Get Ready for Total Chaos as House GOP Wins Historically Puny Majority

The Republican Party’s majority in the House of Representatives is looking meager.

Three House races remain outstanding as of Wednesday—two toss-up races in California’s 13th and 45th districts and one in Iowa’s 1st district that’s leaning Republican, according to CBS.

But if current results hold, the GOP will have a record-small majority—220 seats to Democrats’ 215—CNN data journalist Harry Enten reported Wednesday morning. “You have to go all the way back since the Herbert Hoover administration to find an even smaller majority after November elections,” he observed.

And the majority could grow even narrower with the resignation of one Republican representative and the likely resignations of two more.

Representative Matt Gaetz has already resigned from his seat after Donald Trump nominated him for attorney general. Gaetz has since withdrawn as Trump’s pick in light of sexual misconduct allegations but said he does not intend to join the upcoming Congress. Representatives Elise Stefanik and Mike Waltz, whom Trump has nominated to join the incoming administration, are expected to resign in January.

Those resignations would deflate the GOP’s majority to 217–215. In that event, CNN anchor John Berman noted, in the weeks or months before the vacated seats are filled, a single Republican defector could sink a bill. Enten observed that that has not been the case in 100-plus years.

This is just the latest development throwing cold water on Republican narratives about a 2024 landslide. While Trump crowed about his purported “unprecedented and powerful mandate” on election night, as more votes have been counted, it has become clear that Trump did not win a majority of the popular vote, and his popular-vote margin over Kamala Harris has shrunk considerably.

Trump’s pick for special envoy to Ukraine wants to force Ukrainians to negotiate with Russia by holding aid hostage.

President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday announced he has selected retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg to be his special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, a position focused on ending the two-year-long war. Kellogg previously served as both national security adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence and National Security Council chief of staff during Trump’s first term.  

“I am very pleased to nominate General Keith Kellogg to serve as Assistant to the President and Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Keith has led a distinguished Military and Business career, including serving in highly sensitive National Security roles in my first Administration. He was with me right from the beginning! Together, we will secure PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH, and Make America, and the World, SAFE AGAIN!”

Last spring, Kellogg proposed forcing an ultimatum on Ukraine: Engage in peace talks in order to keep receiving aid. The plan, which was put forward with the help of Fred Fleitz, his successor as chief of staff at the National Security Council, would also force Russia to the negotiating table by agreeing to hold off on Ukraine’s admission to NATO. Under the plan, the cease-fire would take place along existing battle lines.

Kellogg’s views align well with an incoming administration that seems to have little interest in providing aid to Ukrainians, even as Russia is advancing through the country faster than ever.

Vice President–elect JD Vance is similarly opposed to more assistance. South Dakota Governor and Homeland Security secretary nominee Kristi Noem is opposed to more assistance as well, saying that the war is “Europe’s fight, not ours.”

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has come up with another conspiracy theory—that Democrats are stealing a very close election race in California. 

In California’s 13th congressional district, the votes are still being counted, and Republican Representative John Duarte fell behind Democrat Adam Gray by a narrow margin Tuesday night. To Greene, this means that something nefarious is going on. 

“Democrats are stealing another House seat! Elections nationwide should be one day, paper ballots, and require proof of citizenship with ID!!” Greene posted on X Wednesday morning. 

California has fully embraced voting by mail, instituting it statewide since 2022. As long as ballots are postmarked by Election Day, they are allowed to arrive no more than a week afterward in order to be counted, an increase from three days afterward in 2022’s midterm elections. That year, half of the state’s votes were counted after Election Day, meaning that a long wait time to count votes is not suspicious. 

In Republican-run states, though, it’s rare for such allowances to exist. In Greene’s home state of Georgia, for example, mail-in ballots aren’t universal but have to be specifically requested well in advance. Ballots have to be received within three days of Election Day, even if the voter is overseas or in the military.  

Greene and her fellow conservatives seem to hold the laughable opinion that the easier it is to vote, the more likely that Democrats and the left are fixing elections. In fact, making voting more widely accessible allows greater participation from the people who are poorer, don’t have easy access to transportation, work long hours, or are disabled, posted overseas, or any number of other valid reasons. 

Even in states like California, things could be made easier through various reforms, such as making Election Day a national holiday. But such efforts have been consistently opposed by Republicans, who have long seen higher voter turnout as a boost to Democrats. Maybe now that Donald Trump and the GOP actually won the popular vote in 2024, they will stop trying to restrict voting access.

The richest man on earth wants to eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“Delete CFPB. There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies,” Elon Musk wrote on X in response to an error-riddled clip of Trump megadonor Marc Andreessen talking about how much he hates pro-consumer regulation on the Joe Rogan show. In the video, Andreessen tells a shocked Rogan that the CFPB is debanking people and companies for “having the wrong politics.”

In reality, the CFPB has put forth measured, bipartisan policy that protects from that very situation.

Director Rohit Chopra recently stated his clear opposition to politically motivated debanking of conservatives and Christians.  

“The CFPB put out a legitimately good rule that went after banks over debanking users based on political views,” reporter Ryan Grim noted. “Now VCs and Musk who don’t like the CFPB for other reasons are straight up lying to whip people into a frenzy and defang the CFPB. The message: they think you are stupid and can’t read and are going to make your life worse in order to enrich themselves.”

Musk, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, will head the Department of Government Efficiency, and is dead set on wiping away large swaths of vital regulation, mostly to benefit people like himself. The CFPB seems to be the latest thing on this chopping block.

“You put a billionaire in charge, and shockingly he finds that an agency which fights for consumers against bank fraud is one of the first government functions that needs to go,” wrote Bernie Sanders adviser Faiz Shakir.

In a disturbing post on X, a Trump-endorsed candidate for the House of Representatives targeted and invoked an anti-Muslim trope against two Muslim members of Congress.

Florida state Senator Randy Fine, who is running to fill the vacancy in Florida’s 6th U.S. congressional district, singled out Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar on Tuesday. Quote-tweeting an endorsement from the Republican Jewish Coalition, Fine posted, “​​The ‘Hebrew Hammer’ is coming. @RashidaTlaib and @IlhanMN might consider leaving before I get there. #BombsAway.”

Tlaib and Omar are two of just three Muslim members of Congress, and the only two Muslim women.

Fine has a history of using demeaning rhetoric against Muslims and Palestinians and trafficking in Islamophobic tropes. In the past, he has said that “we have a Muslim problem in America” and that “while many Muslims are not terrorists, they are the radicals, not the mainstream.”

In August 2021, when Fine was a representative in Florida’s state House, the Council on American-Islamic Relations filed a complaint against him with the House Public Integrity and Ethics Committee, alleging that Fine “violated his duty as an elected official” by “encouraging his constituents to run over people at Palestinian advocacy protests,” “call[ing] for the annihilation of the Palestinian people,” and direct-messaging a Floridian to “blow yourself up,” among other instances of “egregious conduct.”

In September, Fine took to X to cheer the death of 26-year-old American citizen Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, an activist reportedly killed by the Israeli forces while peacefully protesting illegal settlements in the West Bank. “Throw rocks, get shot. One less #MuslimTerror ist. #FireAway,” Fine wrote.

Donald Trump threw his support behind Fine’s candidacy last week, referring to him as an “America First Patriot” in a Truth Social post.