At a glance

  • Tom Emmer of Minnesota beat August Pfluger of Texas 103-76 in a secret ballot of House Republicans on Tuesday to remain the party’s whip, according to tallies reported by Politico and Punchbowl News.
  • Emmer, a co-founder of the Congressional Crypto Caucus, will serve under Jim Jordan as minority whip when Democrats take control of the House in January.

Tom Emmer will keep his place as the second-ranking House Republican, the House Republicans’ account said on X on Tuesday, listing him as whip under the new Republican leader, Jim Jordan of Ohio.

Emmer won 103 votes to Pfluger’s 76, Cointelegraph reported, citing Politico. Just The News reported the same count from Punchbowl News.

Jordan beat Majority Leader Steve Scalise 106-73 for the top job, CBS News reported, citing people familiar with the count. Speaker Mike Johnson did not run, CBS said.

“Over the next two years we will regain the trust and confidence of the American people so we can build back our majority in 2028,” Emmer said, according to CBS.

The crypto record

Emmer has been majority whip since January 2023. In March 2025 he and Democratic Representative Ritchie Torres launched the Congressional Crypto Caucus. He sponsors the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, which would establish that blockchain developers who never control customers’ funds are not money transmitters, and was an original cosponsor of the CLARITY Act, the House market-structure bill.

Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming called him on X “one of the strongest advocates for digital assets in Congress” and credited him with leading “the fight against a government-controlled CBDC”.

The House passed CLARITY 294-134 in July 2025. In the Senate the bill stalled when a cloture vote failed 49-50 on 15 Sep, as CryptoWatchDesk reported when Democrats won the House.

A whip counts and rounds up votes for the party leadership. In the minority, that job is mostly about keeping the party together against the majority’s bills; the agenda and the committee gavels belong to the other side.

What happens next

The current Congress sits in a lame-duck session until the new one is sworn in in January, when Democrats take the gavels on both House Financial Services and, in the Senate, Banking, where Elizabeth Warren’s plans for the Senate Banking Committee already put prediction markets and Trump-family crypto ventures in view.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice.