Congress faces leaders in flux, big to-do list post-election

“There are all kinds of ways to exert influence,” Pelosi said Sunday, deflecting questions about her future if Democrats lose control of the House. “Speaker has awesome power, but I will always have influence.”

It’s a changed place on Capitol Hill in the aftermath of the first election since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, with the Republican Party split over its ties to former President Donald Trump, Democrats eyeing generational leadership changes, and Biden with just weeks to accomplish goals with guaranteed Democratic control of Washington. Much of the action will be playing out behind closed doors in private caucus meetings.

Against this backdrop, McCarthy has tried to tamp down unrest as he asked his GOP colleagues for their support ahead of Tuesday’s closed-door leadership elections, which would put him in line to take the House speaker’s gavel from Pelosi, D-Calif., if Republicans flip majority control.

“I will be a listener every bit as much as a Speaker, striving to build consensus from the bottom-up rather than commanding the agenda from the top-down,” McCarthy, R-Calif., wrote in a letter to his GOP colleagues.

But McCarthy enters the speaker’s race a weakened leader, confronted by his party’s losses and demands from his restive right-flank, led by the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus and its ties with Trump. The former president backs McCarthy for speaker, but Freedom Caucus lawmakers are calling for elections to be postponed.

“I certainly don’t think we should have elections before we have everything counted and know what our numbers are,” said Freedom Caucus member Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas.

Among the newly elected lawmakers, Republican Cory Mills, an Army combat veteran who won an open seat in Florida, said: “You’ve got actual races that haven’t been called yet and you want to go out and have leadership votes?”

But Mike Lawler, who delivered a stunning defeat in New York to Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the chair of the Democrats’ campaign committee, said McCarthy has “my full support.”

The tumult playing out on Capitol Hill comes as Trump is poised to announce his 2024 bid for the White House on Tuesday. The GOP is torn between those remaining loyal to the former president and those who blame him for the midterm losses and prefer to move on from his “Make America Great Again” brand. Some lawmakers begged off from joining Trump at his Mar-A-Lago club for the announcement because of their own work on Capitol Hill.

“The Republican Party has a choice,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Sunday. “I say to the Republican senators and to Leader McConnell, we are willing to work with you to get things done for the American people.”

Funding to keep the government running past a Dec. 16 funding deadline, aid for Ukraine and bipartisan legislation that would safeguard same-sex marriages from potential Supreme Court challenges in states where they have been legal are all top priorities in the final weeks of the year.

But McConnell faces his own intraparty turmoil ahead of…