WASHINGTON (AP) — The majority of the U.S. House of Representatives hung in the balance Wednesday, wavering between Republican control that would usher in a recent era of unified GOP government in Washington or a switch to Democrats as the last line of resistance against one Whites in Trump’s second term House agenda.
A few individual seats or even just one will decide the outcome. The final counts will take a while, likely pushing the decision into next week – or beyond.
After Republicans won the U.S. Senate majority with seats in West Virginia, Ohio and Montana, House Speaker Mike Johnson predicted his chamber would be next.
“Republicans are ready to have a unified government in the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives,” Johnson said Wednesday.
President-elect Donald Trump, who won the Electoral College and the popular vote against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, has consolidated the growing power around his MAGA movement, supported newcomers to Washington and set the stage for his own return to the White House.
Johnson said Republicans in Congress are preparing an “ambitious” 100-day agenda with Trump, who he said is “thinking big about his legacy.”
Tax cuts, securing the southern border and the “blowtorch” on federal regulations are high on the agenda as Republicans take the White House and Congress. Trump himself has promised mass deportations and retaliation against his perceived enemies. And Republicans want to push federal agencies out of Washington and reshuffle government staff with the facilitate of outside think tanks, Johnson said, to bring the federal government “into obedience.”
But Johnson struggled to govern the House after just a year in office, and the recent Congress would be no different. Hardliners led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Rep. Matt Gaetz and others often confronted and upended their own GOP leadership in one of the most cluttered sessions in state-of-the-art times.
If Johnson’s slim majority of four seats shrinks even further, governing could come to a standstill.
Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the House “remains very much in play.”
After Democrats defeated two Republicans in the House of Representatives in Jeffries’ home state of New York, he said the path to the majority now lies in catch-up opportunities in Arizona, Oregon, Iowa and California that are too early to see.
“We have to count every vote,” Jeffries said.
The elections in the House of Representatives remained a tough fight until the end, with neither party having a dominant path to the majority. Rarely, if ever, have the two chambers of Congress moved in opposite directions.
Each side gains and loses a few seats, including through the redistricting process, which is the routine redrawing of House seat boundaries. The process reset seats in North Carolina, Louisiana and Alabama.
Much of the outcome depends on the West, particularly in California, where a handful of House seats are closely contested and mail-in ballots received a week after the election continue to be counted. Among other things, there are hard-fought races around the “blue dot” in Omaha, Nebraska and as far away as Alaska.
Trump said early Wednesday at his election night party in Florida that the results had given Republicans an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.”
He called the Senate defeat “unbelievable,” praised Johnson and said he was doing “a great job.”
At the U.S. Capitol, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, privately a fierce Trump critic, called it a “darn good day.”
Senate Republicans marched across the map alongside Trump, flipping the three Democratic-held seats and holding their own against Democratic challengers who failed to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas and Sen. Rick Scott in Florida.
In West Virginia, Jim Justice, the state’s wealthy governor, flipped the seat of outgoing Senator Joe Manchin. Republicans toppled Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio along with Republican luxury car dealer and blockchain entrepreneur Bernie Moreno. And Republican Tim Sheehy defeated Democratic Sen. Jon Tester in Montana.
By saving seats in the blue wall states, Democrats were able to avoid a total wipeout. Rep. Elissa Slotkin won an open Senate seat in Michigan and Sen. Tammy Baldwin was re-elected in Wisconsin. The race in Pennsylvania between Democratic Senator Bob Casey and Republican challenger Dave McCormick was still undecided.
In other developments, Democrats made history by sending two black women, Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, to the Senate. Only three Black women, including Harris, have served in the Senate, but never two at the same time.
All in all, Senate Republicans have the potential to achieve their strongest majority in years – a testament to McConnell, who has made a career of showing the path to power, this time on Trump’s side, which he had previously laid out had privately described as “despicable” until the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
During a news conference on Wednesday, McConnell declined to answer questions about his previous harsh criticism of Trump and said he viewed the election results as a referendum on the Biden administration.
He told reporters at the Capitol that a Senate under Republican control would “control the guardrails” and prevent changes to Senate rules that would end the filibuster.
“People just weren’t happy with this administration and the Democratic nominee was part of that,” McConnell said.
It is still unclear who will lead the recent Republican Senate as McConnell prepares to step down.
South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Republican, and Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who previously held the post, are the leading candidates to replace McConnell in a secret election next when senators arrive week in Washington.
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Associated Press writers Stephen Groves, Kevin Freking and Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.
