Lateefah Simon is a widowed mother who’s taking a brand new job, transferring her 13-year-old to a brand new faculty. She is legally blind and her life is about to undergo some additional upheaval.
When requested what worries her most, Simon paused for a second, then took a deep breath. Simon answered, “I’ll do no matter I can in order that my eighth grader finishes her science homework. And, God bless, attempt to assist her cross that French class too.”
Simon, 48, arrives in Washington Monday for orientation classes close to Capitol Hill having been elected as the brand new U.S. Congresswoman representing California’s twelfth District, which incorporates Oakland and Berkley.
Simon, who counts Vice President Kamala Harris as an in depth mentor, served as a civil rights lawyer and helped the victims of intercourse trafficking, will likely be sworn into workplace with the 119th Congress on Jan. 3, 2025.
CBS information
Simon is arriving in a Washington that’s transfixed by the return of President-elect Donald Trump, his outsized character and his pledges to overtake the federal government and safe retribution towards political enemies.
However Simon and a few of her new colleagues don’t intend to go unnoticed — regardless of which occasion controls the Congress or the White Home.
Along with her imaginative and prescient impaired, Simon has relied on public transportation and has a historical past of advocating to make mass transit extra accessible to low-income folks. She is embracing the chance to succeed Rep. Barbara Lee, a longtime progressive fixture in Washington who left workplace to pursue an unsuccessful marketing campaign for the Democratic occasion’s nomination for U.S. Senate in California in 2024.
Talking to CBS Information by telephone whereas getting ready for her first journey to Washington as an elected Congresswoman, Simon stated she first should rebound from Harris’s defeat within the Presidential race. “I am devastated. My mentor was the President we deserved. However Kamala would all the time say: ‘Head up, roll up your sleeves, get to work.’ So that is what I intend to do.”
Simon stated she’ll pursue roles with the Home Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, contemplating her background championing problems with mass transportation, and can hunt down early management roles.
Simon advised CBS Information it will be significant that there’s range among the many members of key panels. “We should defend the values of not simply our occasion, however the folks of the USA, significantly me, as disabled folks,” she stated. “Additionally the elders, the oldsters who’re in search of well being care, queer youngsters. I’ve work to do.”
Simon and the handfuls of others elected who had been newly-elected to Congress on Tuesday face a extra rapid hurdle: A tidal wave of life adjustments.
For Simon, that features transferring her daughter to a brand new neighborhood midyear.
“So long as my seat is on the ground.. I will not complain”
For Tom Barrett, a army veteran who gained a aggressive race for a vacated seat within the Michigan seventh Congressional District, it has been unattainable to easily open the entire textual content messages.
CBS Information
Barrett advised CBS Information, “I am unable to even inform you what number of telephone calls I’ve acquired within the final couple of days. I in all probability acquired 1,000 textual content messages simply on election night time. I have not learn all of them.”
Barrett, a Michigan state senator from the Lansing space, bested a Democratic challenger in one of the heated and costly Home races within the Midwest. Barrett stated he’s hesitant to make any calls for of his new colleagues.
“I joked to Home Speaker Mike Johnson that so long as my seat is on the ground — and never within the higher Gallery — I will not complain,” Barrett stated.
“I acknowledge that it’s a important job that has lots of duty,” Barrett stated.
However he seems poised to work comfortably in a Trump-dominated Washington. When requested for his high legislative and management priorities, Barrett uncorked a response that name-checked Trump six instances.
Barrett spoke of “extending lots of the provisions of the Trump tax cuts”, “Serving to the Trump Administration stem the stream of individuals over the border” and restoring prior “Trump insurance policies.”
Barrett served as a helicopter pilot within the U.S. Military within the Iraq Struggle and stated he’d be keen on a seat on the Home Committee on Armed Companies. However within the meantime, the Eaton County, Michigan, resident should discover a completely different flight plan. He’s spending time in search of one of the best weekly plan to trek by air to Washington, D.C. from both Lansing, Grand Rapids or Detroit.
“He is getting an apple juice; I am getting a beer”
After an exhausting marketing campaign by which he and his marketing campaign volunteers touted that they knocked on 200,000 doorways, Democrat Josh Riley stated he was trying ahead to at least one quiet, post-election night time along with his 4-year-old son.
“He is getting an apple juice, I am getting a beer and we’ll watch a Cornell hockey recreation,” Riley stated.
Riley gained one of the costly Home races within the nation, defeating first-term Republican Marc Molinaro in an 11-county swath of upstate New York, spanning from Cooperstown to Binghamton and the distant New York Metropolis exurbs.
Arriving at a tumultuous second in Washington, Riley stated he is not going to attempt to compete with Trump or his highly effective colleagues for a highlight. Riley advised CBS Information, “I am not trying to find a approach to stand out. If I do that job efficiently, folks in upstate New York can have extra job alternatives and good wages.”
Riley stated he’ll take workplace with a excessive precedence concern: Housing costs. “One of many issues I would love to do,” Riley stated, “Is cease the predatory observe of Wall Road entities working round upstate New York, gobbling up our single household properties and utilizing them to extract earnings. Housing needs to be checked out as a civil proper, not as a driver of earnings.”
Riley, an lawyer and former Congressional aide, acknowledged his two-year time period is anticipated to be spent within the minority occasion within the Home. However with slim margins, Riley talked of exploring becoming a member of a New York Republican’s proposal for housing affordability.
Eight Firehoses
Rob Bresnahan laughed a bit when he stated, “I am ingesting out of nothing lower than eight firehoses proper now.”
Bresnahan is getting his first style of elected workplace, however starting within the large leagues.
“It is beginning to really feel barely extra actual,” Bresnahan advised CBS Information, “I by no means thought a child from Butler Road in Wyoming, Pennsylvania would now be a member of Congress. I imply, it is, it is unbelievable.”
CBS Information
Bresnahan edged a veteran Home Democrat to safe the seat representing the Scranton-area of Pennsylvania. He leads {an electrical} and building enterprise, whereas additionally working in actual property growth. His introduction to politics included an surprising stress: Bresnahan stated his fiancée, a neighborhood tv information anchor, labored as the identical broadcast outlet on which his opponent aired assault advertisements towards him.
“I give her a lot credit score for with the ability to, you realize, watch the horrible issues that had been being stated about me,” Breshnahan stated.
Bresnahan was one in all two Republicans to oust Democratic Home incumbents within the battleground state of Pennsylvania. These victories gave Republicans an edge in securing a majority management of the Home, which might turbocharge Trump’s legislative agenda in 2025.
Bresnahan advised CBS Information he’d search a seat on the Home’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
“I perceive the importance of infrastructure and transportation, exterior of conventional roads and bridges,” he stated. “Airports, levies, ports, freight rail and energy distribution programs and sewer programs, that’s the basis and the hierarchy of wants of a society. I actually suppose I could make a tangible distinction with simply my historical past of what I’ve finished.”
“If you happen to change one thing and it is unpalatable to the opposite facet, they’re simply going to come back and kick it out subsequent time.”
Rob Mackenzie will arrive in Washington with a 7-month-old son, who was born simply days earlier than Mackenzie gained the first to safe the Republican nomination in Pennsylvania’s seventh Congressional District, within the Allentown-area.
And Mackenzie will be bringing a rescue canine too.
Mackenzie advised CBS Information that he and his spouse “are going to be loading up the SUV and taking place and looking for an residence.”
However the brand new work begins rapidly.
CBS Information
Mackenzie stated it’s vital for Congress to maneuver swiftly on the problems of inflation and border safety championed by candidates, together with Trump.
After toppling incumbent Democrat Susan Wild in a heated battleground race that captured the eye of each events, Mackenzie argued that bipartisan efforts maintain essentially the most promise of huge change.
“In order for you lasting change, you must do it in a bipartisan style,” he stated. “If you happen to change one thing and it is unpalatable to the opposite facet, they’re simply going to come back and kick it out subsequent time. After which the pendulum swings forwards and backwards.”
Mackenzie, 42, is one in all dozens of Members of Congress-elect who will symbolize politically-purple Congressional districts, by which the opposing occasion is prone to muster a well-funded challenger in 2026.
He’ll start his new job, with a direct potential political goal on his again. Mackenzie stated his profitable problem to Wild was an costly and grueling battle.
“In an in depth and aggressive district, it was by no means going to be a blowout,” he stated. “That is not the truth of this district. So we all the time knew it was going to be shut, all the time aggressive.”
Mackenzie has served within the Pennsylvania state legislature, specializing in monetary companies and banking points, and would search related committee work subsequent 12 months within the Home. The Home Methods and Means Committee and Monetary Companies Committee are anticipated to play outsized roles, as Trump pursues new tax cuts, tariffs and marketing campaign pledges to sort out inflation.
“Nationwide dialog about Trump-this and Trump-that”
Kristen McDonald Rivet capped her victorious election week with a Friday trek to a cellphone retailer. Her 15-year-old son wanted a cellphone restore, which was joking known as a “nationwide emergency.”
The mom of six already repaired a number of the harm her occasion suffered Tuesday. McDonald Rivet, a state legislator in Michigan, gained a aggressive race for Michigan’s eighth Congressional District within the Flint-area. Trump prevailed within the eighth Congressional District and Democrats fearful about their prospects there, due to the retirement of longtime Democratic Consultant Dan Kildee, the most recent in a household dynasty that is held the seat for many years.
CBS Information
“This is the factor: My district voted for Donald Trump,” McDonald Pivet advised CBS Information by telephone, after getting back from the cellphone retailer restore mission. “There may be lots of nationwide dialog about Trump-this and Trump-that. After we’re engaged on issues like prescribed drugs, the price of housing and decreasing the price of groceries, then I am on board.I am not going to get entangled within the yelling and screaming and the stuff that makes politics terrible.”
She paused a second, regarding CBS Information that it truly is hanging simply what number of groceries a 15-year-old son can devour. (She appropriately fact-checked that the CBS Information reporter’s 14-year-old son was additionally prodigious at consuming excessive volumes of meals)
McDonald Pivet arrives in Washington with years of expertise in Michigan’s state legislature in Lansing. “I’ve spent my life engaged on points, like creating financial safety for households, significantly for youths. I began my profession in Head Begin. These points are high of thoughts, together with growth of the kid tax credit score.”
119th Congress
The group of newly-elected US Home members arrives at a usually unstable second in Washington, however amid a uncommon spec of stability within the decrease chamber. Management of Home Republicans and Home Democrats is anticipated to stay unscathed, after an costly and heated election by which the margins within the Home might emerge unchanged.
Orientation classes for brand new members of the Home start this week close to Capitol Hill, with a number of the newly-elected in search of residing quarters and coaching classes for his or her distinctive new jobs.
A number of of those that spoke with CBS Information stated they’ve spent their first days as an elected federal official working to seek out employees and constituent service consultants.
Bresnahan, the incoming freshman Consultant from northeast Pennsylvania, is amongst those that should wind down — or discover contingency plans – for personal companies again residence. “I am additionally an actual property developer and am making an attempt to determine, y’know, who’s going to imagine my position right here,” he stated.
Bresnahan additionally has a submit on the native SPCA board in Pennsylvania to navigate, as he concurrently tries to be taught to navigate the winding hallways and tunnels of Capitol Hill.
As for Simon, who says she is shifting her daughter to a brand new faculty upfront of starting a time period in Congress, the juggling of her new profession is already properly underway. As a single mother, she’s bearing an extra burden.
Simon paused a number of moments in silence, then advised CBS Information, “This is the deal: It should be a tricky job. However there are single moms who’re barely making minimal wage. And they’re making ends meet barely. I’ll determine it out.”
