Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to deliver his first major address outside his diplomatic portfolio on Friday, speaking to conservative lawyers in Washington, D.C., just days after Republicans suffered a sweeping midterm defeat that has party members searching for direction ahead of the 2028 presidential race.
Rubio will give the Barbara Olson Memorial Lecture at the Federalist Society's National Lawyers Convention, an approximately 45-minute speech at the Mayflower Hotel. Past speakers in the lecture series include former Attorney General Bill Barr and The Free Press founder Bari Weiss. The annual conference draws prominent attorneys affiliated with the conservative legal movement.
Republicans lost a net 41 House seats and eight Senate seats in the midterms, with Alaska's Senate race still undecided, marking the party's largest simultaneous loss in both chambers of Congress in a midterm election since 1958. President Donald Trump has partly blamed the results on voter opposition to the Iran war, and Vice President JD Vance has been more direct about the war's impact on the outcome. Rubio has yet to weigh in publicly.
Attendees said they hoped the secretary would explain the losses and lay out a path forward. "I'm expecting him to discuss both the successes and failures of the administration and what his plans are moving forward," attendee Isaiah McKinney told Fox News Digital, adding that he hopes Rubio addresses the foreign policy implications of the election results.
Speculation about Rubio's own ambitions also hangs over the gathering. "There are a lot of people in the room who are going to be wondering if he's still planning on running for president someday," said Rachel Paulose, a former U.S. attorney and general counsel at the Upper Midwest Law Center. Trump has previously floated a 2028 ticket pairing Vance and Rubio and has joked about who would top it. Rubio, who at one point held four senior administration roles simultaneously, has become the subject of a running internet joke about his expanding portfolio.
John Shu, a legal commentator who served in the George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations, said Rubio might discuss the budgetary process and how a Democratic House and Senate will approach funding for the State Department. Shu said the secretary could also touch on U.S. strikes on suspected drug cartels off the coast of Venezuela in fall 2025, which drew sharp criticism from Democratic lawmakers, including six Democrats with military or intelligence backgrounds who released a video urging service members to disobey unlawful orders. "I don't know that he's going to address the domestic policies. I mean, he's the secretary of state," Shu said.
Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan said he knows nothing about who will run in 2028 but praised Rubio's work "to talk about the importance of American values, what binds us, what brings us all together, and the importance of our Constitution."
The address follows Rubio's trip to Paris earlier this week for G-7 meetings focused on Iran, Ukraine and other international challenges. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, was first elected to the U.S. Senate representing Florida in 2010 and served until 2025, when Trump tapped him to become secretary of state. He ran for president in 2016, dropping out after losing his home-state primary in Florida.
Paulose said Rubio "already is a person of high standing for a lot of people in this room," adding that "there's a real opportunity for him to deliver a positive message and a path forward for the movement." Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department and the White House for comment but did not receive a response before publication.
