Democrats Take the House

Seven hundred and twenty-eight days ago, Americans handed Donald Trump’s Republican Party complete control of the US government. Two years later, voters declared they’d had enough. On Tuesday, Democrats decisively won control of the House of Representatives, putting an end to the president’s ability to govern the country with essentially zero resistance or oversight from the legislative branch.

Democrats won key races across the country, prevailing in districts from Florida to North Carolina to Kentucky.

Trump’s second term has been among the most destructive and most corrupt periods in modern American political history, thanks in large part to congressional Republicans’ near total disinterest in pushing back on his unprecedented abuses of power. On issues ranging from militarized immigration enforcement to ruinous tariffs, the House GOP has enabled one Trumpian calamity after another.

Tuesday’s result won’t put an end to the president’s ability to wreak havoc across the globe, but it will enable Democrats to push back far more effectively against the administration. They will now have far more authority to hold hearings, compel testimony, and subpoena documents, as well as to derail Trump’s legislative agenda, control federal spending, extract policy concessions, and—critically—exercise oversight and launch investigations of the administration’s misdeeds.