Steve Scalise

Steve Scalise (LA-1) is the current House Majority Leader, having previously served as House majority whip from 2014 to 2018 and House minority whip from 2019 to 2022. During the 2024 Republican primaries, Scalise endorsed Trump, writing he “look[s] forward to working with President Trump and a Republican House and Senate.” Scalise has represented the 1st district of Louisiana since 2008, and has won his House races with more than 70% of the vote in each election since 2014.

Scalise was one of the 147 Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 election results just hours after the deadly insurrection on January 6. In December 2020, he was the highest ranking Republican to back a lawsuit by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton attempting to get the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the election. As of November 2023, Scalise still refuses to say that the election was not stolen.

He issued a statement publicly renouncing the violence on January 6 and tried to blame Democratic leadership for not doing enough, but video footage revealed he was just steps away from Nancy Pelosi as she called for the National Guard to defend the Capitol. He also falsely claimed that Trump denounced the violence of the insurrectionists on January 6.

Earlier this year, Scalise joined with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) as a lead signer on an amicus brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in Trump v. Anderson, defending Trump’s ability to appear on the Colorado ballot despite the state’s highest court determining his candidacy was in violation of the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment. The Court ruled in Trump’s favor.

Scalise has downplayed and undermined Trump’s criminal charges, calling the recent conviction a “devastating defeat for any American” and opting to make accusations against Joe Biden or Hunter Biden instead. For example, he claimed that the classified documents pictured in evidence in the Mar-a-Lago case against Trump were not actually classified, but that actual classified documents could be found in “Joe Biden’s garage.” A special counsel, a Republican, determined that Biden should not be charged, while a grand jury found that Trump deliberately hid numerous secret documents and also tried to cover that up.

Scalise is prepared to work against norms in Congress at Trump’s command. For example, Scalise recently met with Trump to discuss using budget reconciliation which allows the majority party to circumvent the filibuster and push through tax cuts (and potentially energy policies) without getting the 60 votes typically needed in the Senate. Scalise also conferred with the Republican Study Committee about using the budget reconciliation to make substantive changes to immigration law and Biden administration regulations. In that meeting, Scalise reportedly urged committee chairs to submit their own “bold” and “creative” requests and ideas for using reconciliation.

Scalise has a record of ties to white supremacists. For example, in 2002, Scalise, then a Louisiana state representative, gave a speech at an event of David Duke’s white nationalist European-American Unity and Rights Organization. Scalise also reportedly once said he was “like David Duke without the baggage.”

Scalise has also sought to make it harder for Americans to vote, through measures imposing restrictive voter ID requirements, encouraging politicization of the census, and thwarting voter registration efforts. He routinely pushes for loosening consumer and environmental protections that regulate the oil and gas industry, which has funded his campaigns. He has even accepted campaign contributions tied to a former CEO caught colluding with Exxon to drive up gas prices.

He also boasts of a “100% pro-life voting record” and joined a brief to the Supreme Court urging a ban on the abortion medication Mifepristone to take effect while the case was pending; the Court recently found that the plaintiffs lacked standing and remanded the case for further proceedings. Scalise’s abysmal record on LGBTQ+ rights includes voting against the bipartisan Respect for Marriage Act in 2022, and against the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in 2010.

He has also sought to repeal the landmark Affordable Care Act that provides access to health insurance for tens of millions of Americans, including young adults and people with pre-existing conditions. In 2017, he played a prominent role in getting a measure dubbed the American Health Care Act passed in the House, which targeted the Affordable Care Act and would have caused more than 14 million people to lose coverage in its first year alone had it been enacted.