As votes are counted across the country, it appears Speaker Johnson will hold on to his House majority and complete the Republican trifecta control of Washington come January, 2025. While keeping the House after two years of dysfunction and partisan gridlock may be impressive, it is going to be immensely difficult to get key legislative items over the finish line in a narrowly divided House of Representatives. 

Republicans have been nothing short of ecstatic over the last 72 hours as it became clear that they would take the presidency in a landslide victory, and retake the Senate by flipping four seats. The House, while it has not yet been called, is clearly leaning in favor of going to President Trump’s party, as well. 

According to the New York Times’ tracker of House elections, Republicans have won 210 seats to the Democrats’ 198. The GOP leads in 13 of 27 uncalled races so far, and if that holds, they will end up with a five-seat majority in the House. That would be the smallest House Republican majority in a trifecta of Washington in American history. 

The implications for such a narrow majority are numerous, especially considering the dysfunction that occurred during Trump’s first two years in office, when the GOP had a 23-seat majority and were still unable to move some of their most important pieces of legislation. That dysfunction made it so that Trump’s only real legislative accomplishment of that first session was a tax reform bill that is up for renewal in 2025. 

During the first two years of the Biden administration, Speaker Pelosi was able to masterfully move legislative priorities through the chamber with just a four-seat majority that spanned the ideological spectrum, from the Blue Dog caucus chairman, Congressman Jared Golden, to self-described democratic socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

If past is prologue, and Mr. Johnson is able to hold on to his position as speaker of the house, then it will be incredibly difficult to get their wish list items through the chamber. When the House is considering legislation, it is a requirement that members pass a “rule” to allow for consideration of a bill so that it can pass with a simple majority. During Mrs. Pelosi’s eight years as speaker, not a single rule vote failed. Under the leadership of both Speaker McCarthy and Mr. Johnson, the Republican House majority failed to pass six rules — a number that had never been hit in a single previous session of Congress. 

The spending bills, especially, will be a hard lift for the speaker. When Mr. McCarthy was elected to the top spot in 2023, he made the promise that his conference will only pass the 12 annual appropriations bills as standalone measures, though because of Republican infighting, both he and Mr. Johnson were forced to renege on that promise. 

As always, the hard-right House Freedom Caucus is going to be a headache for GOP leadership. The group has grown steadily to 45 members in the current Congress from 28 members just eight years ago, and even under the first Trump administration, the group was able to kill one of his healthcare reform bills and some other funding measures.