Republicans are expected to win a majority of seats in the House of Representatives, allowing them to retain control of a chamber they have held since 2023 and giving them joint control for the first time since Donald Trump’s first term in 2017 get over the government.
Controlling the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House will make it much easier for Republicans to implement their agenda, especially an extension of the sweeping tax cuts set to expire at the end of next year.
Republicans in the House of Representatives have blundered over the past two years with one of the smallest majorities in US history. They struggled to find common ground, jettisoned their leader and often relied on Democratic votes to pass legislation.
Thanks in large part to the situation in the House of Representatives, the 118th Congress was one of the least productive in modern history, and also one of the most vulgar. Given the deep division in the Senate and the continued presence of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), it is likely that the vulgarity will continue. But now that both the House of Representatives and the Senate are in Republican hands, more laws will be passed.
Republicans hope to pass $5 trillion in tax cuts for American households that would otherwise expire at the end of 2025, possibly with new cuts Trump proposed during the campaign, such as on tip income, plus new, even deeper cuts for certain businesses. Taxes were the only area where Republicans could agree with themselves when they last controlled the government in 2017.
There may be less drama this time. After winning election as Speaker of the House of Representatives in October 2023 after several weeks of leaderless chaos, Mike Johnson (R-La.) kept the House in lockstep with Trump, amplifying his voter fraud with symbolic legislation, while his lieutenants conducted fruitless investigations into the Joe. Biden administration.
Republicans will have to choose their speaker in January, and Johnson is a clear favorite. Several far-right lawmakers grumbled about Johnson’s habit of passing government funding bills with Democratic votes, although an alternative speaker candidate has yet to emerge. Johnson’s close relationship with Trump — he even flew to meet the former president on election night — will likely help him keep his gavel.
Former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) needed 15 votes in the House of Representatives to win the gavel in January 2023, and he did so only after agreeing to a rules change that would allow individual members to pass a vote of no confidence in his leadership – a fateful decision that led to McCarthy’s downfall ten months later. Republicans will have to decide whether they want to continue working with their president under the constant threat of impeachment.
View the full results of the House of Representatives elections here.
