EXCLUSIVE: North Carolina freshmen lay out historic wins of "transformational" Congress

In 2024, North Carolina sent a trio of freshman Republicans to Congress who joined the Republicans Study Committee (RSC): Reps. Mark Harris, Brad Knott, and Tim Moore.

The three discussed the “transformational” wins of their first Congress in the latest episode of the RSC’s Right to the Point podcast, obtained exclusively by the Washington Reporter. Much of their discussion centered around the legislative wins signed into law by President Donald Trump with the One Big, Beautiful Bill (OBBB). Harris, who has served in Congress before this term, said that the body is off to an “absolutely phenomenal” start.

“I anticipate that there will be immediate effects and a new energy now,” Knott said following the bill’s passage. “Jamie Dimon said that the animal spirits were out of the economy…It's my belief, looking at these policies, that the president will spark a sort of a renewed vigor in the American economy.”

Knott, a former federal prosecutor, saw the consequences of President Joe Biden’s open border firsthand. “All of the illegal drugs, but for marijuana, are manufactured outside the United States,” he said. “Every ounce. And in terms of the southern border, I would say it’s at least 85 percent, 90 percent.”

Under Biden, “all of this was intentional,” Knott explained. “The open border, the lack of enforcement, the shuttling around of millions of people, were deliberate. It was organized and it was planned. And I don't want to be too hyperbolic, but I really believe it was a mortal wound to the country, and if you continued the open border policies, the illegal immigration problem that we are facing, and we're facing in earnest, it touched everything. It touched healthcare. It touched education. It touched law enforcement in a big way. It touches housing, public safety.”

“The list goes on and on,” Knott continued. “And when I saw the toll that it took, not just in North Carolina, but every every state around the country.”

Knott drew a distinction between legal and illegal immigrant, which he said often get “lump[ed] together.”

“I know that this president — I've talked to him about it personally — could not be more bullish and favorable for legal immigration,” Knott said. “There's a saying that I've heard and agree with that some of the best Americans are the newest Americans. And I was blessed to go to an event in South Florida with the Speaker. And I think it was probably 95 percent people who were not born in this country. They were at this event, and they could not have been more patriotic. They were so excited about what the president was doing.”

Now, thanks to the OBBB, the border is the most secure that it’s been in decades. Under Biden, “you looked at all the millions of people who crossed illegally,” Moore said. “Now, virtually nobody's crossing illegally. I'll be curious to see as we get into the year what the flow of drugs is. My understanding is it's down and the reality is, the bill that we've passed on that is to increase funding to provide that.”

The GOP delivered on more than just border security, however. Moore, a former Speaker of the House in North Carolina, explained that “a lot of that with the Big, Beautiful Bill — with reigning in wasteful spending, reducing taxes — was adopting the same policies we did back in our home state, and doing that here.”

Those tax cuts, Moore said, will “allow Americans to keep more of their hard earned dollars. [They’re] going to spur the economy, which, by the way, we are seeing happen already.”

However, the OBBB’s wins aren’t only domestic. “What we've done to put additional resources into our national defense is critical,” Moore said. The OBBB secures tens of billions of dollars for the Golden Dome missile defense system. Every Democrat in Congress opposed the bill.

Other wins backed by the North Carolinians and opposed by their counterparts included the slashing of the death tax, the expansion of the child tax credit, and a drastic increase in funding for ICE. Outside of the OBBB, Moore specifically cited the recent votes on digital currency as being significant wins for his part of the state.

Beyond the wins of OBBB, the lawmakers looked to the open Senate seat in their home state, where former Governor Roy Cooper seems to have cleared the field for Democrats. Trump has similarly cleared the field for Michael Whatley, the Chair of the Republican National Committee, on the GOP side.

Moore, who served with Cooper in the legislature, warned that voters shouldn’t be fooled by him pretending to be a moderate — especially on the issues of men in women’s sports.

“Roy Cooper tries to act like a moderate,” Moore cautioned. “When he was governor, he vetoed that legislation [on banning men from competing in women’s sports]. The Democrats have lost their way. They are just controlled by the the hard, woke, crazy left. Rahm Emanuel was actually interviewed the other day, and he was asked the question by Megyn Kelly, she asked him, ‘can a man become a woman?’ And he said ‘no.’”

All episode of the RSC’s Right to the Point podcast can be found here.