House Republican Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) sees an advantage in wrangling the tiny House GOP majority this year, despite having a historically narrow margin and fewer members than last time: President Trump.
The Trump factor in whipping GOP votes is both carrot and stick: Republicans are eager to advance Trump’s ambitious legislative agenda — and they are also wary of getting on the president’s bad side.
“I’m pretty sure you’re not going to want to be the one in your district where the president shows up to tell everybody you’re the one blocking the advancement of his agenda,” Emmer said in an interview last week at the House Republican issues conference at Trump’s resort in Doral, Fla.
Emmer said Trump will be a “significant force” in keeping the House GOP together, pointing to his influence in making sure Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was reelected on the first ballot on Jan. 3. Trump called two initial holdouts, Reps. Keith Self (R-Texas) and Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), and got them to switch their votes.
The president’s message to House Republicans at the retreat, Emmer said, was “classic Trump.”
“You’re going to have differences of opinion, but when we get to the moment, just vote yes. You just got to get this stuff done,” Emmer said of the president’s message.
While Trump once helped to derail Emmer’s short-lived bid for Speaker after former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) ouster by calling the whip a “Globalist RINO,” he now heaps praise on Emmer.
“Tom is incredible,” Trump told House Republicans at the retreat. “He’s done an unbelievable job. I’ve become friendly with him. I didn’t really know him, and over the last year or so, I’ve become friendly. He’s an incredible leader.”
But Trump also reverenced the tough job Emmer has in keeping the GOP majority together, with which Emmer is all too familiar after the chaotic last two years.
Last year, GOP rebels not only ousted the Speaker, but they also repeatedly blocked procedural votes for GOP legislation on the House floor in an unheard-of shift in floor dynamics.
It could be even tougher this time around, with an even smaller majority and higher expectations of what Republicans can deliver with trifecta control in Washington. Emmer must contend with clashing factions in the House GOP, like fiscal hawks in the House Freedom Caucus and elsewhere on the one end, and moderates and blue-state Republicans focused on raising the state and local tax deduction on the other.
After Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) is confirmed to be U.N. ambassador, expected this week, Republicans will have 217 members to 215 members for Democrats — meaning they will not be able to spare any GOP defections, assuming all members are present and voting.
That will last until two Florida special elections are completed on April 1. But before then, Republicans face a March 14 funding deadline, and aim to move forward on a party-line budget resolution that is the first legislative step for teeing up a massive Trump legislative agenda on the border, taxes, energy, and more.
Democrats, however, have seen some members take extended absences, potentially changing the math for House Republicans.
Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who has been battling cancer, missed the vast majority of votes in 2025 and has been absent since the first day of the new Congress. Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.) announced the birth of her second child last week and has pushed to allow for proxy voting for new parents, saying it is “incredibly unfair that my constituents will not have a voice in Congress until I am physically able to return to Washington” while she recovers from birth.
But Emmer says he is not counting on Democratic absences when assessing whether a partisan bill has the votes to pass.
“We are never going to say to the Speaker, ‘Oh, they’ve been missing six people all week, so let’s go,’” Emmer said. “In fact, we emphasized this morning to the group, we just don’t have a margin for error. We need everybody in attendance.”
“Take the budget resolution a couple weeks. Don’t for a second think that they won’t have everybody there voting. They will on the big stuff. They’re going to have everybody,” Emmer said.
A bad bet on Democratic absence led to a remarkable failure on the House floor last year, of Republicans’ first attempt at impeaching then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Three Republicans were against the measure and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) was out due to cancer treatment, but because Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) was in the hospital for a procedure and missed other votes that day, Republicans saw a chance of approving the impeachment articles by one vote.
Emmer recalled telling Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.): “They’ve been missing one person all week that we understand is in the hospital. If they somehow bring that person from the hospital, it will likely be a tie vote, it will fail.”
Leaders went along with the vote — and Green, in a wheelchair and hospital garb, showed up at the last minute to cast his vote in a stunning defeat of the measure. Republicans brought up the impeachment articles again later when Scalise was back and approved them.
“He was in his hospital garb. He looked awful, but he was there,” Emmer said of Green.
When it comes to vote-counting, Emmer sees his job as less as one of whipping Republicans to change their minds and more of assessing where every member stands.
“It’s advising the speaker, the majority leader, this is where the conference is at,” Emmer said.
“We don’t have the tools that they had 20 years ago. We’ve got 24-hours-a-day, sound-bite, entertainment-driven news,” he continued. “If you give someone the ability to be a victim, they’re going to take advantage of it.”
Emmer says he only has two rules for House GOP members.
The first: “You take care of the people at home first, nobody in DC voted for you.”
The second: “You take care of yourself, second, because if you’re not taking care of yourself, you’re not going to be here long.”
“If you can do those two things, then you can work with the team, and we’ll, we’ll try to help you so that you can achieve whatever it is you came here to achieve,” Emmer said.
