” Pentagon leaders should issue a directive now reiterating that the military’s oath is to the Constitution. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer must use every minute of the end-of-year legislative session to confirm federal judges and key regulators—none of whom can be removed by the next President.

Warren added that “Democrats should also acknowledge that seeking a middle ground with a man who calls immigrants ‘animals’ and says he will ‘protect’ women ‘whether the women like it or not’ is unlikely to land in a good place. Uniting against Trump’s legislative agenda is good politics because it is good policy.”

Progressive groups are also pushing the last-minute dash to confirm Biden’s judicial nominees. 

“The reality is that we now have a rapidly closing window to confirm well-qualified, fair-minded judges who will protect our rights and serve as one of the last guardrails in upholding our nation’s laws and the Constitution,” said Demand Justice’s managing director, Maggie Jo Buchanan, in a statement published shortly after it became apparent the Senate would come under Republican control in January.

There are currently 47 vacancies with 17 pending nominations. Of the vacancies, six are in states held by two Democratic senators in addition to vacancies in the District of Columbia.

Governors without governors

As Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill strategize and plan for Trump 2.0, in governors’ mansions across the country, other members of the party are preparing their own responses to a radically changed federal government. The emerging strategy among Democratic governors is to fortify their states into bastions of liberalism, places where the federal government’s authority runs into hard stops everywhere it turns. 

After the election was called, California governor Gavin Newsom summoned the state assembly to a special session that will begin on December 2. 

The plan for the session includes “several urgent priorities to be defended . . . by bolstering legal defenses against federal actions,” including by providing additional resources to the California Department of Justice to counter the Trump administration and “support the ability to immediately file litigation and seek injunctive relief against unlawful federal actions.”

“The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack—and we won’t sit idle,” Newsom said in a statement. “California has faced this challenge before, and we know how to respond. We are prepared, and we will do everything necessary to ensure Californians have the support and resources they need to thrive.”

Given the Democratic party’s power in his state, Newsom has the most leeway to play the role of Trump’s great antagonist. But he has the least amount of time. Newsom’s final term will end in just two years, and after that, he will be on his own—free to get a jumpstart on his own presidential campaign, as many expect him to do.

The Democratic governors of Illinois and Colorado intend to use their powers to push back on the incoming Trump administration as well. Discussing his efforts to protect rights that could be under threat in his state during a second Trump term, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker struck an adversarial note: “You come for my people, you come through me.” Colorado Governor Jared Polis put things in less pointed terms, but he was no less firm: “no matter what . . . we will do everything in our power to protect all Coloradans and our freedoms.” Additional Democratic states are likely to follow these examples. 

Democrats aren’t traditionally the ones pushing the notion of states’ rights. But Trump’s presidency will put their governors in a place where that now becomes a rallying cry—and, perhaps, a political springboard. Thinking cynically for a moment, this situation will create opportunities for anyone who has an eye on 2028, which is certain to be another pivotal election year. But let’s be honest. No one in their right mind wants to think about that just yet. Just politicians and journalists—like I said, no one in their right mind.

1. You may recall a recent edition of Press Pass in which I reported that Waltz made the most appearances on Fox News weekday programming of any member of the House during the 118th Congress. It looks like all that airtime paid off.