In our latest edition, we have an interview with Rep. Lisa McClain about the House GOP’s priorities, Republican demands that the Biden administration halt far-left financial regulations, Democratic election denial, and much more!
By: Matthew Foldi
Michigan housed multiple competitive races in 2024, including for president, Senate, and House — some musical chairs following picks by President Donald Trump yielded the promotion of Rep. Lisa McClain to the number three job in the House GOP majority.
The lawmaker spoke with the Washington Reporter shortly after her election as the House GOP Chairwoman for the next Congress, and laid out her goals, which include “helping get people what they want, putting the right people on the right bus at the right time.”
McClain, a Detroit Lions fan, fancies herself a head coach — but she is content to let Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump run the show. For now, she wants to highlight Trump’s success in expanding the GOP’s base by showcasing the party’s diversity.
Click HERE to read more from Rep. Lisa McClain, the House GOP’s new chairwoman, about her vision for 2025 and beyond.
Looking ahead to two years from now, what are you most looking forward to having accomplished in this new role as House GOP chair?
Matthew Foldi
Editor-in-Chief of the Washington Reporter
Continue to promote traditional Republican, conservative, American values. And I’ll say it again. Everyone is thinking, ‘oh my gosh, the midterms are gonna be tough.’ The midterms are gonna be tough. I want to see us do such a good job that we not only keep our majority, but we grow our majority in the House and in the Senate. We have an opportunity to win, to flip Michigan red with the governor’s race. I know that’s a tall order, but I think we can do it. I think we have the right message. I think we have the right game plan, and all we need to do is get to work and start working right now, getting our message out and communicating with our constituents.
Rep. Lisa McClain
House Republican Conference Chair
What we’re hearing from people we trust on and around the Hill – please send us more tips!
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.
Observers of the House note the three have complementary skill sets. A former Hill staffer and current state Treasurer in West Virginia, Moore has a deep knowledge of policy and process. A longtime aide to both former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and to Trump, Jack knows the politics of the GOP and Washington, D.C. better than some veteran legislators. Gill is practically conservative media royalty — he’s married to Danielle D’Souza and founded the D.C. Enquirer, a conservative media platform, before running for office, making him a natural advocate for the class in the right-leaning press.
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.
Back in August, the Daily Caller reported that PPT had discovered through FOIA documents that the Department of Justice (DOJ) was using Schedule A hiring authority to bypass normal merit-based hiring procedures to load DOJ with new, assumably activist, career appointees who would be an impediment to a Trump 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.
