When Donald Trump moves into the White House for the second time in January, he’ll have plenty of friends in Congress and fewer — if any — guardrails.
Votes are still being counted, but Republicans have flipped control of the Senate to their side with several key states yet to be called leaning in their favor. The House of Representatives will take longer to come into focus, with 58 seats still uncalled, but GOP candidates are performing well in tough races, and party leaders are feeling optimistic that they might even expand their narrow majority in the chamber.
Those results mean Trump will be able to get judges, Cabinet nominees and other executive appointments confirmed in the Senate without much pushback — even for controversial picks like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Elon Musk. The new class of Republicans coming to Washington, like Ohio’s Bernie Moreno and Montana’s Tim Sheehy, are decisively of the MAGA mold and eager to help Trump with his agenda. If Republicans are able to pick up two or more of the outstanding races, in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin, or Arizona, they’ll have the largest GOP majority in nearly a decade.
The last time Trump was in office, several Republican senators regularly pushed back on him. Moderates like Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins were critical swing votes on Trump’s Supreme Court picks and contentious legislation, and Sens. Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, and John McCain routinely challenged his foreign policy. Corker and Flake aren’t in Congress anymore, and McCain died in 2018.
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With enough Trump-aligned cushion, concerns from Murkowski and Collins won’t matter as much.
Democrats still have a chance to win the House, if they do better in races in western states, where more votes are still being counted. If they pull ahead, Trump’s administration would face more oversight — Democrats would be able to lead congressional investigations and issue subpoenas. Trump has said he will act like a “dictator” the first day after being inaugurated and called his political adversaries “the enemy within.” Some Democratic lawmakers have taken out professional liability policies to prepare for legal fees if Trump tries to sue or arrest them.
While a Democratic House would put a giant pause button on legislation and make regular government spending deals much more acrimonious, it would not stop Trump from being able to transform key pieces of government. Sources previously told NOTUS that a future Trump administration was much more focused on getting judges confirmed and executive actions to transform the administrative state.
But House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Tuesday night that he was “very hopeful” that his party would win “a larger majority in the House to make my job easier.”
House GOP leaders want to unify the conference before the new session begins. They’ve already been planning their legislative calendar.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told NOTUS in an interview before the election that Republicans will focus on extending tax cuts from the party’s 2017 tax law. With the party winning control of the Senate, House Republicans would be able to use the arcane budget reconciliation process to pass their priorities with only a simple majority in both chambers, rather than overcoming the Senate’s normal threshold of 60 votes for passage.
Republicans used that process to initially pass the tax law during Trump’s first term, and they feel confident they’ve ironed it out enough to avoid procedural hiccups.
They will also seek to beef up border security funding, and they hope to deport more immigrants instead of allowing them to stay in the United States while they go through a lengthy asylum process. Trump frequently called for a mass deportation of millions of immigrants while on the campaign trail, but the mechanics of that are less clear for Congress. Members told NOTUS this year that they knew it would be costly and hadn’t worked out the details.
House Republicans can also be expected to prioritize cuts to federal spending and scrapping regulations to boost the oil and gas industry.
In a speech prior to the election, Johnson also said Republicans will continue to encourage companies to divest from China, which he said is “our largest geopolitical adversary.”
On that last point, at least, Democrats largely agree.
How many additional Republican seats the party wins could determine just how contentious their conference is in the next Congress. With more of a buffer for disagreement, GOP leaders would have an easier time advancing Trump’s priorities.
During the current narrowly divided Congress, a faction of far-right Republicans ousted their speaker, repeatedly challenged his replacement, and broke records for defying their leaders on procedural votes — frequently derailing their own conference’s agenda.
Election night brought victories for GOP incumbents in several tight swing districts, if the numbers hold after any recounts or post-election litigation.
Rep. Scott Perry is ahead in Pennsylvania, Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks seems to be on the way to winning in Iowa, and Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska has pulled ahead of his Democratic opponent. Others couldn’t hold onto their seats. Rep. Marc Molinaro of New York has lost to his Democratic challenger, Josh Riley, according to the AP.
In his victory speech, Trump said his second term would be about “promises kept.”
“We’re going to keep our promises,” he said. “Nothing will stop me.”
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Haley Byrd Wilt is a reporter at NOTUS.
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