The Republican Party won control of the US House of Representatives, according to media projections this Wednesday (16), which will give conservatives the possibility to fight President Joe Biden’s agenda in the next two years.
The Republican majority in the lower house of Congress will be much smaller than the party had hoped, after failing to gain control of the Senate in last week’s midterm elections.
Broadcasters NBC and CNN projected victory for Republicans with at least 218 of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives, enough to secure a majority.
The confirmation comes a week after millions of Americans went to the polls to vote in midterm elections, which often punish the ruling party.
Biden congratulated Republican Kevin McCarthy, elected on Tuesday by his colleagues to be the leader of the party in the lower house, for the “victory of the Republicans of the majority in the House”.
The Democratic president said he was “ready to work with Republicans in the House of Representatives to get results for working families.”
Also according to Biden, last week’s vote was “a strong rejection of election denialists, political violence and intimidation” and showed “the strength and resilience of American democracy”.
McCarthy said via Twitter shortly after the projections were published: “Americans are ready for a new direction, and Republicans in the House of Representatives are ready to fulfill that mission.”
The news comes a day after former President Donald Trump, whose endorsement appears to have doomed some of his party’s candidates in the midterm elections, announced that he intends to run for president in 2024.
Against a backdrop of rising inflation and falling Biden’s popularity ratings, Republicans hoped to gain control of both houses of Congress and thereby effectively block most of Biden’s legislative projects.
Instead, Democratic voters turned out in droves, spurred on by the Supreme Court’s overturn of abortion rights and fearful of Trump-backed candidates openly rejecting the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
Republicans, on the other hand, lost ground by presenting candidates rejected by moderate voters for being too radical.
– Democratic majority in the Senate –
Biden’s party reversed a key Senate seat in Pennsylvania and retained two more in Arizona and Nevada, giving Democrats a 50-seat upper house majority plus Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote.
The second round of elections for the Georgia Senate, scheduled for next month, could lead to Democrats improving their majority in the upper house.
The Senate oversees the confirmation of federal judges and cabinet members, and having that 100-seat body on your side will be of great importance to Biden.
Meanwhile, McCarthy won the election by secret ballot to lead his party in the House of Representatives, which should allow him to become Speaker of the House starting in January.
The 57-year-old California congressman, a high-ranking Republican in the House since 2014, defeated his co-religionist Andy Biggs, a member of the far-right group Freedom Caucus.
But possible defections from the far right could complicate its path when the full House chooses its leader in January.
McCarthy is expected to win the plenary vote on January 3, when the 435 new members of the House of Representatives, Republicans and Democrats, will choose the “speaker” (president), the third most important office in American politics after the president and vice president. .
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