The Republicans have won back the US House of Representatives in a blow to US President Joe Biden’s agenda.
The party won the 218 seats required in the midterm elections to secure a majority in the lower chamber of Congress, with a victory in California’s 27th Congressional district taking them over the line.
The final balance of the House remains unclear with votes in several cliff-hanger races still being counted, but the Republican Party is now projected to win between 218-223 seats in the 435-seat chamber.
After two years of Democratic control of both the House and the Senate, the power dynamic in Washington will shift.
The slender majority will give the Republicans the power to rein in the agenda of Democrat Mr Biden by hampering his ability to enact legislation, as well as to launch potentially politically damaging probes of his administration and family, though it falls far short of the “red wave” the party had hoped for in the elections.
The Democrats retained control of the upper chamber, the Senate, with former president Donald Trump, who launched his 2024 Presidential Election campaign on Tuesday, blamed by the Republicans for their poor showing.
However Kevin McCarthy, the Republicans’ leader in the House, celebrated as he said the House had been “officially flipped”.
He was picked by rank-and-file Republicans on Tuesday to be their nominee to replace Democrat Nancy Pelosi as the next Speaker of the House.
The first woman to hold the post, Mrs Pelosi, 82, has not said whether she plans to stay on as minority leader, amid speculation in Washington about her future.
Mrs Pelosi vowed that her party would exert “strong leverage over a scant Republican majority”.
