“House Republican leaders, poised for a celebratory takeover of Congress next week, instead found themselves scrambling Tuesday to defuse a racially charged controversy over one lawmaker’s speech a decade ago to a white supremacist group,” the New York Times reports.

“The controversy erupted as Republicans were making a renewed effort to reach out to black voters. It threatened to cloud their agenda after capturing control of the Senate and adding to their House majority in last month’s election. Republicans anticipated using their new power to focus on economic growth and potentially find areas of common ground with President Obama, both elements of a broader push to demonstrate that the party can govern at a time when lawmaking in Washington has all but come to a halt.”

Washington Post: GOP ramps up damage control

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), the No. 3 Republican in the House, addressed a group of white supremacists and neo-Nazis in 2002, the New York Times reports.

“Mr. Scalise made his remarks to the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, which was founded two years earlier by David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader and Louisiana politician… It was unclear what the revelation means for Mr. Scalise’s future in the House leadership. Speaker John A. Boehner declined to comment on the reports.”

Washington Post: “The news could complicate Republican efforts to project the sense of a fresh start for a resurgent, diversifying party as the new session of Congress opens next week.”