WASHINGTON – Republicans look likely to hold on to the House, and therefore maintain full control of Congress for the next two years as Trump goes back to the White House.
However, it is still possible for the Democrats to recapture the 435 seat chamber if they win the remaining outstanding races in districts in California, Arizona and Oregon.
But the GOP holds the edge. The Democrats first scored by ousting a few New York Republicans in the suburbs.
Those gains were offset, however, by the the GOP flipping seats held by Democrats in Michigan and Pennsylvania, while Vice President Kamala Harris witnessed significant declines in the swing states.
According to the Associated Press tally as of Sunday morning, Democrats had 202 seats while Republicans had 212, so the GOP needs only six more seats to have the slimmest of margins in the House while Democrats require 16.
House Democrats have called for calm as the results come in among these states while House Republicans have said that the last districts will go their way.
“We must count every vote and wait until the results in Oregon, Arizona and California are clear,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the likely next speaker should Democrats triumph, said in a statement on November 7.
Some Republican lawmakers are getting impatient with the absence of a result almost a week after Election Day. They have accused states without any substantiation of ‘slow walking’ results.
“There are about as many people eligible to vote in each congressional district,” Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., said on X, formerly Twitter.
Therefore, there is no reason at all why Arizona and California should take weeks to count ballots after the election is over. I knew the results of my election a few hours – not weeks – after the polls closed.”
Different states have different processes of vote counting after the election day and some states depend more on mail in votes and others.
It is not proof that something has gone wrong in races. But what would happen if Democrats just barely win the House while Republicans just barely lose it? What might it have entailed for Trump’s second term? Here’s what you need to know.
From mass deportations to corporate tax cuts: Trump’s agenda on the line The outcome will be a House that either supports Trump’s initiatives or a House that obstructs them at every turn.
If the GOP wins the House, Trump, his policies, and the interests of his conservative supporters would fare much better in Washington. But if Democrats win the chamber back they will likely claim that the voters want some form of balance to the Republican party.
The president-elect’s biggest stated issue is immigration and border control. That includes hardline initiatives like the 2024 campaign promise to begin what would be the largest deportation effort in American history.
Spending for such an exertion of federal resources — Trump has said the cost is “not a question” — would have to pass the House, for example.
Although Democrats have signaled interest in immigration reform, Trump’s marquee campaign pledge wouldn’t pass the lower chamber if the left is in charge.
But House Democrats wouldn’t just fight Trump on his immigration policies. If Trump does not have a House majority, he will have to bargain with Jeffries and the Democrats on the essential spending bills that fund the government and prevent shutdown disasters.
These are moments that already create high drama showdowns, even when the Republicans dominate the lower house. Indeed, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was recently booted by some of his own party members for his eagerness to compromise with Democrats to avoid a shutdown.
But it would rise even higher if Democrats are in control of one house while the Republicans are in the White House and Senate.
For instance, the $1.5 trillion tax cuts that were signed by Trump in 2017 are due to expire next year. Whether there are or not, and what the shape of national tax policy is, depends mainly on who holds the House majority.
There was general agreement on some of the proposals such as reducing the federal taxes on tips (Trump and Harris agreed on this), but the proposed reduction of the corporate tax rate was to go up to the House of Representatives depending on the outcome of the elections.
Any radical conservative domestic policy proposals, however, such as repealing the Affordable Care Act, enshrining further restrictions on abortion access into law, dismantling climate change measures or eliminating federal funding for schools that use curriculum that conservative activists have criticized on race, gender identity and U.S. history, would be unable to pass Congress unless Republicans maintain their advantage in the race for the speakership of the House.
After a bitter loss at the presidential level, Democrats potentially remain the only obstacle for Trump, and they would have no incentive to cooperate with him on a serious legislation as far as their progressive base would be concerned.
Inquiries And Removals
Another area where twice impeached Trump does not want to deal with a Democratic House is with the various investigative powers.
Not only does the majority party in Congress get to choose which bills are actually put to a vote, it also gets to control the committees that can potentially investigate presidents of the opposite party and their cronies.
In the House, that may involve questions that cause problems for the sitting government, though it is not necessarily followed by policy change.
For instance, the House Oversight Committee and the House Judiciary Committee with Reps. James Comer, R-Ky., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, for months looked for corruption or abuse of power by President Joe Biden and despite not finding any, they did not recommend articles of impeachment against Biden.
But would Democrats immediately begin their own investigations once the new Congress is sworn in in January? Jeffries, for his part, said on NY1 on Thursday that his party will try to “seek to cooperate with the new administration whenever and wherever possible, but also be very clear that we will resist MAGA extremism whenever needed.”
Trump is already the first president in the history of the United States to have been impeached twice. A phone conversation between Trump and the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in July 2019 during which Trump tried to persuade Zelenskyy to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden resulted in Trump’s first impeachment.
The lower chamber also, however, passed articles of impeachment against Trump for his role in the Capitol riot before the end of his term, but the Senate acquitted him in both instances.
Should Republicans keep the House, you could envision a continuation of probes into the origins of COVID-19, but also other investigations into the outgoing Biden administration’s past actions, such as the prosecution of rioters involved in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
During the campaign, Trump was open about going after political opponents and calling for their prosecution, which would be much easier to do if the House was in his party’s hands.
While Trump and his supporters have also said that any successes in office would ultimately be his revenge, other allies have left the door open the door to legal ramifications.
“President Trump will not use the DOJ for political purposes, that is to go after individuals simply because they are political opponents,” Mark Paoletta, who served as lawyer in the first Trump administration, said in a Nov. 7 post on X.
“But just because you are a political opponent,” he added, “does not give you get a free pass if you have violated the law.”