U.S. Sen. John Thune, R-South Dakota,. arrives for the Senate Republican leadership elections at the U.S. Capitol on Nov. 13, 2024 in Washington, D.C.  Thune was elected to be the majority leader in the next session of Congress.  (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Republicans on Wednesday elected their leadership teams for the next Congress, opting for a new slate in the Senate while reelecting many of the same lawmakers in the House.

South Dakota Sen. John Thune will become that chamber’s next majority leader, marking the first time since 2007 that Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell hasn’t held the top GOP slot after choosing to retire from leadership.

Thune defeated Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Florida Sen. Rick Scott during the closed-door, secret ballot. 

“We’re excited to reclaim the majority and to get to work with our colleagues in the House to enact President (Donald) Trump’s agenda,” Thune said during a press conference. “We have a mandate from the American people — a mandate, not only to clean up the mess left by the Biden-Harris-Schumer agenda, but also to deliver on President Trump’s priorities.”

Thune said border security, deregulation and energy policy would be among the top policy areas GOP senators pursue once the new Congress begins.

He also pledged to “be a leader who serves the entire Republican Conference” and noted the GOP has “an ambitious agenda that will take each and every Republican working together” to achieve.

More new GOP leaders

Senate Republicans also elected a new slate of new leaders during the Wednesday elections, all of whom will take on their new roles in January.

Wyoming’s John Barrasso, who ran unopposed, will become the assistant majority leader next Congress, holding the No. 2 slot in the Senate that was previously referred to as the whip.

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton defeated Iowa’s Joni Ernst for the No. 3 leadership post of conference chair.

West Virginia’s Shelley Moore Capito was elected as the Republican Policy Committee chair, Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford received his colleagues’ backing for conference vice chair, and South Carolina’s Tim Scott will become the next chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Trump made demands of the next Senate Republican leader ahead of the election, writing on social media that whoever is chosen should recess the chamber early next year so he can appoint whoever he wants without having to go through the confirmation process.

Thune said during the press conference Wednesday the Senate would work quickly to vet and confirm Trump’s nominees, but didn’t fully commit to recessing the chamber for the 10 days minimum that’s required for recess appointments.

“What we’re going to do is make sure that we are processing his nominees in a way that gets them into those positions, so they can implement his agenda,” Thune said. “How that happens remains to be seen.”

“Obviously, we want to make sure our committees have confirmation hearings, like they typically do, and that these nominees are reported out to the floor,” Thune added. “But I’ve said this, and I mean it, that we expect a level of cooperation from the Democrats; to work with us to get these folks installed. And obviously we’re going to look at, explore all options to make sure that they get moved and get moved quickly.”

Building trust

South Dakota GOP Sen. Mike Rounds said after the election that Thune was able to secure the votes needed to win after spending years building trust.

“For a lot of people, it was that sense of comfort with John Thune of being able to represent what we believe — the fact that they knew that they could go to him and talk to him privately, and that he was not going to be doing this as ‘I’m going to tell the conference what to do,’ but rather, ‘We’re going to, as a conference, move forward, and we will find consensus as we do it, because we need everybody to support the vast majority of the things that we’re going to get done,’” he said.

Rounds, an early backer of Thune in the race, said his fellow South Dakota senator voted in support of Trump’s policies “more than 90% of the time when he was in office.”

South Dakota veteran lawmaker

Thune, 63, was elected to the Senate in 2004 after spending six years in the U.S. House of Representatives.

He currently holds the title of Republican whip, but has done stints as Republican Conference vice chair, Republican Policy Committee chair, Republican Conference chair and chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

Thune has given dozens of floor speeches and press conferences during his time in the Senate, but highlighted his support for bipartisanship in April 2021, applauding Democrats, who were in the majority, for working with the GOP on legislation.

“The Senate was designed to promote moderation and consensus. It was intended to be a check on the more partisan — or as the founders would put it, factious — House of Representatives,” Thune said during a floor speech. “The Senate fulfills its constitutional role best when it engages in serious, bipartisan consideration and negotiation and ensures that members of both parties are heard.”

He then pressed lawmakers from both parties to adopt that framework to negotiate infrastructure legislation in the months ahead.

Control of Congress and White House

Thune will have to break from those beliefs a bit during the next two years as Republicans use what is expected to be unified control of government to move through as much conservative legislation as they can via the complex budget reconciliation process.

That legislative pathway will allow Republicans to get around the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster, which typically forces bipartisanship on major legislation.

The GOP used the process to try to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, during the first Trump administration, but were unsuccessful. Republicans were able to use it to enact the 2017 tax law.

Democrats used budget reconciliation to approve a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package and their signature climate change, health care and tax package called the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, during the first two years of President Joe Biden’s term.

Thune expressed frustration during his April 2021 floor speech that Democrats had used the process to avoid negotiating with Republicans senators on those two laws.

“Our Founders established a democratic republic instead of a pure democracy because they wanted to balance majority rule with protection for minority rights. They knew that majorities could be tyrants, so they wove protection for minority rights into our system of government,” Thune said at the time. “The Senate was one of those protections. That is why we should be preserving rules like the filibuster, which ensures that the minority party and the many Americans it represents have a voice in legislation.”

House Republican leaders

In the House, Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana received his party’s nomination for speaker for a second time, but he’ll need to secure the votes to hold the gavel in the 119th Congress during a floor vote in January.

Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise was reelected as House Republican leader and Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer secured the votes needed to continue as the whip. Both ran unopposed.

Michigan Rep. Lisa McClain will become the Republican Conference chairwoman, succeeding New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, whom President-elect Donald Trump has said he’ll nominate as ambassador to the United Nations. McClain defeated Florida Rep. Kat Cammack for the role.

Indiana Rep. Erin Houchin will become conference secretary. Utah Rep. Blake Moore will become conference vice chairman. Oklahoma Rep. Kevin Hern will become policy chairman. And North Carolina Rep. Richard Hudson will remain chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee for another two years.

Johnson said during a press conference after the closed-door elections that the GOP was ready to begin passing legislation as soon as the new Congress begins on Jan. 3.

“I know you’re all tired of hearing my football metaphors, but we have a very well-designed playbook. We will begin to execute those plays with precision on day one,”

Emmer signaled the potential speed bumps ahead during that press conference, referencing some challenges the GOP has faced with small margins in the House during the last two years.

“As the 118th Congress proved, it may not always be smooth sailing, and we may have some disagreements along the way, but I’ve always been a firm believer that there’s more that unites us than divides us,” Emmer said. “So long as we work together as a team, I have no doubt we will seize the opportunity in front of us.”

Shauneen Miranda contributed to this report.

Sen. John Thune, R-South Dakota, joined by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, left, speaks at the Capitol on Sept. 29, 2021, in Washington, D.C.  Thune and Cornyn, along with Florida Sen. Rick Scott, are vying for the post of majority leader. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump is making demands of the next Senate Republican leader ahead of a closed-door election this week, writing on social media that whoever is chosen should recess the chamber early next year so he can appoint whoever he wants without having to go through the confirmation process.

“Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner,” Trump wrote. “Sometimes the votes can take two years, or more. This is what they did four years ago, and we cannot let it happen again.”

If the Senate were to recess for an extended period after Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, it would ensure Trump could freely make appointments to top-ranking positions in government, including the secretary of Defense and Treasury secretary, without needing the support of centrist GOP lawmakers. Senate Republicans are on track for a majority of 53 seats, with one race, in Arizona, still undecided.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn, Florida Sen. Rick Scott and South Dakota Sen. John Thune — who are competing for the majority leader post — all quickly got in line with social media posts of their own about what are called recess appointments.

“It is unacceptable for Senate Ds to blockade President  @realDonaldTrump’s cabinet appointments,” Cornyn wrote on social media. “If they do, we will stay in session, including weekends, until they relent. Additionally, the Constitution expressly confers the power on the President to make recess appointments.

“Article II, Section 2, Clause 3: The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.”

Thune wrote: “We must act quickly and decisively to get the president’s nominees in place as soon as possible, & all options are on the table to make that happen, including recess appointments. We cannot let Schumer and Senate Dems block the will of the American people.” Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, is the Senate majority leader.

Scott commented on Trump’s original post, saying that he agreed “100%”

“I will do whatever it takes to get your nominations through as quickly as possible,” Scott said.

Skipping over the Senate’s advice and consent power would likely mean no committee hearings for nominees named through recess appointments, preventing them from having to answer lawmakers’ questions about their experience and policy goals.

It would also prevent senators from having to take what might be difficult floor votes on possibly controversial Trump nominees.

Trump has just started to announce who he’s selecting for posts in his next administration, naming a “border czar,” ambassador to the United Nations and EPA administrator as of Monday afternoon. 

Supreme Court ruling

The Senate has avoided recessing for more than three days in the middle of a session for years, under both Republican and Democratic majorities.

Instead, when the Senate leaves Capitol Hill for weeks at a time, the chamber holds what’s known as a pro forma session every three days to prevent recess appointments. Those usually last just a few minutes and don’t typically include any legislative business. 

The pro forma sessions, in part, stem from a unanimous Supreme Court ruling in June 2014 that held a president could fill vacancies during a congressional recess if it lasted more than 10 days.

“In light of historical practice, a recess of more than 3 days but less than 10 days is presumptively too short to fall within the Clause,” the justices wrote in National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning. 

That case began after then-President Barack Obama made three appointments to the National Labor Relations Board in 2012, even though the Democratic-controlled Senate was holding pro forma sessions every few days.

Opposition to Obama recess appointments

Republicans in Congress, including Thune and Cornyn, praised the Supreme Court’s decision at the time, sharply criticizing Obama for having tried to get around the Senate.

Thune released a written statement, saying the Supreme Court had blocked Obama from attempting “to violate the separation of powers.”

“When the president couldn’t get his appointments through the Senate, he decided to ignore the law and attempt an end run around Congress,” Thune wrote. “I am pleased that the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the president’s attempt to circumvent the Constitution. Today’s decision reaffirms the fact that Congress, not the president, has the authority to determine its own rules.”

Cornyn criticized Obama for making “unilateral actions” that gave “the perception he doesn’t care what Congress says.”

“As a matter of fact, this morning the Supreme Court rebuked the President on an illegal recess appointment — unconstitutional recess appointment,” Cornyn said during a floor speech, according to the Congressional Record.

Scott was not a member of Congress when the Supreme Court issued its ruling.

Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley at the time praised “the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down President Obama’s illegal recess appointments.”

“Article II, section 2 of the Constitution provides for only two ways in which Presidents may appoint certain officers: First, it provides that the President nominates and, by and with the advice of the Senate, appoints various officers,” Grassley said. “Second, it permits the President to make temporary appointments when a vacancy in one of those offices happens when the Senate is in recess.”

During Trump’s first term in office, Senate Republicans held pro forma sessions as a way to avoid recess appointments and ensure the chamber had the time to vet the people Trump wanted to run some of the most powerful institutions in the country, including the Defense Department.

Any recess appointments Trump might make in the future would expire at the end of the Senate’s “next session,” meaning he would need to go through the process all over again within two years, according to a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

Election planned Wednesday

Senate Republicans will hold closed-door, secret ballot leadership elections Wednesday to select new colleagues to fill the top positions.

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, who has held the Republican leader title since 2007, opted not to continue in that role once the new Congress begins, leading to a three-way race between Cornyn, Scott and Thune.

Whoever Republicans elect as their next leader, along with the other members of the leadership team, will have a significant role determining the Senate’s agenda for the next two years as well as setting the tone with the incoming Trump administration.

They’ll also need to broker deals with Democrats on must-pass legislation, like the annual government funding bills and yearly defense policy bill.

Wyoming’s John Barrasso is running unopposed for the whip position, currently held by Thune and previously held by Cornyn.

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and Iowa’s Joni Ernst are competing to hold the No. 3 leadership position of Conference Chair, currently held by Barrasso.

Republicans will also elect a Policy Committee Chairman, Vice Chairman of the Conference and chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee to round out the six-person Senate leadership team.