House GOP leader says 'hopefully no more' as Trump Cabinet picks make 'thin majority even smaller'

12 November 2024

As President-elect Donald Trump makes his first key appointments to his incoming administration, one top House Republican is asking him to stop cutting into the GOP's numbers in the lower chamber of Congress.

NBC News reported that the president-elect has announced several House Republicans will be joining his Cabinet. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York), who is the chair of the House Republican Conference, will be the next U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, while Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Florida) will be his National Security Advisor. Former Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-New York) — who left Congress in 2023 — will be joining the incoming Trump administration as its Environmental Protection Agency administrator.

While delivering remarks on the steps fo the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana), who is the House Majority Leader, gently suggested to the incoming president that he should stop elevating House Republicans to his Cabinet given Republicans' already tenuous majority.

"He knew that if he won the election, this would be his last opportunity to serve as president of the United States," Scalise said. "I know he's already pulled a few really talented people out of the House, hopefully no more for a little while."

Journalist Jamie Dupree picked up on the intent of Scalise's remarks, tweeting that House Republican leadership knows "their thin majority [is] being made even smaller by Trump picks."

Other Trump picks that have been announced include Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) as the potential next U.S. Secretary of State, and former Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief Tom Homan as the incoming border czar, Homan will likely be in charge of the president-elect's mass deportation agenda, and previously said at the National Conservatism conference that he was already putting plans in place to make Trump's proposal to deport millions of immigrants as draconian as possible.

"Trump comes back in January, I’ll be on his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen,” Homan said in July. “They ain’t seen s— yet. Wait until 2025.”

Stefanik and Waltz are from reliably Republican districts, and the U.S. Constitution requires that any vacancy in Congress be filled via special election. Governors Ron DeSantis of Florida and Kathy Hochul of New York have yet to announce a date for special elections to fill their seats.

Watch the video of Scalise's comments below, or by clicking this link.

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