GOP House Completes Trump Trifecta
The Republicans are projected to narrowly retain the House of Representatives, and that’s yuuuge news for Donald Trump’s second-term agenda.
Call it the Trump Trifecta.
It doesn’t feel like 1994 when Newt Gingrich led the midterm Republican Revolution and ended 40 years of consecutive Democrat rule in the House of Representatives.
It doesn’t feel like a net gain of 54 House seats and eight Senate seats and a complete remaking of the political order in Washington.
But it still feels big. Still feels important. Still feels really good.
Next to Donald Trump’s popular vote win and his 312 electoral-vote landslide, this is the big news of the 2024 election. Because this second Trump term would’ve been entirely, radically different if the Democrats had managed to win just a handful more of House seats and took control of the lower chamber. If they’d done so, Donald Trump’s ambitious agenda would’ve been significantly muted.
Indeed, but for a few close wins in congressional districts across the country — in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Michigan, for example — Trump’s second term would’ve been hostage to an adversarial House controlled by Speaker Hakeem Jeffries. And the Democrats would’ve controlled the gavels, the purse, the legislative agenda, and the power to subpoena witnesses and hold impeachment hearings — just as they did twice during Trump’s first term, and just as they most assuredly would’ve found reason to do in Trump’s second term. These controls, collectively, would’ve given the Democrats the power to obstruct.
Instead, though, as The Hill reports: “Republicans are projected to keep control of the House of Representatives, handing the party total control of Washington with President-elect Trump back in the White House in January. Decision Desk HQ projected the GOP would hold the House by winning its 218th seat on Monday, the number needed for a majority in the lower chamber. … The final House breakdown is uncertain, with ballots still being counted for several races in California. But Republicans are expected to have another slim majority heading into the new Congress.”
We applaud Decision Desk HQ for having the guts to make a call, even as Fox News and a host of others continue to drag their feet.
This is spectacularly good news for the Trump agenda. Now comes the hard part, as Trump continues to choose a cabinet that will help him implement the America First policies that the American people voted for in such resounding fashion. But even then, the Trump team will do so in the face of what will certainly be fierce resistance from the Democrats and their Leftmedia brethren.
“It’s morning again in America,” said a thrilled National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Richard Hudson during a press conference yesterday on the Capitol’s east steps. “Voters delivered House Republicans a majority and sent Donald Trump to the White House in a landslide.”
Hudson was harkening back to 1984, to the eve of Ronald Reagan’s 49-state, 525-electoral-vote wipeout of Walter Mondale and the Democrats. This certainly wasn’t that, but it does have a bit of a “new morning” feel to it.
According to the Associated Press, Republicans are projected to win or are leading in 222 House races, with the Democrats projected to win or are leading in 213. It’s a narrow margin, to be sure, and it would mirror the outcome of the 2022 midterms. But it’s a majority. And when January 3, 2025, rolls around, and the 119th Congress is sworn in, Republicans will have control of the presidency, the Senate, and the House for the first time since 2017, when Trump began his first term.
But unlike in 2017, when Republicans came into power with a collective We actually won? look on their faces, the GOP seems like it’s getting ready to hit the ground running this time.
“When President Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson yesterday, “we all look back and recognize that the Republican Party was not fully prepared for that moment, and precious time was wasted in the beginning of that Congress. I know it well because that was my freshman year in Congress. … We are not going to make those mistakes again. We will be ready on Day 1. We are prepared this time.”
Speaker Johnson had better be prepared because he’s likely to face a conservative challenge to his leadership from the House Freedom Caucus. It might only be a symbolic challenge, but it should serve notice that this is Donald Trump’s moment, and that the GOP-controlled House will be counted on to get things done.
It’s morning again in America, after all.
