In a Trump-dominated Washington, new arrivals in the House try to emerge

Lateefah Simon is a widowed mom who is taking a new job, moving her 13-year-old to a new school. She was born legally blind and her life is about to go through some further upheaval.

When asked what worries her most, Simon paused for a moment, then took a deep breath. Simon answered, "I will do whatever I can so that my eighth grader finishes her science homework. And, God bless, try to help her pass that French class too."

Simon, 48, arrives in Washington Monday for orientation sessions near Capitol Hill having been elected as the new U.S. Congresswoman representing California's 12th District, which includes Oakland and Berkley.

Simon, who counts Vice President Kamala Harris as a close mentor, served as a civil rights attorney and helped the victims of sex trafficking, will be sworn into office with the 119th Congress on Jan. 3, 2025. 

Simon is arriving in a Washington that is transfixed by the return of President-elect Donald Trump, his outsized personality and his pledges to overhaul the government and secure retribution against political enemies. 

But Simon and some of her new colleagues do not intend to go unnoticed — no matter which party controls the Congress or the White House.

With her vision impaired, Simon has relied on public transportation and has a history of advocating to make mass transit more accessible to low-income people. She is embracing the opportunity to succeed Rep. Barbara Lee, a longtime progressive fixture in Washington who left office to pursue an unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic party's nomination for U.S. Senate in California in 2024.  

Speaking to CBS News by phone while preparing for her first trip to Washington as an elected congresswoman, Simon said she first must rebound from Harris's defeat in the Presidential race. "I'm devastated. My mentor was the President we deserved. But Kamala would always say: 'Head up, roll up your sleeves, get to work.' So that's what I intend to do."

Simon said she'll pursue roles with the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, considering her background championing issues of mass transportation, and will seek out early leadership roles.

Simon told CBS News it is important that there is diversity among the members of key panels. "We must defend the values of not just our party, but the people of the United States, particularly me, as disabled people," she said. "Also the elders, the folks who are seeking health care, queer kids. I have work to do."

Simon and the dozens of others who were newly-elected to Congress on Tuesday face a more immediate hurdle:  A tidal wave of life changes.

For Simon, that includes moving her daughter to a new community midyear.

"As long as my seat is on the floor... I won't complain"

For Tom Barrett, a military veteran who won a competitive race for a vacated seat in the Michigan 7th Congressional District, it has been impossible to simply open all of the text messages. 

Barrett told CBS News, "I can't even tell you how many phone calls I've received in the last couple of days. I probably received 1,000 text messages just on election night. I haven't read them all."

Barrett, a Michigan state senator from the Lansing area, bested a Democratic challenger in one of the most heated and expensive House races in the Midwest. Barrett said he is hesitant to make any demands of his new colleagues.

"I joked to House Speaker Mike Johnson that as long as my seat is on the floor — and not in the upper Gallery — I won't complain," Barrett said.    

"I recognize that it is a significant job that has a lot of responsibility," Barrett said.

But he appears poised to work comfortably in a Trump-dominated Washington. When asked for his top legislative and leadership priorities, Barrett uncorked a response that name-checked Trump six times.  

Barrett spoke of "extending a lot of the provisions of the Trump tax cuts," "Helping the Trump Administration stem the flow of people over the border" and restoring prior "Trump policies."

Barrett served as a helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army in the Iraq War and said he'd be interested in a seat on the  House Committee on Armed Services. But in the meantime, the Eaton County, Michigan, resident must find a different flight plan. He is spending time seeking the best weekly plan to trek by air to Washington, D.C. from either Lansing, Grand Rapids or Detroit.

"He's getting an apple juice; I'm getting a beer"

After an exhausting campaign in which he and his campaign volunteers touted that they knocked on 200,000 doors, Democrat Josh Riley said he was looking forward to one quiet, post-election night with his 4-year-old son.  

"He's getting an apple juice, I'm getting a beer and we're going to watch a Cornell hockey game," Riley said. 

Riley won one of the most expensive House races in 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 City exurbs.

Arriving at a tumultuous moment in Washington, Riley said he will not try to compete with Trump or his powerful colleagues for a spotlight.  Riley told CBS News, "I'm not searching for a way to stand out. If I do this job successfully, people in upstate New York will have more job opportunities and good wages."

Riley said he will take office with a high priority issue:  Housing prices. "One of the things I'd like to do," Riley said, "Is stop the predatory practice of Wall Street entities running around upstate New York, gobbling up our single family homes and using them to extract profits. Housing should be looked at as a civil right, not as a driver of profits." 

Riley, an attorney and former congressional aide, acknowledged his two-year term is expected to be spent in the minority party in the House. But with narrow margins, Riley talked of exploring joining a New York Republican's proposal for housing affordability.

"Eight firehoses"

Rob Bresnahan laughed a bit when he said, "I'm drinking out of nothing less than eight firehoses right now." 

Bresnahan is getting his first taste of elected office, but beginning in the big leagues.   

"It's starting to feel slightly more real," Bresnahan told CBS News, "I never thought a kid from Butler Street in Wyoming, Pennsylvania would now be a member of Congress. I mean, it's, it's incredible."

Bresnahan edged a veteran House Democrat to secure the seat representing the Scranton area of Pennsylvania. He leads an electrical and construction business, while also working in real estate development.  His introduction to politics included an unexpected stress: Bresnahan said his fiancée, a local television news anchor, worked as the same broadcast outlet on which his opponent aired attack ads against him. 

"I give her so much credit for being able to, you know, watch the horrible things that were being said about me," Breshnahan said. 

Bresnahan was one of two Republicans to oust Democratic House incumbents in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. Those victories gave Republicans an edge in securing a majority control of the House, which could turbocharge Trump's legislative agenda in 2025.

Bresnahan told CBS News he'd seek a seat on the House's Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.   

"I understand the significance of infrastructure and transportation, outside of traditional roads and bridges," he said. "Airports, levies, ports, freight rail and power distribution systems and sewer systems, that is the foundation and the hierarchy of needs of a society. I really think I can make a tangible difference with just my history of what I've done."

"If you change something and it's unpalatable to the other side, they're just going to come and kick it out next time"

Ryan Mackenzie will arrive in Washington with a 7-month-old son, who was born just days before Mackenzie won the primary to secure the Republican nomination in Pennsylvania's 7th Congressional District, in the Allentown area.   

And Mackenzie will be bringing a rescue dog too.   

Mackenzie told CBS News that he and his wife "are going to be loading up the SUV and going down and trying to find an apartment."

But the new work begins quickly. 

Mackenzie said it is vital for Congress to move swiftly on the issues of inflation and border security championed by candidates, including Trump.

After toppling incumbent Democrat Susan Wild in a heated battleground race that captured the attention of both parties, Mackenzie argued that bipartisan efforts hold the most promise of big change.   

"If you want lasting change, you have to do it in a bipartisan fashion," he said. "If you change something and it's unpalatable to the other side, they're just going to come and kick it out next time. And then the pendulum swings back and forth." 

Mackenzie, 42, is one of dozens of Members of Congress-elect who will represent politically-purple congressional districts, in which the opposing party is likely to muster a well-funded challenger in 2026.

He will begin his new job, with an immediate potential political target on his back. Mackenzie said his successful challenge to Wild was an expensive and grueling battle.  

"In a close and competitive district, it was never going to be a blowout," he said. "That's not the reality of this district. So we always knew it was going to be close, always competitive."   

Mackenzie has served in the Pennsylvania state legislature, focusing on financial services and banking issues, and would seek similar committee work next year in the House. The House Ways and Means Committee and Financial Services Committee are expected to play outsized roles, as Trump pursues new tax cuts, tariffs and campaign pledges to tackle inflation.

"National conversation about Trump-this and Trump-that"

Kristen McDonald Rivet capped her victorious election week with a Friday trek to a cellphone store. Her 15-year-old son needed a cellphone repair, which was joking referred to as a "national emergency."   

The mother of six already repaired some of the damage her party suffered Tuesday. McDonald Rivet, a state legislator in Michigan, won a competitive race for Michigan's 8th Congressional District in the Flint area. Trump prevailed in the 8th Congressional District and Democrats worried about their prospects there, because of the retirement of longtime Democratic Representative Dan Kildee, the latest in a family dynasty that's held the seat for decades.

"Here's the thing: My district voted for Donald Trump," McDonald Rivet told CBS News by phone, after returning from the cellphone store repair mission. "There is a lot of national conversation about Trump-this and Trump-that.  When we're working on things like prescription drugs, the cost of housing and lowering the cost of groceries, then I'm on board.I'm not going to get involved in the yelling and screaming and the stuff that makes politics awful."

She paused a moment, relating to CBS News that it really is striking just how many groceries a 15-year-old son can consume. (She correctly fact-checked that the CBS News reporter's 14-year-old son was also prodigious at eating high volumes of food)

McDonald Rivet arrives in Washington with years of experience in Michigan's state legislature in Lansing.   "I've spent my life working on issues, like creating economic security for families, particularly for kids.   I started my career in Head Start.  These issues are top of mind, including expansion of the child tax credit."

119th Congress

The group of newly-elected US House members arrives at a generally unstable moment in Washington, but amid a rare spec of stability in the lower chamber. Leadership of House Republicans and House Democrats is expected to remain unscathed, after an expensive and heated election in which the margins in the House could emerge unchanged.

Orientation sessions for new members of the House begin this week near Capitol Hill, with some of the newly-elected seeking living quarters and training sessions for their unique new jobs.

Several of those who spoke with CBS News said they have spent their first days as an elected federal official working to find staff and constituent service experts.

Bresnahan, the incoming freshman Representative from northeast Pennsylvania, is among those who must wind down — or find contingency plans – for private businesses back home. "I'm also a real estate developer and am trying to figure out, y'know, who is going to assume my role here," he said.   

Bresnahan also has a post on the local SPCA board in Pennsylvania to navigate, as he simultaneously tries to learn to navigate the winding hallways and tunnels of Capitol Hill.

As for Simon, who says she is shifting her daughter to a new school in advance of beginning a term in Congress, the juggling of her new career is already well underway. As a single mom, she's bearing an additional burden.

Simon paused a few moments in silence, then told CBS News, "Here's the deal:  It's going to be a tough job. But there are single mothers who are barely making minimum wage. And they are making ends meet barely. I will figure it out."