Members of Congress returned to Capitol Hill Monday for the start of a lame-duck session after Democrats completed one of the most lopsided midterm election victories in modern U.S. history to gain control of the House and Senate, leaving their Republican rivals to reckon with a decisive rout.
In the Senate, Democrats flipped seven seats and now hold 54 to the Republican Party’s 44. Two seats, in nail-biting contests in Alaska and Mississippi, remain undeclared. In Mississippi, where Democrat Scott Colom leads Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by about 2,500 votes, absentee ballots must arrive by Tuesday and counties must certify results by Friday.
In the House, Democrats held 254 seats to the GOP’s 163 as of midday Monday, comfortably passing the majority threshold of 218, with 18 races yet to be called, according to the Associated Press. The latest estimates show that the party is on track to win its largest majority since 2008. And there are still seats it could flip, including Colorado’s Fourth District, where Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, a staunch Trump ally, trails Democrat Eileen Laubacher by about 3,200 votes with 97% of the vote counted.
At the White House, President Trump signaled he would work with Democrats during his remaining two years in office but said he wouldn’t hesitate to use his veto power. Trump also acknowledged that the Iran war contributed to Republican losses, but defended his decision to pursue the conflict. Vice President JD Vance, though, blamed the scale of GOP losses squarely on the war with Iran. “The real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone,” he wrote in a post on X. “The reason we lost is the war.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing intense political backlash over the conflict. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, plans to force a House vote on impeaching Hegseth as early as this week. But Trump continues to express confidence in Hegseth and insists he is not considering replacing his Pentagon chief at least not yet.
On election night, as Democrats were on the brink of gaining control of Congress, Trump told the New York Times that he was “absolutely willing” to accept the results.
But as Republicans grappled with the fallout from their bruising defeat, Trump reversed course, publicly questioning the legitimacy of the outcome while suggesting without evidence, as he did in 2020, that the voting machines were rigged.