Exclusive with Rep. Lisa McClain – 11/18/24 Edition

What we’re hearing from people we trust on and around the Hill – please send us more tips!

• Paragon enters PBM debate: The most influential conservative health care focused think tank urged Congress not to include anti-pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) legislation in the lame duck. Paragon’s involvement was noteworthy, according to some Hill staff, because Paragon’s team is set to play an influential role in the Trump administration, with Brian Blase being considered for several leading health care roles. 
• We told you so: Over a week before Politico reported that President Donald Trump was weighing picking Chris Wright as his Secretary of Energy, we told readers as much; now, Trump’s selection of Wright is official, and we are hearing rave reviews about him from the energy industry. “Chris is a fantastic champion for American energy and will be a great addition to the Trump administration,” one industry leader told us. “After years of energy pessimism, Wright’s ‘zero energy poverty’ philosophy is a breath of fresh air and will increase human prosperity and opportunity for all.” Wright, it’s worth noting, is also good friends with Doug Burgum, Trump’s pick to helm the Interior Department — another Trump selection that we have only heard great things about.
• Congrats, Commissioner! President Donald Trump announced that FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr will take over the commission and serve as its chairman; we interviewed Carr at length about his priorities, Elon Musk, and the government’s failure to supply rural broadband — read that here. 
• Last hurrah for Durbin: Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) is using one of his final days as Judiciary Committee Chairman to hold a hearing, not on judges, immigration, crime, or the border, but on credit cards, a longstanding obsession of the Illinois senator. A Republican on the committee told us “we don’t know why [Durbin] is doing it but it is much better to waste time on this than on confirming more of Biden’s lunatic judges.” 
• Fresenius Kabi and the left: With Republicans taking power, we are hearing from Hill sources that the firms that spent the last few years aligned with the left will face some serious questions from the new majority. One Hill aide who works on healthcare issues said, “companies like Fresenius Kabi whose employees and PAC gave more than six figures to Kamala and Democrats and the DSCC should be prepared for questions.”  
• Big leagues in Poland: Our reporting about how Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, is singing a different tune about President Donald Trump, took off like wildfire in the Polish media landscape. One of the country’s most popular TV shows covered our reporting. 
• Raising the Barr: Rep. Andy Barr (R., Ky.), one of the leading candidates to chair the Financial Services Committee, is giving out “Make Financial Services Great Again” hats as part of his pitch. This cycle, Barr gave over $2.6 million the the NRCC this cycle, $500,000 directly to candidates, and raised an additional $650,000 for candidates into the Scalise Leadership Fund. We interviewed Barr about his problems with the Biden administration’s Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Read that here. 

Incoming Reps. Brandon Gill, Brian Jack, and Riley Moore aren’t sworn in yet, but they’ve already been dubbed by GOP strategists as the “three amigos” —  a trio of young conservatives, committed to President Donald Trump’s agenda. The trio is already ubiquitous on the Hill, and is now poised to punch well above its weight-class in the next Congress.

Moore and Jack won contested elections to serve on the Elected Leadership Committee (ELC) and as the freshman class’s representative on the Steering Committee, respectively. Gill, a former conservative journalist, had the field to himself in his bid to become the freshman class’s president.

Rep. French Hill (R., Ark.) demanded that the Biden administration’s financial regulators “immediately cease all ongoing rulemaking actions and suspend the proposal or promulgation of any regulations” in a new letter to multiple agencies.

Hill expressed Americans’ discontent with the Biden administration’s “excessive regulatory overreach” and the need to abandon “a politicized regulatory agenda,” especially in the wake of President Donald Trump’s convincing victory, in a letter addressed to the Treasury Department, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Federal Reserve, National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Democrats, including defeated Sen. Bob Casey (D., Penn.), made opposing election denialism a centerpiece of their 2024 campaigns — now, they are openly defying the law in a doomed attempt to keep Casey in office.

Following President Donald Trump’s narrow 2020 loss, Casey demanded that Trump respect “the peaceful transfer of power”; but the disgraced nepo baby senator, who lost to Republican Dave McCormick, is teaming up with Vice President Kamala Harris and Marc Elias to force a costly recount, which experts acknowledge will not change the reality that he lost. 

In Bucks County, Casey donors such as Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia, are defying the law and the state Supreme Court to count ballots that don’t have signatures on them, CNN’s Jake Tapper reported.

North Dakota’s top vote-getter in 2024 spent much of the year aiding Republican Party candidates in top races across the country.

Incoming Rep. Julie Fedorchak donated six figures of campaign cash to efforts to elect Republicans this cycle, including $25,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and tens of thousands of dollars more to Republican candidates and recount efforts, her team told the Washington Reporter. 

“Keeping and growing our House majority was essential to delivering the conservative solutions we need for North Dakotans and the American people,” Fedorchak told the Reporter. “I can’t wait to get to work and help President Donald Trump deliver on his America First Agenda.” 

As state financial officers from across the country responsible for overseeing key elements of our states’ fiscal wellbeing, we have grave concerns regarding the $36 trillion national debt. In 2025, we urge President-elect Donald Trump and Congress to make restoring America’s financial solvency a “Day One” priority for the sake of our states and the country.

We are calling on them to address the national debt by developing and implementing a plan to restore America’s financial position by 2026, when we will celebrate the 250th Anniversary of our Declaration of Independence — and start taking action immediately.

My organization, Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT), was hip to “Trump-proofing” before it was popular. 

Suddenly, Trump-proofing is all over the news. President Joe Biden will spend his last months in office Trump-proofing his legacy. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.) called a special session of the legislature to Trump-proof the state. Something similar may happen in Washington. 

But such efforts have been going on for months, if not years, inside the Biden-Harris administration. The difference is they were quieter. They were also constitutionally questionable. The idea was to insulate the (presumably partisan) federal bureaucracy from attempts by any future administration they opposed to halt or undo initiatives introduced by a friendly administration. In other words, to thwart the will of the majority that voted in the new administration. 

The American people have spoken and have sent a clear message: the Washington status quo needs to go.

Besides getting the economy back on track, the Trump administration has a terrific opportunity to turn the page on the failed Biden administration’s foreign policies that have made our country and our world more dangerous.

President Trump is off to a great start by nominating Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) to lead the State Department.

President-elect Donald Trump nominated Afghanistan and Iraq veteran Pete Hegseth to be the next Secretary of Defense last week. Within hours of the announcement, much of the media and the “coastal-expert class” began to mock the nomination. The much-repeated claim was that Hegseth was too inexperienced to lead the greatest military in the world. These overtures contrast with the words of many grassroots veteran organizations who see in Hegseth one of their own.