Republicans keep narrow House majority as Democrats pick up last race

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives will hold a slim 220-215 majority when the next Congress gets underway next month.

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives will hold a slim 220-215 majority when the next Congress gets underway next month. (Elizabeth Frantz, Reuters)


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KEY TAKEAWAYS
  • Republicans will hold a narrow 220-215 majority in the U.S. House when Congress gets underway next month.
  • Republicans laid out plans to push ahead with Trump's agenda as soon as they take office.

WASHINGTON — Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives will hold a slim 220-215 majority when the next Congress gets underway next month after Democrats picked up a seat in California, according to Edison Research on Wednesday.

President-elect Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans will control both the White House and both chambers of Congress starting next month, following a rightward shift in the country in November's election and Democrats' loss of both the White House and the Senate.

Republicans, who already control the House, will see their majority narrow further at least for some time when the new Congress convenes in January to 217-215 after Trump chose two members for top positions in his administration.

Trump tapped two Florida Republicans — U.S. Reps. Mike Waltz as his national security adviser and Matt Gaetz for U.S. attorney general — although Gaetz later withdrew from consideration.

Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin will also leave the House for her new seat representing Michigan in the Senate. Fellow Democrat Adam Gray won his bid to represent California's 13th Congressional District in what was the last U.S. House race to be decided from the Nov. 5 election, according to Edison Research.

Republicans this week laid out plans to push ahead with Trump's agenda as soon as they take office.

Trump laid out a broad agenda during the campaign, including sweeping new tariffs, mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, energy sector deregulation and extending tax cuts enacted during his first term that are due to expire next year.

Congressional Republican leaders said they may start with border security, energy and defense before turning to tax cuts.

Lawmakers must also contend with funding the federal government.

On Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson said he believes the current Congress will pursue a continuing resolution to fund federal agencies into March. On Wednesday, he separately said he does not believe the U.S. debt ceiling will come due until this summer, Punchbowl reported.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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