JOHNSON: It’s A New Day In America

Editor’s Note: These are the prepared remarks of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), as he delivered a speech on the Capitol steps celebrating the projected retention of the GOP’s majority.

It is a beautiful morning in Washington. It is a new day in America. The sun is shining, and that’s a reflection of how we all feel.

This is a this is a very important moment for the country. And we do not take it lightly. We did work really hard to bring this day about and the actual statistics are even harsher than you said, Richard, my team calculated when it was all said and done, we did more than 360 campaign events in over 250 cities across 40 states.

I logged enough miles to circumnavigate the globe five and a half times. But it was worth it, and we got extraordinary candidates. We flipped blue seats to red, as we planned, and we kept this majority.

We expect that the majority will be larger than last time. We still have a number of races outstanding, but we’re very optimistic about those, and we are looking forward to governing in unified government beginning in January.

It’s true that on Tuesday, voters rejected what they really felt was the misery of the last four years. We’re moving on and we’re turning the page, and this is something that the American people desperately need and deserve.

We’re going to raise an America First banner above this place.

You saw a demographic shift that I was talking about on the campaign trail for over a year, with new demographics, new groups of persons who had not traditionally been with the Republican Party, who came on board with us because they believed in what we were saying.

They believed the answers that we were providing for all the great challenges facing the country. And we made them a commitment to do that, and we will.

And as the new members return now, we lay the groundwork for the next Congress, and we usher in this new day in America.

Republicans in the House and Senate have a mandate. It’s true, it was a decisive win across the nation. The American people want us to implement and deliver that America First agenda, and we must do that while we have that energy and that excitement, beginning on the very first day of the Congress in the new year.

It’s clear the American people do want secure borders. They want to prevent terrorists and criminals from entering the country. These things are common sense. They want and deserve lower costs for groceries and gasoline. They want us to project strength on the world stage again, and not the weakness that we have projected for the last four years. They want an end to the wokeness and the radical gender ideology and a return to common sense in our children’s classrooms and corporate boardrooms and government agencies. And we’re going to ensure all that’s true.

This leadership will hit the ground running to deliver President Trump’s agenda and the 119th Congress, and we will work closely with him and his administration to turn this country around and unleash, as he says, a new golden age in America.

That’s not a campaign slogan. We believe that that is true. We believe in our hearts that America’s best days are ahead of us, and we’re excited to deliver upon that promise.

The only way we’re able to work quickly is because we have unified control of the Congress, both chambers now and the White House, beginning January.

And I want to congratulate all our Republican incumbents who worked so hard to ensure their reelection, and our new members who helped us to keep this house majority, especially a couple of new members that flip districts from blue to red.

People like Tom Barrett and Ryan McKenzie, Rob Bresnahan, Tim Moore, Addison McDowell, Brad Knott, and Gabe Evans.

From different states around the country who worked really hard to ensure that we could have Republicans return to those seats.

And we have an amazing group of freshmen members who are going to join our conference, the patriots who are already here and who are ready to implement this agenda on day one.

Now, as we sit here this morning, we’re still watching a number of races. We have races still pending in Alaska, Arizona, California, Maine, Ohio, and Oregon, and we’re going to ensure that every single legal vote is counted in those races.

While we’re completing the work of this Congress, we’re shifting gears and preparing for the next Congress, we’re also still in campaign mode in some sense, and awaiting the final outcome of these races.

Looking ahead, over the past year, I’ve been working with our committee chairs and our Senate colleagues to lay the groundwork for this America first agenda.

It will grow our economy and reduce inflation. It will secure our borders. We will restore America’s energy dominance once again, we’ll implement educational freedom, and we will drain the swamp. And that’s just the beginning of the agenda.

This leadership team standing behind me has been preparing for this moment, and we are ready to deliver on America’s mandate in the next Congress.

When President Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, we all looked back and recognized that the Republican Party was not fully prepared for that moment, and precious time was wasted in the beginning of that Congress.

I know it well because that was my freshman year in Congress. We began in 2017.

We are not going to make those mistakes again. We will be ready on day one.

We are prepared this time. And as we wind down the 118th Congress, we’ll be ready to take the ball and run full speed in the 119th Congress that begins in January.