Democrat Adam Gray won the U.S. House contest in California's 13th District on Tuesday night, ousting GOP Rep. John Duarte in what is likely the closest House race in 2024.
Gray defeated Duarte by 187 votes as of Wednesday morning, though that margin is not yet certified. A recount, if ordered, is very unlikely to overturn Gray’s election.
With Gray's victory now called, the final breakdown of the 119th Congress will be 220 Republican seats to 215 Democratic ones, the smallest majority in more than a century. The final margin means Democrats netted one seat in the 2024 elections despite the fact that Donald Trump won.
However, Republicans' margin in the House will be even slimmer than that for the first few months of 2025. That’s because Trump selected two GOP House members—Reps. Elise Stefanik of New York and Mike Waltz of Florida—for his administration. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida also announced he would not be taking the oath of office for the northern Florida House seat he won, likely to avoid the release of a damning House Ethics Committee report on his alleged sex trafficking.
That will leave Republicans with a 217-215 majority until special elections can be held in the spring.
With that margin, House Speaker Mike Johnson cannot lose a single vote if the entire House is in attendance since losing one Republican vote would end in a 216-216 tie and the bill would fail.
And that will prove to be a near-impossible task for Johnson. The fractious Republican conference is filled with right-wing agitators who love to vote “no” rather than do the difficult work of compromising and negotiating.
For example, with a slightly larger margin in the current Congress, Johnson has had to seek Democratic votes to pass government funding bills, giving Democrats negotiating power.
In September, Johnson relied on Democrats to pass a continuing resolution that funded the government through Dec. 20. In that vote, 82 House Republicans voted to shut down the government, a large number that would have doomed the legislation had Democrats not voted in favor.
The narrow margin will also make Trump's agenda harder to pass. Republicans in competitive House seats may not want to vote for Trump's far-right legislation out of fear they'd lose their seats in the 2026 midterms.
For example, in 2017, Trump’s tax-scam bill—his signature legislative accomplishment in his first term—passed. But 12 Republicans voted against it, with another three GOP lawmakers not voting. This time, Trump won’t have 15 votes to spare.
Get your popcorn. It’s going to be an ugly, chaotic mess for Trump and his party.
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