• We still don’t know who will control the House next year and counting the votes could take several days.
• Trump will have a GOP Senate, but both parties have a path to control of the lower chamber.
• If Democrats win control, it could significantly reduce Trump’s power.

Donald Trump it is now elected presidentand the Republicans have gained control of the US Senate.

But we still don’t know who controls the House of Representatives, and the outcome will have major implications for the first two years of Trump’s second term.

As of Wednesday morning, both Democrats and Republicans had a plausible path to winning the 218 seats needed to hold a majority, though Republicans were projecting confidence that they would pull it off.

“As more results come in, it’s clear that, as we’ve predicted all along, Republicans are poised to have a unified government in the White House, Senate and House,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday morning in a statement. “We will continue to monitor the results and ensure that every legal vote is counted throughout this process.”

Democrats have claimed victory in three GOP-held seats in New York, and the party is set to pick up an additional seat in Alabama. But Republicans picked up Democratic-held seats in Pennsylvania and Michigan, along with three seats in North Carolina.

To flip the chamber, Democrats would need a net gain of four seats.

Results in several other battleground districts have yet to be determined, many of them in California, which has historically taken days to count ballots.

A Democratic House would be a major constraint on Trump’s power

Historically, newly elected presidents have usually enjoyed a unified government at the start of their term.

Last time a president took office without control of both houses of Congress was in 1988 when President George HW Bush was elected with Democratic majorities in both the Senate and House.

But to get an idea of ​​what it would look like for Trump to share power with a Democratic-led House, we need only look back to the 2018 midterm elections, when a Democratic takeover of the House dramatically altered the course of his first term. to Trump. .

The most significant impact was that Democrats had the power to investigate and impeach Trump, which they ultimately did twice: once in 2019, over Trump’s attempt to mobilize aid military to get Ukraine to investigate then-Vice President Joe Biden and again earlier this year. 2021 after the January 6 insurrection. Trump was acquitted by the Senate both times.

Moreover, Trump has been unable to pursue the kinds of party priorities of the first two years, including the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and an attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Besides mandatory legislation such as the government funding and defense bills, the only major legislative accomplishments of that period included massive economic stimulus bills to address the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Many of the provisions in the tax bill are set to expire next year, including income tax cuts, an expanded child tax credit, a small business deduction and a property tax rollback. Allowing these provisions to simply expire would cause most Americans to experience a major tax increase.

Republicans have promised to extend those tax cuts, but if Democrats control the House, the parties will have to work together to make it happen — and Democrats will be able to make demands.