Republicans’ even thinner new House majority could complicate Trump’s policy plans

House Republicans will enter the new Congress with an even narrower majority than many expected, complicating President-elect Donald Trump’s push to quickly enact his conservative policy plans.

The House Republican conference will consist of 220 lawmakers, two fewer than the five-seat majority that the GOP struggled to manage in this Congress. If Republicans want to pass bills without relying on Democrats, they can lose support from only two GOP lawmakers to reach the 218 votes needed to approve legislation.

But that margin of error will quickly evaporate early next year because two Republicans are expected to join the Trump administration, and former congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) will not return to Congress following his short bid for attorney general.

“Do the math; we’ve got nothing to spare,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) said during his weekly news conference.

Though House Republicans have been projecting unity and excitement about finally holding all levers of power in Washington, many Republican lawmakers and staffers concede that their narrow and ideologically fractured majority will be a major hurdle.

And no one will face more pressure to deliver Trump’s agenda in the House than Johnson, who has already had to corral a one-seat majority in his short tenure. He must now find a way to push ahead with Trump’s often unorthodox proposals while protecting the reelection bids of swing-district Republicans, who are the front line of the majority.

“We could be the most consequential Congress of the modern era because we have to fix everything,” Johnson said. “We know how to work with a small majority; that’s our custom now.”

House and Senate GOP leaders are already discussing what policies to address early next year - and how they will move forward.

They are eyeing two large-scale policy bills: one that would include border security and energy-related changes, then an economic package that they hope will reauthorize Trump’s 2017 tax law. Lawmakers and aides said that pushback on the bills could force them to wait until April, when the two vacant Florida seats are filled, to hold votes.

House Republicans hope that Trump’s tendency to strong-arm lawmakers could be an asset. If lawmakers balk at certain policy proposals, House Freedom Caucus Rep. Ralph Norman (R-South Carolina) said, “We’ll call President Trump.”

Many pragmatic Republicans have faith that Johnson will use his strong relationship with Trump to protect vulnerable incumbents. “Trump and the speaker speak a lot. I think [Trump] understands that we need to protect the majority-makers,” said Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez (R-Florida).

“Yes, we need to be bold. We need to do things that he promised,” he continued, “But those things can be accomplished without hurting the majority-makers.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), one of Trump’s fiercest allies in the House, said that if House or Senate Republicans do not follow the mandate voters gave Trump, megadonors such as billionaire Elon Musk could help voters push dissenters out of office. Musk recently posted on X that Republicans “who oppose reform will lose their primary/election. Period.”

Greene credited Trump for pulling Hill Republicans across the electoral finish line. “The way the House and the Senate needs to understand the mandate is that the American people want President Trump’s agenda done,” she said. “This wasn’t a ‘we support Republicans’ election.”

Some of the members who often blocked their majority from passing legislation, including Gaetz, former House Freedom Caucus Chair Bob Good (R-Virginia) and Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Montana), will be gone. Republican lawmakers largely despised Gaetz in particular, especially after he led the historic charge to oust Kevin McCarthy (R-California) as speaker of the House.

“It’s about to be more cohesive,” moderate Rep. Don Bacon (R-Nebraska) said. “There are now more team players, not the ‘it’s my way or the highway’ type of mentality that a small number had last cycle.”

Their five-seat majority this term - which often shrank as members resigned from Congress or took significant leaves of absences - exposed deep divisions as hard-liners banded together to block compromise and sink votes.

Some Republican lawmakers grew tired of leadership bending to the will of a small faction and forcing McCarthy and Johnson to rely on Democrats to pass legislation.

But the conference may need to rely on Democrats again, especially on days when GOP absences may give them the majority for the day.

“Pragmatically, you’re going to have to have Democrats vote with you to make some of these dreams become a reality,” said Rep. Max L. Miller (R-Ohio).

“That is going to be, I think, the challenge for some people within my party to accept,” he continued. “You still do need the other side, even though you do have a trifecta.”