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      Republicans scrape back control of US House after midterms flop

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      Republicans scrape back control of US House after midterms flopSlim majority means any member of party sitting in House of Representatives could stymie legislation

      US midterms: results in full
      Republicans have won back control of the House of Representatives, scraping a victory from a midterm election that many had expected to be a red wave of wins but instead turned into more of a trickle.Nevertheless, the party finally won its crucial 218th seat in the lower chamber of Congress, wresting away control from the Democrats and setting the stage for a showdown with Joe Biden in the next two years of his presidency.US midterm elections results 2022: liveRead moreThe result means the end of Democrat Nancy Pelosi’s time as House speaker. She is likely to pass the gavel to the Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who has announced his intention to take up the post.Control of the House is crucial as it will allow the Republicans to launch an array of congressional investigations into issues ranging from Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan to more obviously politicised probes of government actions during the Covid pandemic and Biden’s son Hunter’s business activities.The Republican-run House is likely to be a raucous affair as its predicted slim majority means it will take only a few rebels to stymie any legislation – in effect handing great power to almost every Republican member of the House. With the Republican right full of fringe figures, including Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, that could be a recipe for chaos and the promotion of extremist beliefs and measures.Trump for 2024 would be ‘bad mistake’, Republican says as blame game deepens Read moreBiden congratulated McCarthy on the victory and said he was “ready to work with House Republicans to deliver results for working families”.“Last week’s elections demonstrated the strength and resilience of American democracy,” the president added. “There was a strong rejection of election deniers, political violence, and intimidation.”Biden and his party had gone into election day largely expecting to get a thumping from an electorate angry at high inflation that has wrought misery for millions of Americans struggling with bills and spiraling prices. Republicans had doubled down on that by running campaigns that stoked fears of violent crime and portrayed Democrats as far-left politicians out of touch with voters’ concerns.But the Democrats fought back, pointing out the extremist nature of many Republican politicians, especially a cadre of far-right figures backed by Donald Trump, and warning of the threat to US democracy they represented. They were also boosted by the backlash from the loss of federal abortion rights, taken away by a conservative-dominated supreme court.03:20The result was a shock: Democrats held up in swathes of the country and while Republicans won in some parts, such as Florida, in many other parts their candidates were defeated. High-profile Trump-backed candidates such as Mehmet Oz and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania lost their races.Meanwhile, Republican performance in the Senate was worse. Democrats retained control of the upper chamber when their incumbent senator was projected as the winner in Nevada the Saturday after election night.The remaining seat up for grabs, in Georgia, will be decided in a run-off between incumbent Raphael Warnock and his Republican challenger Herschel Walker in early December after neither surpassed 50% of the vote.If Warnock wins, Democrats will enjoy a one-seat majority, 51-49, in the 100-seat senate, a small but significant improvement on the current 50-50 balance, which leaves Democrats in control because the vice-president, Kamala Harris, has the tie-breaking vote.That situation will continue if Walker wins the seat for the Republicans.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022RepublicansHouse of RepresentativesDemocratsNancy PelosiJoe BidenUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Q&A: what does a split Congress mean for US politics?

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      ExplainerQ&A: what does a split Congress mean for US politics?With Republicans in control of the House and Democrats holding the Senate, expect a legislative logjam Republicans officially captured control of the House on Wednesday, as the Associated Press called the 218th seat for the party. The House victory ends four years of Democratic control of the lower chamber, handing Republicans the speakership and the chairmanships of key committees, while Democrats will maintain control of the Senate.But the incoming Republican speaker has the unenviable task of attempting to pass legislation with a very narrow majority, where only a few defections within the party will be enough to kill a bill.Republicans had hoped that a “red wave” in the midterm elections would allow them to flip dozens of House seats, giving them a much more comfortable majority. Instead, Republicans were barely about to flip the House, and Democrats may even be able to increase their Senate majority depending on the results of the Georgia runoff next month.With the House and the Senate now both called, Washington is bracing for at least two years of split control of Congress. Here’s what we can expect. :Will Congress be able to pass any bills?It will be extremely difficult for Democrats to advance their legislative agenda. Republicans can use their majority power to block any bills passed by the Democratic Senate from even getting a vote on the House floor.Since Joe Biden took office, some notable bills have passed the House with bipartisan support, including the infrastructure law that the president signed late last year. But the new Republican speaker will probably be hesitant to hand Biden and his party any more policy wins before the 2024 presidential race, which could result in a legislative logjam.How will Republicans use their House majority?Given their very narrow majority, House Republicans may have trouble advancing major legislation through the chamber. Even if they are able to pass something, the bill would almost certainly fail in the Democratic Senate, so it seems likely House Republicans will focus most of their attention on investigations and executive oversight.Even before polls closed last Tuesday, House Republicans had outlined plans to launch a series of investigations into the Biden administration and members of the president’s family. Republican members have expressed keen interest in investigating the administration’s handling of the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden’s oversight of the US-Mexican border and his son Hunter’s overseas business dealings.Some of the far-right members of the House Republican caucus have also threatened to use their new majority to hold up must-pass bills, including a debt ceiling hike. If the debt ceiling – essentially, the maximum amount the US government can borrow – is not raised, it could jeopardize the entire US economy. Some House Republicans have signaled they want to withhold support for a debt ceiling increase until they secure concessions on government spending and entitlement programs.The new House Republican majority could also threaten proposals to send more military aid to Ukraine amidst its war against Russia. The far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has said that “not another penny will go to Ukraine” once Republicans take control, alarming Ukraine’s allies on Capitol Hill and abroad. With such a narrow majority, it only takes a few votes to block bills.Who will replace Nancy Pelosi as House speaker?That is a question that many House Republicans are asking themselves right now as well. The obvious frontrunner for the role – which oversees, manages and directs the majority party in the House – is Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican who has served as House minority leader since 2019.But McCarthy has faced some dissent from within his own caucus, and it remains unclear whether he can get the 218 votes needed to become speaker. On Tuesday, the House Republican caucus easily nominated McCarthy as their speaker candidate, but 31 members cast ballots for the far-right Arizona lawmaker Andy Biggs. That tally could spell disaster for McCarthy when the full floor vote is held in January.“My position remains the same until further notice – no one has 218 (or close, as needed),” Chip Roy, a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus who nominated Biggs, told the Texas Tribune on Tuesday. “We have to sit down and establish the fundamental changes needed.”How will Biden work with the new Republican speaker?Before becoming president, Biden built a reputation in the Senate for his ability to reach across the aisle and strike compromise with his Republican colleagues. During the 2020 Democratic primary, Biden boasted about how he was even able to work with hardline segregationists such as James Eastland and Strom Thurmond. Those comments, meant to demonstrate Biden’s collaborative nature, outraged many Democratic primary voters.But in recent months, Biden has become increasingly vocal in his criticism of the modern Republican party, which he says is beholden to Donald Trump and hostile to democratic principles. “Donald Trump and the Maga Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” Biden said in September.McCarthy has responded to Biden’s criticism by accusing the president of having “chosen to divide, demean, and disparage his fellow Americans … simply because they disagree with his policies”.So if McCarthy does manage to capture the speakership, he and Biden will not be starting off their new relationship on the best footing. When a reporter asked Biden last week about his relationship with McCarthy, the president deflected.“I think he’s the Republican leader, and I haven’t had much of [an] occasion to talk to him,” Biden replied. “But I will be talking to him.”What can Democrats get done without control of the House?Democrats’ continued control of the Senate ensures that they will still be able to approve Biden’s cabinet and judicial nominations. Their Senate majority will allow Democrats to install more liberal judges in key posts, and it could give them the ability to fill another supreme court seat if one opens up in the next two years.But overall, Democrats’ best opportunity to enact change between now and 2024 may come down to the power of the executive. Biden has already signed more than 100 executive orders since becoming president, according to the Presidency Project at University of California Santa Barbara.Biden has used executive orders to overturn some of Trump’s most controversial policies, such as halting funding for construction of a wall at the US-Mexican border, and to advance progressive proposals that would otherwise stall in Congress. Biden’s order to provide student debt relief of up to $20,000 for millions of borrowers was celebrated by the president’s progressive allies, although the policy is now facing legal challenges.With Republicans now in control of the House, Biden could soon be reaching for his executive pen more frequently.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US CongressRepublicansDemocratsUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesUS SenateexplainersReuse this content More

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      Republicans are already fighting with each other as they take House control

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      AnalysisRepublicans are already fighting with each other as they take House controlMartin PengellyControlling an unruly party with an extremely narrow majority will all but guarantee brutal tests every day Even before Republicans took the House of Representatives, leading figures on the right of the party pointed to troubled waters ahead for Kevin McCarthy – or whoever else becomes the next House speaker.Now Republicans have won their slim victory in the lower chamber of Congress, the next two years are likely to be chaotic. Controlling an unruly party with an extremely narrow majority will all but guarantee brutal tests every day, especially from the right wing.Fighting among Republicans over who leads the House is already in full swing. On Tuesday, Clay Higgins of Louisiana, a member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, would not tell Politico if he would back McCarthy.But Higgins did say: “The speaker of the House, whomever he or she is, will be required to recognise the center of gravity of the conference itself. And the Freedom Caucus has moved that center of gravity to the right.”Andy Biggs, a Freedom Caucus member from Arizona and an ardent backer of Donald Trump’s electoral fraud lie, challenged McCarthy, now minority leader, to be the Republican nominee for speaker.“My bid to run for speaker is about changing the paradigm and the status quo,” Biggs tweeted, adding: “McCarthy does not have the votes needed to become the next speaker of the House and his speakership should not be a foregone conclusion.”Biggs did not have the votes in secret leadership ballots on Tuesday, losing 188-31 to McCarthy. But the speaker’s role will not be decided till January and any candidate for speaker must attract 218 votes. That is a simple House majority, not confined to party lines, but Republicans are set to hold power by not much more and McCarthy must now win over his skeptics.Backstage manoeuvers are in full swing. On Tuesday a moderate Democrat, Henry Cuellar of Texas, confirmed that consultants allied to McCarthy had been seeking his vote, via a switch to become a Republican.The Republican party is in flux, after a predicted midterms “red wave” failed to materialize and with leaders under fire from all directions, each faction seeking to identify what went wrong and set course for the next two years.Another prominent rightwinger, Matt Gaetz of Florida, is among those demanding aggressive action against Democrats, including investigations of Hunter Biden, the coronavirus response and immigration policy and swift impeachment of Joe Biden.On Monday, Gaetz said of McCarthy: “I’m not voting for him tomorrow. I’m not voting for him on the floor. And I am certain that there is a critical mass of people who hold my precise view.”On Tuesday, after McCarthy’s party vote victory, Gaetz told reporters the current minority leader “couldn’t get 218 votes, he couldn’t get 200 votes, he couldn’t get 190 votes today, so to believe that Kevin McCarthy is going to be speaker, you have to believe he’s going to get votes in the next six weeks that he couldn’t get in six years”.Illustrating party ferment, however, an equally visible and extreme provocateur, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, has taken an opposing view.03:20Speaking to the former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, Greene said denying McCarthy the speaker’s gavel would be “bad strategy when we’re looking at having a very razor-thin majority”.McCarthy has confirmed that if made speaker, he will restore to Greene committee assignments Democrats stripped over her extremist views and behaviour.Greene also pointed to an outlandish idea, nonetheless circulating on Capitol Hill, that moderate Republicans could join with Democrats and install Liz Cheney, an anti-Trump conservative, as speaker.Greene said: “We’ve already been through two years where we saw Republicans – Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger – cross over and join the Democrats and produce a January 6 committee.“The danger is this: do we want to watch a challenge for speaker of the House simply because the ‘Never Kevin’ movement – just like we’ve seen a ‘Never Trump’ movement – do we want to see that challenge open the door to Nancy Pelosi handing the gavel to Liz Cheney?”Cheney will soon leave the House, having lost her Wyoming primary to a Trump-backed challenger. But the speaker of the House does not have to be a member of Congress, hence a previous fringe idea that Republicans could put Trump in the role.On Monday, Don Bacon, a Republican moderate from Nebraska, told NBC News “Cheney for speaker” was a non-starter. But he also said that if his party paralysed itself with partisan infighting, he would work with Democrats to install a moderate Republican speaker.“I will support Kevin McCarthy,” he said. “But … I do want the country to work and we need to govern. We can’t sit neutral. We can’t have total gridlock for two years.”TopicsRepublicansHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsanalysisReuse this content More

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      Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma could get first delegate to Congress in 200 years

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      Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma could get first delegate to Congress in 200 yearsThe tribe’s right to representation is detailed in the 1835 Treaty of New Echota, which forced them from their ancestral land The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma moved a step closer on Wednesday to having a promise fulfilled from nearly 200 years ago that a delegate from the tribe be seated in Congress.Chuck Hoskin Jr, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, was among those who testified before the US House rules committee, which is the first to examine the prospect of seating a Cherokee delegate in the US House. Hoskin, the elected leader of the 440,000-member tribe, put the effort in motion in 2019 when he nominated Kimberly Teehee, a former adviser to Barack Obama, to the position. The tribe’s governing council then unanimously approved her.Trump for 2024 would be ‘bad mistake’, Republican says as blame game deepens Read moreThe tribe’s right to a delegate is detailed in the Treaty of New Echota signed in 1835, which provided the legal basis for the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation from its ancestral homelands east of the Mississippi River and led to the Trail of Tears, but it has never been exercised. A separate treaty in 1866 affirmed this right, Hoskin said.“The Cherokee Nation has in fact adhered to our obligations under these treaties. I’m here to ask the United States to do the same,” Hoskin told the panel.Hoskin suggested to the committee that Teehee could be seated as early as this year by way of either a resolution or change in statute, and the committee’s chairman, the Massachusetts Democrat James McGovern, and other members supported the idea that it could be accomplished quickly.“This can and should be done as quickly as possible,” McGovern said. “The history of this country is a history of broken promise after broken promise to Native American communities. This cannot be another broken promise.”But McGovern and other committee members, including the ranking member, Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, acknowledged there are some questions that need to be resolved, including whether other Native American tribes are afforded similar rights and whether the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma is the proper successor to the tribe that entered into the treaty with the US government.McGovern said he has been contacted by officials with the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and the Delaware Nation, both of which have separate treaties with the US government that call for some form of representation in Congress. McGovern also noted there were also two other federally recognized bands of Cherokee Indians that argue they should be considered successors to the 1835 treaty: the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians based in North Carolina, both of which contacted his office.The UKB selected its own congressional delegate, the Oklahoma attorney Victoria Holland, in 2021. Holland said in an interview with the Associated Press that her tribe is a successor to the Cherokee Nation that signed the 1835 treaty, just like the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.“As such, we have equal rights under all the treaties with the Cherokee people and we should be treated as siblings,” Holland said.Members of the committee seemed to be in agreement that any delegate from the Cherokee Nation would be similar to five other delegates from the District of Columbia, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa and the Virgin Islands. These delegates are assigned to committees and can submit amendments to bills, but cannot vote on the floor for final passage of bills. Puerto Rico is represented by a non-voting resident commissioner who is elected every four years.TopicsNative AmericansOklahomaIndigenous peoplesHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Donald Trump announces 2024 run for president nearly two years after inspiring deadly Capitol riot

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      Donald Trump announces 2024 run for president nearly two years after inspiring deadly Capitol riotTwice-impeached ex-president makes expected election announcement despite shaky midterms and surge from rival Ron DeSantis00:52Donald Trump on Tuesday night announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, likely sparking another period of tumult in US politics and especially his own political party.“In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,” Trump said from ballroom of his private Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, where he stood on a stage crowded with American flags and Make America Great Again banners.Vowing to defeat Joe Biden in 2024, he declared: “America’s golden age is just ahead.”The long-expected announcement by a twice-impeached president who incited a deadly attack on Congress seems guaranteed to deepen a stark partisan divide that has fueled fears of increased political violence.Who’s next? Republicans who might go up against Trump in 2024Read moreBut it also comes as Trump’s standing in the Republican party has suddenly been put into question. Trump spoke at Mar-a-Lago a week after midterm elections in which his Republican party did not make expected gains, losing the Senate and seeming on course for only a narrow majority in the US House.In his remarks, Trump took credit for Republicans’ performance victory in the House, even though they are poised to capture a far narrower majority than anticipated. “Nancy Pelosi has been fired. Isn’t that nice?” he said. The Associated Press has not yet projected which party will win the majority.In a party hitherto dominated by Trump, defeats suffered by high-profile, Trump-endorsed candidates led to open attacks on the former president and calls to delay his announcement or not to run at all. As Trump’s standing has slipped, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has surged into strong contention after sailing to reelection last week.Trump’s announcement also coincided on Tuesday with the release of Mike Pence’s memoir, So Help Me God, in which the ex-president’s once-faithful lieutenant criticizes him for his conduct on January 6. The former vice-president is also maneuvering toward a possible 2024 run despite falling out of favor with the Maga base.Brushing past Republican setbacks in 2022 and his defeat in 2020, Trump insisted that he was the only candidate who could deliver a Republican victory in 2024.“This is not a task for a politician or a conventional candidate,” he said. “This is a task for a great movement.”His third candidacy comes as he faces intensifying legal troubles, including investigations by the justice department into the removal of hundreds of classified documents from the White House to his Florida estate and into his role in the 6 January attack. Trump has denied wrongdoing and used the attacks to further his narrative that he has been unfairly targeted by his political opponents and a shadowy “deep state” bureaucracy.“I’m a victim,” Trump said, making reference to the Russia investigation and the raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate. On Tuesday, Trump nevertheless pressed forward with his run.Painting a bleak portrait of the United States, with “blood-soaked” city streets and an “invasion” at the southern border, Trump said his campaign was a “quest to save our country.”In the less than two years since Biden took office, a period Trump referred to as “the pause”, he accused his successor of inflicting “pain, hardship, anxiety and despair” with his economic and domestic policies.Trump offered an alternative vision, which he called the “national greatness agenda”. Among the policy proposals he endorsed on Tuesday were the death penalty for drug dealers, term limits for members of Congress and planting an American flag on Mars. And wading into the social fights he enjoys inflaming, Trump promised to protect “paternal rights” and keep transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.Though he made no explicit mention of his stolen-election lies, he promised to overhaul the nation’s voting laws, vowing that a winner would be declared on election night. In close contests, it can take several days before enough votes are tabulated in a state to project a winner, but Trump and his allies have seized on the delay to spread baseless conspiracy theories about results.Despite promising to deliver remarks as “elegant” as the gold-plated room he was standing in, Trump’s rambling, hourlong speech turned to name-calling and ridicule, lashing the “fake news”, mocking the former German chancellor Angela Merkel’s accent and accusing Biden of “falling asleep” at international conferences. At one point, he appeared to confuse the civil war with the reconstruction period that followed and scoffed at climate science.Without acknowledging his 2020 defeat, Trump insisted that beating Biden in 2024 would be much easier because “everybody sees what a bad job has been done.”He called Biden the “face of left-wing failure and government corruption” and accused him of worsening inflation and “surrendering” America’s energy independence. He also slammed the administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan as “the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country”.“Our country is being destroyed before your very eyes,” he said, casting his four years in office as a glowing success, despite leaving behind a nation shaken by disease and political turmoil.Now 76, Trump was long seen as a colorful if controversial presence in American life, a thrice-married New York real-estate mogul, reality TV star and tabloid fixture who flirted with politics but never committed.But in 2015, after finding a niche as a prominent voice for rightwing opposition to Barack Obama – and a racist conspiracy theory about Obama’s birth – Trump entered the race for the Republican nomination to succeed the 44th president.Proving immune to scandal, whether over personal conduct, allegations of sexual assault or persistent courting of the far right, he obliterated a huge Republican field then pulled off a historic shock by beating the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 election.Trump’s presidency was chaotic but undoubtedly historic. Senate Republicans playing political and constitutional hardball helped install three supreme court justices, cementing a dominant rightwing majority which has now removed the right to abortion and weakened gun control laws while eyeing further significant change.Trump is running for president again – but these legal battles might stand in the wayRead moreTrump’s third supreme court pick, replacing the liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with Amy Coney Barrett, a hardline Catholic, came shortly before the 2020 election. That contest, with Obama’s vice-president, Joe Biden, was fought under the shadow of protests for racial justice and the coronavirus pandemic, the latter a test badly mishandled by Trump’s administration as hundreds of thousands died.Trump was conclusively beaten, Biden racking up more than 7m more votes and the same electoral college win, 306-232, that Trump enjoyed over Clinton, a victory Trump then called a landslide.But Trump’s refusal to accept defeat, based on his “big lie” about electoral fraud, fueled election subversion efforts in key states, the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol by supporters and far-right groups, a second impeachment for inciting that insurrection (and a second acquittal, if with more Republican defections) and a deepening crisis of US democracy.01:41With a third White House bid, Trump hopes to defy political history. Only one former president, Grover Cleveland, has served two nonconsecutive terms. Cleveland was elected in 1884 and 1892, but, unlike Trump, he won the popular vote in the intervening election of 1888.Trump flirted with announcing a new run throughout Biden’s first two years in power, ultimately delaying until after midterm elections, which did not go as he or his party expected. But while high-profile backers of Trump’s stolen election myth were defeated, among them his choice for Arizona governor, Kari Lake, more than 170 were elected, according to the Washington Post.Until his midterms reversal, Trump dominated polling of potential Republican nominees for 2024. His closest rival in such surveys, DeSantis, reportedly indicated to donors he would not compete with Trump. But the landscape has now changed. DeSantis won re-election by a landslide, gave a confident victory speech to chants of “two more years” and has surged in polling – prompting attacks from Trump. At least one Republican mega donor, Ken Griffin, has said he backs the Florida governor.Should Trump dismiss DeSantis as he has so many other challengers and win the nomination, the 22nd amendment to the US constitution would bar him from running again in 2028. But a rematch of 2020 remains possible. Though Biden will soon turn 80 and has faced questions about whether he should seek a second term himself, he is preparing a re-election campaign.TopicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2024US politicsRepublicansRon DeSantisJoe BidenUS midterm elections 2022newsReuse this content More