About
Steve Scalise (R-La.) has served Louisiana’s 1st District in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2009. He is currently the minority Whip, the second highest position in GOP leadership in the House, and won reelection in 2022 with Trump’s endorsement and 73% of the vote.
In 2014, Scalise was shot and injured by a gunman targeting Republicans during practice for a Congressional baseball game. As chair of the conservative House Study Committee, he reportedly vowed to keep moving the Republican leadership to the right. Throughout his congressional career, he has been a strong supporter of gun rights and an outspoken critic of Obamacare, repeatedly vowing to overturn the Affordable Care Act.
In 2014, Scalise was forced to backpedal and apologize for a 2002 speech he made to a white supremacist group while serving in the Louisiana State Legislature, which he did from 1996–2008. During that period, he was a member of American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate right-wing bill mill creating “model legislation” for implementation at the state level.
After the 2020 presidential election, Scalise threw himself into spreading the Big Lie denying Trump’s legitimate loss. He objected to certifying the Electoral College count and voted against both impeaching Trump for inciting the insurrection and establishing a special House committee to investigate it, among other measures.
January 6, 2021
- Just hours after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, Scalise joined 146 other congressional Republicans in refusing to certify Biden’s win of the 2020 presidential election.
- Scalise voted against impeaching Trump or holding him accountable in any way for instigating the attack on Congress and for fanning the flames by targeting Vice President Pence once the riot broke out.
- Scalise also voted against establishing a House committee to investigate the genesis of the assault that disrupted the certification process shortly after it began.
The Big Lie
- On Dec. 10, 2020, Scalise signed an amicus brief in a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the results of the presidential election in four swing states: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
- In February 2021, Scalise reinforced his loyalty to Trump by meeting with him at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.
- Appearing on Fox News Sunday in October 2021, Scalise continued to dance around repeated questions about whether or not the 2020 presidential election had been stolen and refused to acknowledge that Biden had legally won.
- As of early 2022, Scalise still refused to acknowledge that President Biden’s win of the White House was fair and legitimate.
- Like so many of his GOP colleagues in Congress who support the Big Lie, Scalise has benefited from it financially, garnering the second largest amount of corporate donations in support of his reelection.
Post-2020 Election Subversion
- In an interview, Scalise appeared to give credence to an argument that state lawmakers hold sole power over election administration—an argument made in several lawsuits attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results by questioning the use of ballot boxes and other pandemic-related measures.
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