Republicans will control the US House of Representatives, according to CNN projection

() – Republicans secured their monopoly on power in Donald Trump’s new Washington, maintaining their majority in the House of Representatives, projected this Wednesday, after winning seats in California and Arizona and ushering in a dramatic new era of populist government. from the right.

The GOP’s control of both chambers of Congress means the president-elect will have a path to enact an agenda that could profoundly change America, including sweeping tax cuts, hardline immigration enforcement and a transformation of politics. internal and external.

Republican dominance of the Capitol is just one aspect of Trump’s formidable new power base. A president-elect who already believed he had nearly unlimited power will be emboldened by last summer’s Supreme Court ruling offering substantial immunity to the commander in chief for official acts performed in office.

Trump could also have the opportunity in the next four years to replace older members of the court, potentially extending into mid-century the conservative majority he built in his first term.

And as Trump introduces his team of Cabinet members and senior White House officials, largely made up of ultra loyalists, it’s already clear that the 47th US president will face few of the restrictions that White House officials Career veterans attempted to impose some of their most extravagant plans when he was the 45th president.

Trump’s team promises an aggressive agenda in the first 100 days to carry out both of his “Make America Great Again” plan early next year, after tapping into public concerns about high prices and immigrants. undocumented immigrants to help the Republican Party win the White House, the Senate and now the House.

Republicans flipped the Senate by defeating Democrats defending red states and, with a pending race yet to be projected, control 52 seats. Although the Senate filibuster means 60 votes are needed to pass most major legislation, party leaders will be able to use the same budget devices that helped President Joe Biden pass some major issues.

The House GOP victory represents a triumph for House Speaker Mike Johnson, who has struggled to control his restive conference over the past year. The GOP House often descended into chaos and infighting, some of which was aggravated by Trump’s interventions and the behavior of some of his most vocal supporters. The narrow majority meant that any member could decide to provoke a revolt or break with the leadership out of personal political interest.

The question now will be how big the House majority becomes next year and whether the GOP can widen the margin of a handful of seats that has made managing the conference so complex for Johnson. The fact that Trump is in the White House with the Republican Party in full control could facilitate unity next year. However, Trump is already recruiting from the incoming majority for his Cabinet picks, and even if those members come from safe Republican districts, their potential vacancies could last long enough to cause Johnson headaches.

Democrats had held out fading hopes in the days after the election that they could flip the House and create a single bulwark against the Trump administration, a feat that looked like a possibility for much of the year given the House’s lack of productivity and Johnson’s struggle to assert control. Democrats were targeting Republicans sitting in districts Biden won four years ago, many of which were in New York and California. However, with Trump’s landslide victory this year, some of those seats became harder to attract.

Now, Democrats face the monumental task of regrouping before the midterm elections in 2026, without a single power platform in Washington.

Republicans had won back the House in the 2022 midterm elections to stop Biden’s rule, mainly by winning a flurry of those competitive seats in New York and California. Democrats managed to flip several New York seats this year, but Trump’s relative strength as the Republican presidential candidate in his birth state helped limit Democratic gains. Democrats also failed to take down some other key targets, such as Republican Rep. Don Bacon, whose district in Nebraska’s Omaha area gave one electoral vote to Vice President Kamala Harris. And the GOP captured some of its top targets in Pennsylvania and Michigan.

That left the fate of the House to unfold in counts that extended well beyond Election Day in California, Oregon, Arizona, Iowa and Alaska, among other places.

However, Democrats held onto some of their most competitive seats, such as that of vulnerable Washington state Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez, and were hopeful about others in Ohio and Maine in strong Trump territory.

Johnson, who rose from backbench obscurity to the House speakership after a party collapse following the impeachment of previous House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in 2023, anchored his strategy to hold the chamber — and, if It is possible to expand your majority—in a close alliance with Trump. The Louisiana Republican traveled to the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort to celebrate on election night and his office has been coordinating closely with the transition team.

Johnson has also formally launched his campaign to remain president. “To make America truly great again, we will need to start delivering for the people from day one. In preparation, we have worked diligently over the past year to be ready with a priority list of key conservative policy achievements that we can achieve together with our Senate Republican colleagues, working side by side with the new Trump administration,” Johnson wrote in a letter to his colleagues.

The president also faces a looming crisis: the need to raise the government’s borrowing limit, perhaps as soon as early summer, although there may be limited appetite from fiscal hawks in the party to provoke a showdown that could anger Trump.