U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth struck a defiant tone Tuesday as he faces potential impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives this week, casting the effort as an attack on American service members.

Hegseth during a rare news conference at the Pentagon called the impeachment effort a “farce” and flatly rejected the notion that he had committed impeachable offenses as the top civilian leader of the military. He likened himself to President Donald Trump, who was twice impeached during his first term.

“Let’s be clear about what this resolution actually does. It tells our enemies — Iran, the cartels, every adversary watching — that the United States will actually punish its own warriors and its own civilian leadership for successfully executing lawful military operations,” Hegseth said.

The House, led by Republicans during the lame-duck session following the Nov. 3 election, is set to vote on impeaching Hegseth as soon as Wednesday, with a procedural vote expected later Tuesday. 

Massie impeachment articles

Rep. Thomas Massie, an outgoing Kentucky Republican, introduced articles of impeachment Monday alleging the defense secretary waged unlawful war against Iran, ordered extrajudicial killings and ignored laws intended to minimize civilian casualties, among other charges. 

Impeachment would represent an extraordinary rebuke of one of the most divisive members of Trump’s Cabinet. Democrats, as well as some Republicans, are expected to support the effort, raising the possibility the articles will pass and trigger a trial in the Senate, though the outcome is unclear there.

Hegseth, a 46-year-old former Fox News personality who narrowly won Senate confirmation last year, has sought to project a swashbuckling, masculine image as the military’s top civilian leader. He has rebranded the Department of Defense as the “Department of War,” purged numerous high-ranking officers and tried to kick critical media outlets out of the Pentagon.

On Tuesday, Hegseth called Massie a “disgruntled and defeated congressman” who is attempting a “political spectacle” driven by ego and resentment. Massie, who has often clashed with Trump, lost his primary in May to a Trump-backed challenger.

“It’s a farce and it’s a stunt and everybody knows it,” Hegseth said.

Drug boats

Massie told reporters on Monday that Hegseth’s conduct of the military has endangered Americans. 

As an example, he pointed to a second strike conducted on survivors of a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean that had already been hit, suggesting it will encourage enemies of the U.S. to act similarly in the future. Hegseth has denied ordering the strike, but said he supported it.

Massie dismissed Hegseth’s attacks on him, adding that he was “being polite” by using the impeachment process, which would only remove Hegseth from office but not subject him to criminal charges.

“Well, he’s right about one thing, I’m a defeated congressman. I’m not disgruntled,” Massie said.

The House can impeach Hegseth with a simple majority vote, though GOP leaders may first attempt to derail the measure with procedural votes, such as sending the articles to a committee. 

But convicting Hegseth and removing him as defense secretary will take a two-thirds vote in the Senate — 67 senators — a high bar to clear. 

The Senate is currently composed of 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats, including two independent senators who caucus with Democrats. Beginning in January, Democrats will control the chamber with at least 54 seats.

Trump praise

Trump has so far stood by Hegseth. He praised the defense secretary in multiple public remarks over the past two weeks,  saying he’s “done a fantastic job” in reducing the number of “woke” four-star generals, and for conducting the “war with Venezuela,” which he said “was over in 48 minutes.”

“Pete Hegseth should be praised, not Impeached. Congress, stand up for Pete!!!” Trump wrote in a social media post on Monday.

Impeachment would mark a significant escalation in Congress’ push to restrain Trump’s war in Iran — and its efforts to assert authority over presidential warmaking. The U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to declare war, something lawmakers haven’t done since World War II.

The U.S. military, in conjunction with Israeli forces, attacked Iran in late February. The American campaign, overseen by Hegseth, killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and numerous other Iranian officials. 

Iran retaliated by firing missiles at U.S. bases across the Middle East and moving to cut off traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping point for oil. The lack of safe, regular access to the strait has sent energy prices rising in the U.S. and around the world.

War Powers Resolution

The articles of impeachment include three articles alleging Hegseth directed military operations against Iran in violation of the War Powers Resolution, legislation Congress approved in 1973 over the veto of President Richard Nixon. The War Powers Resolution sets limits on when presidents can engage in military conflict without authorization by Congress.

The legality of the War Powers Resolution has long been disputed, with the executive branch asserting it improperly interferes with the president’s conduct of foreign policy. Secretary of State Marco Rubio as recently as May called the War Powers Resolution unconstitutional.

Impeachment would signal that executive branch officials could face consequences if they don’t abide by the War Powers Resolution.

“Pete Hegseth is obligated to follow the laws on the books, not the laws that he wants to follow,” Massie said Monday.

Hegseth disputed the allegations, saying he had overseen lawful military operations first ordered by Trump. He said initiating the impeachment effort ahead of Veterans Day on Wednesday sends a message to service members that “their service was a crime.”

“We destroyed terror regimes’ capabilities. We sank the boats carrying poison into our communities. We put a narco dictator in handcuffs,” Hegseth said. “These are not high crimes. This is the job, and it’s a job well done.”

Next Congress

Massie, who has said he would drop his impeachment effort if Hegseth resigns, suggested that the defense secretary will face more intense scrutiny in the next Congress if he survives the current impeachment effort.

Democrats, Massie said, will hold hearings on Hegseth’s conduct that could prompt more Republican senators to vote to convict him. Democrats will have a strong majority in the House beginning in January and will almost certainly have enough votes to impeach Hegseth if Massie’s effort comes up short.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat expected to become speaker in January, told reporters Monday that he is a “hard yes” on Massie’s articles of impeachment.

“He’s the architect of the reckless and costly failed war of choice in Iran,” Jeffries said of Hegseth.

On Monday, Trump told reporters at the White House that Hegseth had won two wars, referring to the conflicts in Iran and Venezuela, where U.S. special forces seized President Nicolás Maduro in a nighttime raid. Maduro is now awaiting trial in the United States on federal narco-terrorism charges.

Eighteen U.S. service members have died since the start of the war in Iran on Feb. 28, with the most recent deaths in July, according to the Defense Casualty Analysis System. No service members died in Venezuela.

Trump questioned why leaders who oversaw past wars with far higher casualty counts weren’t impeached.

“We lost 18 — 18,” Trump said. “They lost 65,000 in Vietnam.”

Ashley Murray contributed to this report.

Democrats have used President Donald Trump’s unpopularity to expand the midterm map, and analysts project the party carries momentum heading into the final two weeks of the election cycle, even as Democrats are expected to flip fewer U.S. House seats than wave elections this century.

The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter predicts Democrats will gain a net of 10 to 20 House seats in the Nov. 3 elections, Erin Covey, the top House analyst at CPR, said Monday during a panel discussion hosted by the Brookings Institution. 

The party needs to pick up just three seats to gain control next year.

The Senate is closer to a pure toss-up, with the likely range of Democratic pickups between two and six seats, experts believe. A net gain of four would give Democrats a majority in that chamber.

The landscape is more favorable for Democrats at the end of the 2026 cycle than many people expected at the outset. Trump’s dismal approval ratings, especially on the economy and the war in Iran, appear to outweigh Republicans’ advantages in the Senate map and outside spending.

That has put Democrats on offense, pushing the battleground map further into traditionally GOP states and districts.

“It’s still not clear exactly how deep into the map Democrats can play,” Covey said. “They have fewer resources to invest in some of these reach seats. But regardless of how far they can expand the map, I think they are going to be in a very good position to win the House, and the Senate perhaps as well.”

The president’s party almost always loses House seats in midterms as its base voters are less motivated to turn out and those without strong partisan allegiances tend to opt to balance out the president’s power.

That happens “even when the president’s popular, even when there’s a good economy,” Christopher Warshaw, a professor at Georgetown University’s school of public policy, said on the Brookings panel. “And today the president, of course, is unpopular, and we have a relatively poor economy.”

Promises not kept

Driving Trump’s unpopularity is the administration’s failure to rein in inflation and to stay out of foreign wars, which was core to his appeal in the 2024 election, William Galston, a senior fellow in Brookings’ governance studies program, said. 

Galston was also an official in President Bill Clinton’s White House and has staffed Democratic presidential campaigns.

Trump also blew a public-opinion advantage on immigration with an aggressive crackdown in the country’s interior that resulted in shooting deaths of U.S. citizens by federal agents, overshadowing his administration’s success at limiting illegal immigration at the southern border, Galston said.

“Trump has not done what he said he was going to do, that is, focus relentlessly on prices and bring them down,” Galston said. “He has done what he said he wouldn’t do, and that is start yet another difficult war in the Middle East … and third, he has taken what should have been his big winning issue, namely immigration, and turned it into a jump ball.”

As a result, the president’s approval rating is at record lows, with a Reuters/Ipsos poll Monday showing only 31% of voters approve of his job as president.

His record on the economy is generally viewed even more unfavorably, often polling in the 20s, Galston said.

“Other than core MAGA supporters, it is very difficult to find any appreciable pool of voters who think that the president has done a good job managing inflation, high prices, affordability,” Galston said.

Some regions, particularly rural areas, have been especially hard hit by Trump’s economic policies. That has put House districts in Iowa, southern Minnesota, Upstate New York and South Texas that had trended toward Republicans in recent decades back in play for Democrats, Covey said.

House elections: wave or ripple?

Still, even the upper limits of Democrats’ House gains would be well short of what both parties have seen in recent midterm elections. 

Democrats gained 41 seats in Trump’s first midterm in 2018 and Republicans gained 63 seats in President Barack Obama’s first midterm in 2010. And in 2006, Democrats capitalized on an unpopular Middle East war to net 31 seats during George W. Bush’s presidency.

In part that’s due to Democrats’ “higher floor” this year, Covey said in an interview. Because they’ll enter Election Day with 214 of the chamber’s 435 seats, plus a vacancy in a reliably blue Florida district, they have less far to go to gain a majority and also less potential to expand.

To reach the same 235-seat size Democrats had after the 2018 elections, they need to gain half as many, Covey said.

Fewer competitive House districts, after redistricting and geographic sorting, also factor into potential gains, she said.

Long-term effects of redistricting

Starting with Texas Republicans in August 2025, state leaders redrew several House districts this cycle in rare mid-decade redistricting. In a neutral year, the redistricting arms race should have netted Republicans between eight and 10 House seats, Warshaw said.

But this year, the GOP will likely gain around three seats from redistricting, Covey said.

“That is not a lot,” she said. “There is a world in which the environment is so bad for them that they don’t net any at all, and that’s because the bulk of these districts that were redrawn were redrawn under the assessment, I think, that it would be a better or at least less terrible political environment for Republicans than what has panned out.”

That environment will shift in the next two election cycles, while the district lines are less likely to move. Democrats are likely to have trouble keeping those seats past this cycle, Covey and Warshaw said.

“In a midterm environment in 2026, that’s not going to stop Democrats from taking control of the House,” Warshaw said. “But in 2028 or 2030, I think the mid-decade redistrictings will have a much more important impact.”

Spending gap greatest in Senate races

Spending by super PACs and other outside groups has heavily favored Republicans this cycle, though individual Democratic candidates have often outraised their Republican counterparts.

The spending in House races is relatively even, Covey said, but Republican groups have poured money into competitive Senate races.

That may indicate the GOP campaign groups view the Senate majority as still up for grabs, and concede the House is likely to flip.

“Republicans came into this cycle with a massive spending advantage on the super PAC side,” she said. “What has happened is that Republicans have definitely used that spending advantage in the Senate races to try to attempt to shore up their majority there, even as they largely concede that the House is probably gone at this point.”

U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, the Republican incumbent running for reelection in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, one of the most hotly contested House races in the country, has decided his best chance is to dance with the one who brought him — President Donald Trump. 

“Derrick, this guy he fights like hell. He’s in a little bit of a community that tends to be on slightly, a little bit more than we wanted, left, but he loves them all, and he’s very popular, and he’s going to win by a lot,” Trump said of Van Orden at a June rally in Chippewa Falls. “You’re doing well. I understand you’re really doing well. So, thank you and he’s a real fighter … we’ve been friends right from the beginning.” 

Trump’s approval ratings have hit all-time lows in Wisconsin recently, a potential problem for Van Orden, whose seat is one of the Democratic Party’s top targets for flipping this year. The two-term Republican is running for the second time against Democrat Rebecca Cooke, who two years ago lost to Van Orden by only 2.7 points, in a district where Trump beat Vice President Kamala Harris by 7.4 points. 

Between the two campaigns and outside groups, the increasingly heated race is nearing $30 million in spending on mostly negative ads. Van Orden’s ads have alliteratively accused Cooke of being “corrupt” and “communist” while calling her authenticity into question — largely over charges that she’s highlighted her work as a waitress while downplaying her previous work for Democratic political campaigns and interest groups. 

“I think the campaign has gotten intensely negative, with authenticity being a core theme,” Anthony Chergosky, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, said. “I’m seeing authenticity come up on both sides, where Congressman Van Orden and his allies are going after the persona or biography of Rebecca Cooke, particularly her waitressing, has become kind of a flashpoint in this campaign. And for Congressman Van Orden, Democrats are going after him as kind of saying that he’s part of the problem in Washington, and that’s a tried and true strategy for unseating an incumbent, to portray them as part of the problem.”

Congress, Chergosky continued, “has rock bottom approval ratings as an institution, so incumbents are often targeted due to their membership in an unpopular institution. Chergosky expects the attack ads will blanket the airwaves up to Election Day, he said. “I think that this is going to continue to be a very negative campaign.” 

Across the country, a number of vulnerable Republicans have sought to find areas to distance themselves from an unpopular president. Even in Wisconsin, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany — despite a voting record that has been in near perfect lockstep with the Trump administration — has tried to put some breathing room between himself and Trump. 

But Van Orden, a former Navy SEAL, has gone the other way, continuing to vocally support the Trump administration, the war in Iran, Trump’s tariffs, his steering of the economy and the administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown. 

In September, Van Orden was the only member of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation to speak at Trump’s midterm convention in Texas. 

Throughout the year, the 3rd CD has hosted a parade of high-profile administration officials and top-ranking Republicans. 

Van Orden has appeared in his western Wisconsin district with Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services Administrator Mehmet Oz and House Speaker Mike Johnson. 

“We are defending, right now, the foundational truths, and I’ve got to have warriors in the room to do it,” Johnson said at a rally in Sparta earlier this month. “There is no stronger warrior than Derrick Van Orden.” 

In recent weeks, Van Orden has made online posts suggesting he would volunteer to join the firing squad in the planned execution of Nidal Hasan, the man convicted of a mass shooting at Fort Hood, accusing Cooke of supporting the “chemical and physical castration of children and men in woman’s locker rooms” and alleging that she wants to bring “Somali fraud” to Wisconsin. 

He’s also posted a number of AI-generated videos of Cooke and other Democratic Party of Wisconsin officials, a tactic that drew a cease and desist letter from the Cooke campaign. Van Orden called the letter a “publicity stunt.” 

A spokesperson for Van Orden did not respond to a request for comment, but in an interview with Channel 3000, Van Orden strongly endorsed Trump’s ongoing war in Iran and argued that the high price of gas and diesel is not only because of the war causing shocks to global oil markets but also due to Democrats “chasing the green new scam” and U.S. oil companies “profiteering.” 

“Is this politically convenient right now? Absolutely not,” Van Orden said in the interview, in which he also referenced the “radical Muslim mullahs” who led the Iranian revolution in the 1970s. “Would it be much easier for Republicans to maintain the House and the Senate if we weren’t involved in this conflict in Iran? Yes. I would be a fool not to acknowledge that. But at some point, we have to deal with this issue that’s been going on for a half a century.”

Chergosky said that Van Orden “doubling down on Trumpism” might be a valid strategy in a district that’s voted for Trump three times. 

The problem, he said, is that those Trump voters haven’t always been reliable when Trump isn’t on the ballot. 

“I think Republicans in this district are making a play to turn out the pro-Trump base, and it’s a base that has delivered for Trump three times, but with any midterm election, we’re going to see a significant drop-off in voter turnout,” Chergosky said. “So a lot of times these midterms come down to the question of, among the voters who voted in the presidential election, which of them stay home this time around? In other words, who drops out of the electorate compared to the presidential election? And so I think the concern for Republicans is that a lot of these pro-Trump, low-propensity voters are going to drop out of the electorate, and I can see them trying to avoid that certainly through Congressman Van Orden’s strategy.” 

But the 3rd CD is also a district that for decades was represented by Ron Kind, a moderate Democrat. Van Orden, with his divisive and confrontational style, has been elected twice deploying a different approach to politics; still, joining forces with some of the most controversial members of Trump’s cabinet could alienate voters. 

At an agricultural roundtable hosted by the Cooke campaign last week, voters complained about the anti-vaccine “conspiracy theories” espoused by figures such as Kennedy resulting in measles outbreaks in the area. At a town hall hosted by the Wisconsin Farmers Union in Gays Mills, attendees lamented the treatment of immigrant workers at the district’s farms and manufacturing plants. 

“Derrick Van Orden has not delivered a successful farm bill out of this Congress,” Cooke said last week. “I don’t think that he’s really done very much at all to support our family farms or people in agriculture across this district.”

In the Channel 3000 interview, Van Orden made the case that he’s been a serious legislator, listing the three committees he sits on.

While in Congress, he voted in favor of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cut billions from federal healthcare programs and has hurt the bottom line of rural hospitals in the 3rd CD. After voting for the law, Van Orden has touted his work to provide millions of dollars to rural hospitals in Wisconsin. But that funding provides only $200 million after the OBBBA cut $7 billion in federal healthcare funds meant for the state, an analysis by KFF found last year

From his position on the House Agriculture committee, Van Orden has suggested expanding the H2-A visa program to help the district’s dairy farms get more immigrant labor. But the H2-A program only applies to seasonal farm workers, not the year round workers needed on a dairy farm. Van Orden has also proposed the creation of a new system in which currently undocumented workers return to their home country and pay $2,500 to get in line and wait to be approved for a new visa. 

“They should expect me to work doggedly, like I have been doing. I’ve been an incredibly effective legislator,” he said.

With less than 50 days before the midterm elections, national figures and groups of both parties have increased their attention on Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, where incumbent Republican Rep. Bryan Steil is running against former VA hospital nurse Mitchell Berman. 

The focus on the 1st CD race comes as the national map of competitive congressional districts has expanded with Democrats increasingly challenging Republicans in areas where President Donald Trump won handily in 2024. A national Marquette Law School poll of likely voters released earlier this week found that Democrats are leading on a generic ballot by 13 points. 

Trump’s super PAC, MAGA Inc., is spending heavily in a number of districts that Trump won by more than 5 points two years ago, The New Republic reported Thursday, signaling that Republicans are being forced to devote resources to defending previously safe seats. 

In Wisconsin, Trump’s PAC plans to spend $90,000 boosting Steil and just $21,000 boosting U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden in the state’s 3rd Congressional District, the New York Times reported. The 3rd CD has previously been one of the most hotly contested seats in the country. 

On Tuesday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced that it was adding Berman to its “Red to Blue” program, signaling a coming influx of national financial and infrastructure support. 

“Wisconsinites in the First Congressional District are tired of Bryan Steil’s votes to make life more expensive for working people while also ensuring that he, his wealthy donors, and Donald Trump can enrich themselves,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesperson Rachel La Due said in a statement. “Mitchell Berman joining the DCCC’s ‘Red to Blue’ program shows what Wisconsinites have seen for years: Bryan Steil has failed to stand up for working families, work to lower costs, or make healthcare more accessible.”

Since Trump’s return to office, Steil has regularly been involved in high profile political efforts, including as one of the lead authors of the bill, championed by Trump, to implement strict national voter ID requirements. 

Steil was first elected in 2018 following the retirement of former House Speaker Paul Ryan. Republicans have won the district by large margins in every congressional election since 1998. 

In 2018, with the seat open for the first time in more than two decades, the DCCC supported Randy Bryce’s run against Steil. Steil still won that race by more than 12 points — in a year in which Democrats won back control of the House nationally. The 1st CD has not been represented by a Democrat since Peter Barca in 1995. 

Zach Bannon, a spokesperson for the National Republican Campaign Committee, said in a statement that Berman’s campaign is “out of touch” with voters in the district. 

“Liberal activist Mitchell Berman is completely out of touch with southeast Wisconsin, pushing a radical far-left agenda that puts politics ahead of common sense,” Bannon said. “While Berman marches in lockstep with the extreme left, Congressman Bryan Steil continues delivering real results for hardworking Wisconsin families.”

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House departed Wednesday for a seven-week campaign break after spending less than two weeks in session during August and September.

The extended “district work period” is intended to give incumbents from both political parties time to meet with constituents and fundraise back home before voting in this year’s midterm elections ends on Nov. 3. 

House Republican leaders hope that more time campaigning will help some of their most vulnerable members secure reelection, allowing the party to hold onto its majority for another two years. 

Less time on Capitol Hill also means less time voting on potentially divisive issues. Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, for example, would have been able to force a vote to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday had leaders not sent lawmakers home a day early.

Despite the somewhat limited time in session, Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday he believes Republicans have accomplished much during their nearly two years with unified control of government. But he brushed aside requests to keep the chamber in town to address warnings from several executives about artificial intelligence.

The Louisiana Republican pointed to a bipartisan task force that issued a 273-page report in December 2024, saying those recommendations meant lawmakers would not be “caught flat-footed here.” 

“We’ve been working on this for years and we’re right there where we need to be,” Johnson said.

Moments later, however, he added Congress cannot apply those recommendations to draft legislation to regulate AI because “nobody in the room knows yet what that should look like.”

“Why? Because we don’t have the latest information,” Johnson said. “We are not in the … frontier labs who have taken this technology many steps further than even when our own report was published.” 

He argued that instead of Congress debating legislation, the executives of AI companies should instead “self-police” and “self-regulate.”

“They don’t need the government to tell them to slow it down,” Johnson said. “If they want to slow it down, they should.”

‘Nothing’ done, Dem leader says

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries sharply disagreed with Johnson and Republicans’ approach, saying Wednesday that there was considerable work left to do, despite the planned recess. 

“They have decided to cancel votes and run out of town without providing any relief to hard-working American taxpayers,” he said. 

“Republicans have done nothing to lower the high cost of groceries,” he continued. “Nothing to make healthcare more affordable, nothing to end the reckless war of choice in Iran, nothing to lower gas prices, nothing to stop the violent mass deportation machine, nothing to hold the Trump administration accountable for the unprecedented corruption unleashed on the American people.” 

Jeffries questioned why Republicans haven’t been able to improve the economy and lower prices for everyday Americans, despite having made it a central campaign promise during the last election cycle. 

“For two years, Americans have been wondering — were MAGA Republicans lying, indifferent, or are they just incompetent?” he said. “We now have an answer: It’s all of the above.”

Long lame duck

The House will return after the election for two weeks in November and three weeks in December. That will give lawmakers a total of 27 weeks in session this year, though those are rarely the type of five-day weeks most Americans are used to. 

House lawmakers often take their first vote of the week on Monday evenings around 6:30 p.m. and their last vote of the week on Thursday morning, before many walk down the steps of the Capitol to cars waiting to take them to the airport. 

Some weeks are shorter, giving House lawmakers a total of 72 days in session so far with 20 more days of voting on Capitol Hill scheduled before the end of the year. 

An American with four weeks of time off a year spends about 48 weeks or 240 days at work, significantly more than the United States House of Representatives dedicated to debating and voting.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that Americans in the private sector with more than 20 years of experience get, on average, four weeks of paid vacation a year. 

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump tried to maintain power following his loss in the 2020 election by exerting pressure on state election officials to, in some cases, “find” the votes.

Loyalist Republicans in Congress then attempted to deny Joe Biden the Oval Office when lawmakers gathered to certify the Electoral College, bringing to light loopholes and deficiencies in the law that could have denied voters their choice. 

Similar flaws exist for U.S. House elections. 

With concern mounting among GOP lawmakers they may lose control of that chamber following November’s midterm elections, it is not a stretch to imagine state officials could, once again, receive calls from the White House or powerful Republicans in Congress.

What’s less understood is that the House itself has the ability to investigate and potentially overturn the results of any of its 435 races. In a House narrowly controlled by one party or the other, disputes over a handful of seats could become significant. 

“The House and the Senate, they are the final judge of their own elections,” explained John C. Fortier, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

“So, in theory, if a state went through a process and counted all the votes and certified the votes and sent in the results, it still could be questioned by Congress,” he added. “The House has done this in the past. It is much less common today. There was a time in the 19th century where it became extremely common.”

Experts and officials interviewed by States Newsroom pointed to several circumstances that could occur.

State officials could hold back an election certificate, a member-elect could seek to block another member-elect from taking the oath, or legitimate challenges could occur under a federal law dealing with contested elections.

States act first

The first step after votes are counted, or in some cases recounted, is for a state’s top election official, typically a secretary of state, to certify the results and send the certificates of election to the U.S. House clerk. 

But that doesn’t always happen.

New York state election officials held back Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney’s ability to join the House following the 2020 elections amid a legal battle in an extremely close race.

It wasn’t until a state Supreme Court justice ruled in Tenney’s favor that she took her oath of office in February 2021, more than three months after the election.

Fortier detailed another particularly messy example of a disputed House race in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District following the 2018 election.

The state board of elections opted not to quickly certify either Democrat Dan McCready or Republican Mark Harris as the winner given concerns about mail-in ballots. 

It took until late February, nearly four months after Election Day, for the board to call for a new election after Harris testified during a hearing that “his political operative orchestrated a fraudulent absentee ballot scheme,” according to an article from NC Newsline. 

That September, Republican Rep. Dan Bishop won a special election over McCready.

And while the House didn’t step in at the time, it could have. “They essentially deferred and kind of waited it out,” Fortier said. 

Neither of those holdups determined control of the House, but a few state officials deciding not to send certificates to the clerk later this year could have an impact come January.

State officials are not exempt from political influence from Washington, something that was on full display beginning in 2025 when Trump and Republicans in Congress called on state legislatures to redistrict to give them an advantage in this fall’s elections. The results have rolled out even through September.

House members can try blocking members-elect

Another potential roadblock emerges on the first day of a new Congress when any member-elect can try to block another member-elect from being sworn in. 

That happened in 2021 when Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy objected to lawmakers from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin taking their oaths. The Democratic-controlled House voted 371-2 to approve a resolution directing the speaker to swear in everyone. 

The House has two additional options should a member-elect challenge another member-elect taking the oath. 

The first is to “provisionally or conditionally” seat that person and refer the case to the House Administration Committee for investigation. The second is to vote to not seat anyone and refer the dispute to the panel to determine who is entitled to it, according to a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

The report notes that “it would be under only the most exceptional circumstances for the House to refuse to seat, even provisionally, a Member holding valid election credentials from the state, and it appears that this third option has happened since 1933 only two times on the first day of the new Congress, and once during the Congress concerning a special election.”

The House voting not to seat anyone “would effectively nullify a certificate of election that was previously issued by the executive authority of the state,” according to CRS. 

How the House can probe election results

The Federal Contested Elections Act of 1969 provides another avenue for lawmakers on the House Administration Committee to investigate any election once a complaint is filed, typically by the losing party. 

This has happened dozens of times throughout the decades, including in December 2020, when Iowa Democratic candidate Rita Hart asked the House to decide whether Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks actually won the race, triggering a months-long investigation. 

The FCEA allows the committee to “impound records, ballots, tally sheets, ballot stubs, poll books, ballot boxes, voting machines or other electronic voting systems, and irregular or defective paper and absentee ballots,” according to CRS. 

The committee has the option to use the vote count sent by the state or “conduct its own recount and make its own determinations and findings,” the CRS report states.

House members conducting a probe can even instruct states how to handle ballots.

“Where state law requires destruction of ballots after an election, the committee may notify the state election officials to preserve the ballots despite the state law,” the report says. 

The panel would eventually make a recommendation and the House would decide by a simple majority vote which candidate to seat or whether to declare the seat vacant. 

That vote is the final decision “regardless of whether or not the Member-elect had been sworn in on the first day of the new Congress,” says the report.

Decisions about how to decide any contested elections would be made by the new House that will convene in early January, not the one that will return to Capitol Hill during the lame-duck session that’s set to last several weeks in November and December. 

“It’s not as if the outgoing Congress could just make a decision as to who’s contested and who won the election,” Fortier said. “It’s the new Congress that would do that.”

But not just anyone can file a contest with the House. 

The person who challenges the results “must show that but for the voting irregularities or acts of fraud, the results of the election would have been different and the contestant would have prevailed,” according to CRS. 

Those investigations typically take months. The Iowa case of Hart v. Miller-Meeks began in December 2020 when Hart, the Democrat, filed her contest. 

The Administration Committee held a hearing in March 2021 after Miller-Meeks tried to dismiss the case. Then-Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., argued against those efforts, saying “the American people deserve to know who actually won this election. And the people of Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District deserve to be represented by that person.”

The case ended several weeks later after Hart withdrew her challenge. 

‘As far as someone’s willing to burn it’ 

Casey Burgat, legislative affairs program director and associate professor at George Washington University, said while any member-elect can challenge another member-elect’s ability to take the oath on the first day of the new Congress, it is somewhat unlikely a genuine attempt is made to do that next year.

But that comes with a caveat.

“I think the prospect for the tit-for-tat or the brinkmanship goes up exponentially if it is a close majority,” he said. “That just creates an opportunity for parties to see majority status and find reasons to not seat the other side.”

Whether any potential challenge is taken seriously would likely be determined by who makes it. 

“If it’s just a flamethrower, a Chip Roy-type person, I think that’ll be discounted more than if it’s led by someone like a Mike Johnson or someone in leadership or Steve Scalise,” Burgat said. “I’ve had conversations with a lot of these members and staff of like, how far can this go. And my response to them is often, as far as someone’s willing to burn it.” 

Sarah A. Binder, senior fellow in governance studies at Brookings, said it’s unlikely that any Republican could successfully challenge a Democratic member-elect taking the oath if Democrats have a true majority and have elected their speaker.

“There have been some years where the member-elect whose seat is being challenged is prior to that told to sit down, not to stand when the rest are to be sworn in,” she said. “But other times they actually swear in everybody because your winning seat could still be contested after the swearing in.”

Then there’s the rogue clerk theory

In addition to the possibility a state official holds back an election certificate, a member-elect seeks to block another member-elect from taking the oath and legitimate challenges occur under the Federal Contested Elections Act, some Democrats have raised concerns about the clerk of the House.

The nonpartisan official’s office assembles the list of members-elect once they receive a certificate of election from a state official. And that list determines who votes for speaker, which takes place on the first day of the new Congress before any of the 435 members are actually sworn in. 

The House cannot move on to any other business until a speaker is elected. 

AEI’s Fortier said the clerk’s authority is ministerial and that whoever holds that office doesn’t really have discretion over who to add to the member-elect list once the state sends in the certificate of election. 

The clerk going rogue during the vote for speaker also is highly improbable, he said. 

“I think it is not a very likely scenario, even though I think people are thinking about it. I am not even sure it’s realistic,” Fortier said. “I think this is very difficult to imagine.”

Burgat from GWU had a similar assessment that the House clerk doesn’t hold the authority to disregard election certificates once they arrive or to try to meddle in who can vote for speaker. 

“The minute that the secretary of state or its equivalent certifies the election and transmits to the clerk, a nonpartisan position, it goes on the roll,” he said. “The politics comes in after that fact.”

The clerk’s office wrote in a statement that it “receives and verifies Certificates of Election from every state, placing on the Roll of Representatives‑elect only those individuals whose credentials show they were regularly elected.”