way to health insurance. i'm margaret brennan in washington and this week on "face the nation," a potential government shutdown is averted in the 11th hour, but president-elect trump and first pal elon musk show they will disrupt the way washington works. nudging congress to do their work is technically still president biden's job. but it was trump and musk

calling the shots by social media last week. they didn't get all of what they wanted, but will the drama prove to be a preview of what's to come within the gop in 2025? we'll talk with two house republicans, arkansan french hill and tony gonzales. and outgoing security chief ail lejandro may york weighs in extremism. finally, an update on the new efforts to locate journalist austin tice, who has been missing in syria for 12 years. it's all just ahead on fm f. snoof ♪

good morning and welcome to "face the nation." we are just three days away from christmas and the start of hanukkah. congress has gone home, but is last week's chaos on capitol hill an omen of what is ahead in 2025? texas republican congressman tony gonzales is here in studio to answer that. good morning to you. >> good morning, margaret. thank you for having me. >> we just saw turmoil within the party over the past few days, after president-elect trump and elon musk scuttled this bipartisan deal. then demanded another deal that couldn't get enough republican support to get over the finish line. then we have this emergency stopgap measure that only takes us through mid-march. you are one of 34 republicans who voted against it. why? >> it is pretty simple. my constituents were against the cr just as much as i was against the cr. it has been a tough week, though. it started with a tragic

shooting in madison, wisconsin. i've worked in a very bipartisan manner to make sure we have a national strategy that prevents against some of the school shootings that are occurring. i've been working with others to get that done. i think that's important. in the house, we had this messy bill that was put on the floor. it started with a 1500 page bill. in my eyes, there is no doubt there is a sickness in d.c. and that sickness isn't going to be cured with these big long pork-filled bills. you do got to give president trump a lot of credit, though. he was able to whittle that down to 116 pages. once again, the reason i voted no is i think crs are terrible. they do nothing but kick the can down the road. let's fast-forward to march. do you think we're going to be any closer to coming up with a spending deal then than we are now? i don't think so. >> if the government shuts down, the border patrol agents who live in your district wouldn't receive paychecks? >> right. that's why we should have done our job. give us three more months and i

promise in three months we'll do our job. we ran that play before. many my eyes you use christmas, new year's, lock everybody in a room and say let's get it down now. there is a bigger danger to this too. if we're not funding the government long-term, now all of a sudden you're telling the government you have to spend a year's worth of money in six months or three months. that's not fair to any of the agencies as well. basically it was a vote on my end to say let's do our job. >> right, which the republicans who are in leadership had failed to get some of those bills done. in fact, speaker johnson chose to go this route, with the cr, but i want to ask you about the dynamic here, because it is confusing, frankly. elon musk is tweeting against bipartisan deals negotiated and led by the speaker of the house. what role exactly is he playing here? >> it is interesting. we have a president, we have a vice president, we have a speaker. it feels like elon musk is our

prime minister. and i spoke with elon a couple of times this week. i think many of us -- >> unelected. >> unelected. he has a voice. a large part of that voice is a reflection of the voice of the people. once again, 1500 page bill, how does that pass the smell test? it is absolutely wrong. it is what is wrong with this place. we have to get back to regular order. the other part of it too is while house republicans were fighting over the spending bill, guess what senate democrats were doing. they were ensuring that president biden got his 235th liberal judge over the finish line. that's why it is so important the house republicans stay united, stay laser focused on delivering on a president trump agenda next year. >> but republicans in the house are clearly not united. and it was speaker johnson who led that bipartisan deal. do you support him? he's standing for re-election. should he lead the party if you say he's leaning in the wrong direction with a 1500 page

initial funding deal? >> i do support speaker johnson. i think he's done a fantastic job keeping us all together. it is like feral cats on the house. the fact he was able to work with president trump in order to whittle it down to a little over 100 pages, the fact he was able to work with the, you know, with elon musk and some of these other folks, other members to find a solution goes to prove he's found a way, but they're also -- this can't be the norm. this cannot be the norm. once again, that's the reason why i voted against the cr. this cannot be the norm. we have to get back to regular order, and pass our appropriations bills, homeland security is certainly important to us, there is other things going on in the world. >> so, because the republican majority now is so thin, it will also be thin in the new congress, but right now, any missed vote gets a lot of attention. congresswoman kay granger hasn't cast a vote since july. a local reporter in dallas who looked into this. and found the 81-year-old has been living in a local memory

care and assisted living facility for some time. that was not shared with the public. were you and others in the texas delegation aware? >> i wasn't aware. i think there is no doubt a lot of us knew she was gaining in age, like a lot of members do, and sadly, you know, some of these members wait until it is too -- things have gone too far -- >> and leadership allowed for it? >> i think -- i'm not sure what leadership knew on it or didn't know on it. on the other side of the aisle is the same thing. we saw what happened on the senate side with senator feinstein and some of these others that have missed votes for a long time. i think this gets back to the root of it. congress should do its job, and if you can't do your job, maybe you shouldn't be there. >> well, she wasn't there. and apparently it went either unnoticed or just not acknowledged to the public which certainly raises eyebrows. i need to get to the border, because that is -- what, 800 of

the miles of the border in your district. does it mean coming into office that essentially the crisis has been fixed before donald trump even arrives and that it is not as big of a project as initially thought? >> no, it is a huge project and while the biden administration has started to do some things right, the trump administration is going to do everything right in this manner. i'll tell you why, this is why it is important. earlier this week, i had a classified briefing on the threat -- the worldwide threats to homeland -- to our homeland. i won't share some of the sensitive stuff, but i'll share some of the open source stuff in syria. a lot of us are rooting for a free syria, free syria brings a lot of opportunities for stability in that region. it also brings a national security threat, assad was a bad guy. he imprisoned a lot of folks, sometimes wrongfully. some of those folks are terrorists. now they are loose. where are they?

where are they going? let's bring it back to the southern border. this year, the biden administration apprehended 600 syrians. does that mean all the syrians are terrorists? of course not. but do we know who these people are and are they coming to our country? this is something that president trump is going to get to the bottom of. >> you want to halt refugee admissions like donald trump is talking about? you want to block travel for muslim majority countries like the trump team is talking about? >> i want the president -- i want the president to enforce the laws that we have on the books. that simple. >> so no? those aren't laws on the books. refugees are accepted in the united states of america. >> and they should be. right? i want us to follow our laws, right? and if we need to make changes to our laws, congress should be the body to make those changes. and in my eyes, we can both protect those that are warm and welcoming, we want people to come and live the american dream, those that are fleeing political persecution, but we have to go after the criminals and the terrorists.

>> understood. tony gonzales, good to have you here. "face the nation" will be back in a minute. ing breath, huh. dr. garcia? wooo. ♪♪ that's millions of bacteria growing overnight. crest pro-health helps prevent oral health issues before they start. i'm so much fresher. crest. for more than a decade farxiga has been trusted again and again, and again. ♪ far-xi-ga ♪ ♪ far-xi-ga ♪ ♪ far-xi-ga ♪ ♪ far-xi-ga ♪ ask your doctor about farxiga. (fisher investments) at fisher investments we may look like other money managers, but we're different. (other money manager) you can't be that different. (fisher investments) we are. we have a team of specialists not only in investing, but also in financial and estate planning and more. (other money manager) your clients rely on you for all that? (fisher investments) yes. and as a fiduciary, we always put their interests first. (other money manager) but you still sell commission- based products, right? (fisher investments) no. we have a simple management fee structured so we do better when our clients do better. (other money manager) huh, we're more different than i thought! (fisher investments) at fisher investments, we're clearly different.

on friday, we sat down with outgoing dhs secretary alejandro mayorkas to get his thoughts on the homeland security challenges facing the next administration. here's part of our conversation. we recently saw that killing of the unitedhealthcare ceo on the streets of manhattan. manhattan prosecutors call it a killing that was intended to evoke terror. would you consider him a terrorist? is this domestic violent extremism? >> the rhetoric on social media following that murder is extraordinarily alarming. it speaks of what is really bubbling here in this country and unfortunately we see that manifested in violence, the domestic violent extremism that exists, threat of it in the united states is one of the

great threat streams we must counter. >> when you say something is bubbling, what is the national trend you're seeing? >> i -- look, we have been concerned about the rhetoric on social media for some time. >> and that's against ceos, against government, against leadership? >> we have seen narratives of hate, we have seen narratives of antigovernment sentiment, we have seen personal grievances in the language of violence accompanying or being a part of those narratives. it is something that we're very concerned about. that is a heightened threat environment. i still am alarmed, though, by the -- the heroism that is being attributed to an alleged murderer of a father of two children on the streets of new york city. >> and a lot of that seems to be around the healthcare industry and what the company was doing.

it is depersonalized, the victim is depersonalized. >> and the victim is a person. >> yeah. >> and the victim is a husband. and the victim is a father. >> "face the nation" has been to the border, toured some of the federal facilities and we saw some of the small children who came across without parents and without caregivers and i don't think -- i certainly won't ever forget that. there were also children who were separated from their families by the trump administration. the last report we saw shows that homeland security reunireuninigh ed shut majority of 800 parents with their children. how much unfinished business are you leaving behind here? >> we are very proud of the work that we performed through the family reunification task force, but there is more work to be done. some of the parents who were

removed are difficult to find. some are reluctant to come forward, worried that the separation could occur again. we're dealing with vulnerable populations who have gone through trauma. so, there are a myriad of challenges. some of which we have been able to overcome as you note for 800 or so families. but there is more work to be done. >> how many are left? >> it is unclear because the debt we were not left with good records, data was not kept, and so that was also one of the great challenges that we had to overcome. >> i.c.e. was also unable to account for more than 32,000 unaccompanied kids who failed to appear in court from 2019 to 2023 according to the report we read. the incoming border czar, tom homan, says these children are being exploited and trafficked.

is that true? >> well -- >> do you know? >> margaret, we certainly have received reports of children being trafficked. even those that we know, that is outside of the the department of homeland security, hhs places those children. of course, we investigate cases. but there are children who are reunited with a parent here in the united states or a legal guardian, and they move and sometimes the government loses track, individuals do not comply with the reporting obligations or otherwise. i think it is inaccurate to say that all of them are trafficked or victimized. >> december of last year, border

crossings were at record highs. now they have dropped to the lowest level of the biden administration. how much of that dropoff is because mexico is now stopping migrants from even getting to that southern border of the united states? >> that is critically one element of it. it is not the only element of it. the president took executive action in june of this year. that has been a key driver of the low number of encounters at our border. we are now delivering to the incoming administration a southern border at which the number of individuals encountered is well below the level experienced in 2019, the last year before the pandemic. >> but the immigration surge in the u.s. since 2021 has been the largest in american history. that is incredible. so -- >> it is.

margaret, it is one element of the greatest displacement of people in the world since world war ii. this is a phenomenon that has not been unique to the southern border of the united states. >> right. >> it is something that has gripped the entire hemisphere and the world. >> i think you have said to me, one of the first things the biden administration did was ask congress to act in the earliest days and then fast-forward you have a bipartisan near miss on a border bill. all that time passed. why wait until five months before the u.s. election to put in place those asylum restrictions that did cut off the flow? >> margaret, remember -- >> that ended a crisis. >> margaret, remember where we were when the president took office. we were in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic. the prior administration had imposed title 42, which is a public health authority, and

enabled us to expel individuals, to continue to expel individuals at the border as the prior administration had done. there was tremendous pressure to maintain the workings of title 42, which we did. that held until may of 2023. we then turned to congress, and we asked for supplemental funding that was desperately needed to make our administration of a broken immigration system work much better. >> mm-hmm. >> we were denied. we went back to congress a second time and requested supplemental funding. denied. we then turned to the bipartisan negotiations, which proved successful, which were then killed. the result of it a really terrific solution was killed by irresponsible politics. looking back now, in hindsight, 2020, if we had known that

irresponsible politics would have killed what was clearly a meritorious effort, a meritorious result, perhaps we would have taken executive action more rapidly. >> because republicans argue in this back and forth over whose job it is to fix the problem, congress would argue there was executive authority that could have been used before congress legislated. and they point back to the crisis starting at day one when trump era immigration policy was peeled back, remain in mexico, the 100 day moratorium on most deportations that was announced, the halt to wall construction. did those measures and i know you weren't yet in office personally, but did those measures set you up for failure? >> remember something, remain in mexico is touted as the great panacea, the trend lines of migration were increasing quite exponentially from 2018 to 2019,

and that is reflected worldwide. and then the covid-19 pandemic hit. remember something also about the executive action that the president took in may -- in june of this year. we also over time built capabilities that we did not previously have. not just domestically the number of facilities that we stood up, the ability to transport individuals and decompress areas that were experiencing surges of individuals, but our negotiations with mexico, with other countries in latin america, and around the world. we are now removing or returning more individuals in three years than the prior administration did in four. and we are doing so not only greater in volume, but greater in speed, because of the negotiations with other countries, and to more countries than has ever been the case.

>> but why didn't we hear more about those enforcement actions during the election cycle when immigration was so key? >> margaret, we have been executing on enforcement at an unprecedented level throughout this administration. and i.c.e. just published data that evidences that quite powerfully. >> but that data you just cited shows deportation of migrants is at a ten-year high under president biden. a ten-year high. so what shifted at dhs that prompted this deportation of more than 200,000 unauthorized migrants from the united states this year? that's one of the highest numbers in recent years. >> margaret -- >> if congress didn't give you the power, how did you do it? >> margaret, we did it with skill, with strategy, and with unflinching dedication to that mission. >> but it would also suggest that there is the ability to do

it without congress acting, right? that's the downside of showing you can make it work. >> yes, but margaret, we made those very impressive statistics happen. but there is much more work to do and what we have to do is to ensure that the problem does not continue. this broken system needs to be fixed. and it is not just to ensure that individuals who do not have a lawful basis to remain in the united states are removed, but it is also to ensure that we are providing humanitarian relief to those who qualify, one of our proudest traditions and we're also fueling the economy. >> you said recently that this massive chinese hacking of the telecom companies that siphoned off the meta data, the phone

call records, logs and information for millions potentially of americans was accessed, why hasn't the u.s. government stopped it? >> the intrusion is a very significant one. and an extraordinarily impactful one. and an absolutely unacceptable one. and the president has demonstrated a strong response to the people's republic of china. it is very -- >> rhetorically. >> excuse me? >> rhetorically when he met with president xi jinping. >> the department of commerce proposed an action against china telecom. so, this is an ongoing situation. it is not static. the intrusion is a very sophisticated one. the telecommunications companies are working very vigorously to remediate it. they are working in partnership with us, with the cybersecurity and infrastructure security

agency within the department of homeland security, with the federal bureau of investigation, and other agencies of the federal government. >> this is the largest intelligence compromise, potentially, in u.s. history. >> it is a very serious compromise. and requires very serious action to remediate and recover from it. and also very serious response to it. >> how did you find it? >> that is not something i can speak to. >> the full interview is on our website, and ouryoutube page. we'll be right back. type 2 diabetes? discover the ozempic® tri-zone. i got the power of 3. i lowered my a1c, cv risk, and lost some weight. in studies, the majority of people reached an a1c under 7 and maintained it. i'm under 7. ozempic® lowers the risk of major cardiovascular events such as stroke, heart attack, or death in adults also with known heart disease.

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welcome back to "face the nation." we go now to little rock, arkansas, and republican congressman french hill. good morning to you, sir. >> good morning, margaret. merry christmas. >> merry christmas as well to you. this was quite the journey to get you back home and to get lawmakers to wrap up bus