WASHINGTON — Republicans won enough seats to control the U.S. House of Representatives, completing the party’s rise to power and securing their hold on the U.S. government alongside President-elect Donald Trump.
A Republican House victory in Arizona, along with a slow-count victory in California earlier Wednesday, gave the GOP the 218 House victories that constitute the majority. Republicans previously took control of the Senate at the expense of Democrats.
With hard-fought but slim majorities, Republican leaders are eyeing a mandate to overthrow the federal government and quickly implement Trump’s vision for the country.
The new president has promised to carry out the nation’s largest-ever deportation operation, expand tax breaks, punish his political enemies, take control of the federal government’s most powerful tools and reshape the American economy. GOP election victories ensure that Congress will agree to this agenda, and Democrats will be almost powerless to control it.
When Trump was elected president in 2016, Republicans swept Congress as well, but he still encountered Republican leaders resistant to his policy ideas, as well as a Supreme Court with a liberal majority. Not this time.
When he returns to the White House, Trump will work with a Republican Party completely transformed by his “Make America Great Again” movement and a Supreme Court dominated by conservative justices, including three he appointed.
Trump rallied House Republicans at a Capitol Hill hotel Wednesday morning, marking his first return to Washington since the election.
“I suspect I won’t run again unless you say, ‘He’s good, we’ve got to find something else,'” Trump told the room full of lawmakers who laughed in response.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, who with Trump’s support won the Republican Conference nomination to remain president next year, has spoken of taking a “blowtorch” to the federal government and its programs, considering ways to revise even popular programs championed by Democrats in recent years. . The Louisiana Republican, an ardent conservative, has brought the House Republican Conference closer to Trump during the election season as they prepare an “ambitious” 100-day agenda.
“Republicans in the House and Senate have a mandate,” Johnson said earlier this week. “The American people want us to implement and deliver on this ‘America First’ agenda.”
Trump’s allies in the House have already signaled they will seek revenge for legal troubles Trump faced while out of office. The new president said Wednesday he would nominate Rep. Matt Gaetz, a fierce loyalist, to be attorney general.
Meanwhile, Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, said Republican lawmakers are “taking nothing off the table” in their plans to investigate special counsel Jack Smith, even as Smith puts end to two federal investigations into Trump. for plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
However, with some elections still uncalled, Republicans could hold the majority with just a few seats at the start of the new Congress. Trump’s decision to step down from the House to take positions in his administration — so far Reps. Gaetz, Mike Waltz and Elise Stefanik — could complicate Johnson’s ability to maintain a majority in the first days of the new Congress.
Gaetz submitted his resignation on Wednesday, effective immediately. Johnson said he hoped the seat could be filled by the time the new Congress convenes on Jan. 3. Replacements of House members require special elections, and the congressional districts held by all three outgoing members have been held by Republicans for years.
With a slim majority, a perfectly functioning Parliament is also far from guaranteed. The past two years of Republican control in the House of Representatives have been marked by infighting as radical conservative factions sought to gain influence and power by openly challenging their party’s leadership. While Johnson – sometimes with Trump’s help – has largely contained open rebellions against his leadership, the party’s right wing is ascendant and ambitious in the wake of Trump’s election victory.
The Republican majority also depends on a small group of lawmakers who won tough elections by running as moderates. It remains to be seen whether they will remain on board with some of the more extreme proposals pushed by Trump and his allies.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, meanwhile, is trying to keep Democrats relevant in any legislation Congress passes, an effort that will depend on Democratic leaders’ ability to unify more than 200 members, even if the party undergoes an autopsy of its electoral defeats.
In the Senate, Republican Party leaders, who have just won a convincing majority, are already working with Trump to confirm his Cabinet picks. Sen. John Thune of South Dakota won an internal election Wednesday to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving party leader in Senate history.
Thune has criticized Trump in the past, but praised the new president during his leadership campaign.
“This Republican team is united. We’re on one team,” Thune said. “We are excited to reclaim the majority and work with our House colleagues to implement President Trump’s agenda.”
The 53-seat Republican majority in the Senate also ensures that Republicans will have leeway when it comes to confirming Cabinet positions, or Supreme Court justices in the event of a vacancy. All such confirmations are not guaranteed. Republicans were in disbelief Wednesday when news broke on Capitol Hill that Trump would nominate Gaetz to be attorney general. Even Trump’s close allies in the Senate have distanced themselves from their support for Gaetz, who was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over allegations of sexual misconduct and illegal drug use .
Yet Trump demanded Sunday that any Republican leader allow him to make administrative appointments without a vote while the Senate is in recess. Such a move would be a notable shift in Senate power, but all leadership contenders quickly embraced the idea. Democrats could potentially oppose such a move.
Meanwhile, Trump supporters on social media, including Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, have spoken out against the choice of a mainstream Republican to lead the Senate chamber. Thune worked as a top lieutenant to McConnell, who once called the former president a “despicable human being” in his private notes.
However, McConnell made clear that on Capitol Hill, the days of Republican resistance to Trump were over.
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