A Busy Day on Capitol Hill

A busy day on Capitol Hill featuring a workshop with GOP lawmakers, and a bipartisan press conference with Epstein abuse survivors. Fox News Radio's Ryan Schmelz joins us with the details. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is West Michigan's Morning News. Did I even mention
that Steve Kelly and Brett Bakita, let's talk balance of power,
ladies and gentlemen. If you can hear Ryan Schmells in
the background with Fox News Radio, good day to you,
kind sir, Hey, how are you. I'm hearkening back to
the county fair. But yesterday we'll see there. On Capitol Hill,

(00:25):
Carolyn Lovett held a workshop with GOP lawmakers. How important
is the balance of power as of right now? Republicans
hold both the House and the Senate, the executive branch,
and the Supreme Court too, and all, well, not all
of it, but a lot of that up for grabs
at midterms now.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
I mean, look, they are in a better position than
they probably were in twenty eighteen. I think that's kind
of a common consensus. You have about three seats that
President Trump lost, thank your President. Vice President Harris won
them that are being defended by Republicans, whereas you've got
over a dozen seats that President Trump won that are

(01:08):
being defended by Democrats or Republicans think of the map
is in their favor, and especially on the Senate side,
where they just feel especially you know, state like Michigan
where you have Gary Peters who isn't running for reelection. Well,
there's a lot of flip opportunities for Republicans and not
as many flip opportunities for Democrats.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
But traditionally you've been around a little while, there's been
a little correction right after something like the landslide that
happened to get the president off.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yeah. No, I mean, look, Republicans' biggest enemy in this
is history, and that they've got history working against them.
But the biggest thing working against Democrats is a very
unfavorable map where like it is mentioned, you have do
you have way more Democrats defending Trump districts than you
have a Republican's defending Harris district and you just have

(01:57):
a very bad Senate map for Democrats point blank. I mean,
you know, there's probably realistically two states that they probably
could flip that that they would be favored in or
maybe they're you know, at least have good pulling in
their favor. You know, other ones you have to pull
off some pretty big upsets. When you're looking at a
state like Ohio, Iowa, Florida, you know, the Republican income

(02:20):
it's going to be pretty favored in those states.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
So do we know, I mean, what's the agenda? What
was sort of talked about yesterday? Is it? Is it
talking points? Is it unification? Is it all that stuff?

Speaker 2 (02:33):
No, they talked about yesterday changing the name of the
One Big Beautiful Bill Act to the Working Tax Cuts
for Family or the Working Family Tax Cut. So pretty
much they're rebranding the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to
give their you know, to give them better messaging when
they go back to their districts and defend this.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
That's fascinating. Switch gears real quick. There was also a
bipartisan press conference yesterday on those Epstein abuse survivors. What
did we learn there?

Speaker 2 (03:05):
We learned that these survivors and their attorneys are comprising
a list of names of powerful individuals who may have
convicted committed sexual acts against women, and they're going to
be uh potentially trying to prosecute with that list. You know,
we don't know if there's actually an Epstein list, but
you know, with these survivors willing to come forward and

(03:27):
they're willing to make accusations against these people who allegedly
committed these acts, uh, they they might have a pass
forward it comes to prosecution down the road. And you know,
it was a pretty pretty tough scene to watch yesterday.
You had some pretty graphic details and very disturbing stories
that were shared by these survivors. There were reporters in

(03:49):
this room who were starting to tear up by what
they had heard. And I mean, look, we've never seen
a crowd outside Capitol Hill like this. I mean, you
had protesters going back, you know, I mean they were
in the hundreds, so it was it was quite a
steam to sea yesterday.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Ryan Schmells with Fox News Radio in Washington, d C.
Thank you for your time today, but of course, thank
you