‘We’re Going to Defy the Odds’: House GOP Whip Tom Emmer Makes Bold Prediction About Congress

When Rep. Tom Emmer became the House GOP whip in 2023, Republicans’ mission was simple: Limit the damage President Joe Biden did before President Donald Trump returned to the White House.

While coordinated and successful opposition is no easy chore (just ask former Speaker Kevin McCarthy or Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer), governing, even with a trifecta, is harder. But that’s precisely the task before Emmer and his Republican colleagues. 

Emmer, a Republican from Minnesota, opened up about those difficulties on this week’s episode of “The Signal Sitdown.” We discuss the dynamics inside the House Republican conference as budget negotiations and bringing rogue federal judges to heel dominate conversations on Capitol Hill.

Though most odds-makers had Democrats taking back the House last year, Emmer was confident that Republicans would come out of the 2024 elections with a trifecta, especially after Democratic nominee Kamala Harris chose Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., as her running mate.

“Tim Walz is one of the most incompetent executives my state has ever seen,” Emmer said. “Probably the singular greatest mistake they made was putting him on the ticket.”

While Republicans retained control of the House, their majority is razor-thin. To complicate matters, battle lines were drawn within the House GOP conference last Congress, infighting that culminated with the removal of McCarthy. Now that Republicans are fully in the driver’s seat, will they be able to leave the bumps of last Congress in the rear-view mirror and codify the Trump agenda?

“One of my favorite phrases is ‘the animals at the watering hole tend to look at each other much differently as the water recedes,’” Emmer said of the evolving dynamics in the House GOP. “Don’t for a second think they all like each other. Don’t for a second think they’re all going to agree on exactly the same things. They’re not.”

“You can put the same jersey on a bunch of human beings and put them out on the field,” Emmer said, but “that’s not a team.” What makes a team is “a game plan”: “You have to give them leadership and incentive to succeed.”

“They’re going to run into each other,” Emmer admitted. “Some of it’s not going to be pleasant, but you know what? It ends up with a much better result when you’re all done.”

Emmer used himself as an example: “I’ll tell you what: my political leanings, it’s going to be funny, but they lean more with the Freedom Caucus than they do with the other side.”

But, “that’s Tom Emmer the member. As the whip, I got to figure out how I get both of these ends to work together and get to the same result. And that’s not done by getting one side or the other to give up their core beliefs. It’s trying to put them in a situation where, despite their differences, they can honor their core principles.”

House Republicans managed to do just that with the continuing resolution that funded the government through the end of the fiscal year. The House left Washington after passing the continuing resolution and sending it to the Senate, putting Democrats, especially those in the Senate, in a lose-lose situation: Either vote with Republicans or own a government shutdown. 

For the first time in a long time, Democrats found themselves on the back foot when it came to government funding. Crucially, Emmer told me, the continuing resolution gives Republicans “the chance to reset the constitutional art of governance, which we have not done in three decades around this place,” by going through the normal appropriations process for fiscal year 2026.

While next fiscal year’s appropriations bills are being worked on in the background, the more pressing matters for Republicans in Congress are to nail down a budget resolution for the budget reconciliation process and to bring rogue federal judges to heel.

“You may be surprised to know that more universal injunctions were issued by federal district court judges in the month of February than were issued in the first three years of the Biden administration,” Emmer told me. “There’s a red flag.”

“I practiced law for 20 years. I trust judges to apply the law to the facts that are presented,” Emmer said. But “you can’t be a pseudo-legislature. That’s not the way this works, and that’s been the complaint for years.”

“When you have morons like Chuck Schumer going out there and literally telling PBS last Sunday, ‘don’t worry. We spent the last four years appointing 230-some progressive judges who are going to rule against Trump every time’ … if that’s what’s happening, they’re not doing the job that they’re supposed to.”

“If there is a problem, we need to know about it. And so do the American people,” Emmer stated.

Victory means very little if Republicans don’t do anything with it, but Emmer is confident that Republicans can get the job done and the American people will reward them for it: “We’re going to defy the odds in the midterms and keep the majority.”

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