WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday that Republicans are “ready to deliver” President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda after his election victory, insisting the GOP won’t make the mistakes of last time and will be much better prepared for a second-term Trump White House.
Standing on the steps of the U.S. Capitol with the House GOP leadership team, the speaker said there would be no time wasted before work begins on Trump’s “America First” agenda of securing the southern border, projecting strength on the world stage and ending “wokeness and radical gender ideology.” He expects Republicans will lead a unified government, even though House control is still too early to call.
“We are ready to deliver on America’s mandate,” said Johnson.
“We will be ready day one. We are prepared this time.”
With the Capitol behind his group, he said, “We’re going to raise an ‘America First’ banner above this place.”
Trump will meet with Johnson at the Capitol on Wednesday while the president-elect is in town for his visit to the White House, and Johnson said he will be spending the weekend with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida as they prepare for the new year.
Congress returned Tuesday to a changed Washington as Trump’s hard-right agenda is quickly taking shape, buoyed by eager Republican allies eyeing a full sweep of power on Capitol Hill while Democrats are sorting out what went wrong.
Even as final election results are still being tallied, the House and Senate leadership is pushing ahead toward a second-term Trump White House and what he’s called a mandate for governing, with mass deportations, industry deregulation and wholesale reductions in the federal government.
Trump is already testing the norms of governance during this presidential transition period — telling the Senate to forgo its advise-and-consent role and simply accept his Cabinet nominees — and he is staffing his administration and finding lawmakers willing to bend those civic traditions.
“Trump’s going to deliver his deportations, the drilling, the wall — it’s going to take all of us getting together,” said Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., a conservative member of the House Freedom Caucus.
But first, the House and Senate leaders will hold internal party elections this week for their own jobs. Most of the top Republican leaders depend on Trump for their political livelihoods and have worked to draw closer to the president-elect to shore up loyalty.
In the Senate, where Republicans seized power from Democrats on election night, three Republican senators who are vying to become the new GOP leader have rushed to agree with Trump’s plan for quick confirmation of presidential nominees.
All told, it’s a fundamental reshaping of not only the power centers in Washington, but the rules of governing, as Trump returns to the White House in January with a potential GOP-led Congress that is far less skeptical or wary of his approach than eight years ago, and much more willing to back him.
“This is going to be a very challenging time,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
She described the “horrific immigration policies” that Trump promised voters and she insisted the progressives in Congress will provide an “effective check” on the new White House, much the way Democrats did during his first term by fighting efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and other policies.