Republicans hold narrow edge in fight for US House majority

WASHINGTON: Donald Trump’s Republicans held on to a narrow edge on Friday as election officials tallied the final votes that will determine control of the US House of Representatives, though Democrats succeeded in flipping a pair of New York state seats.

Republicans have secured at least 211 seats, seven short of the majority in the 435-member chamber, with 24 races left to be called, according to projections by Edison Research. Republicans are set to hold a majority of least 53 seats in the Senate.

Full congressional control by Republicans would give Trump great leeway to pursue policies including sweeping tax cuts, energy deregulation and border security controls. Should Democrats succeed in capturing a majority, which would require them to win 18 of the 24 as-yet uncalled seats, it would give them a bulwark to push back against him.

Democrats’ hopes of capturing the House run through parts of California and New York, where challengers overnight succeeded in flipping two Republican seats. Laura Gillen unseated Republican US Representative Anthony D’Esposito to represent a section of New York City’s Long Island suburbs and Josh Riley beat Republican US Representative Marc Molinaro in the state’s Catskills region.

In Nebraska, centrist Republican US Representative Don Bacon held off a challenge by Democrat Tony Vargas in a liberal-leaning Omaha-area district.

Republicans’ majority in the Senate will allow them to confirm Trump’s appointments of cabinet members, judges and other personnel, though they will not have the 60 votes needed to quickly pass most legislation.

The other uncalled competitive Senate races are in Nevada, where incumbent Democrat Jacky Rosen led Republican challenger Sam Brown by 1.3 percentage points with 96 percent of the expected vote counted, and in Arizona, where Democrat Ruben Gallego was leading Republican Kari Lake by 1.7 percentage points with 74 percent of the expected vote counted.

Democrats are more worried about the fiscal outlook under Trump, the poll showed. Some 89 percent of Democratic respondents said they were concerned by the prospect of Trump pushing the debt higher, compared to 19 percent of Republicans. Republicans in Congress point to buoyant gains in federal tax receipts since 2017 as proof that Trump’s tax cuts raised revenues and say his current agenda will bring more of the same.

Meanwhile, federal and state authorities are investigating racist text messages sent anonymously to Black Americans across the country this week telling them they should be enslaved, prompting widespread condemnations as well as warnings.

The NAACP civil rights group said the messages urged recipients in multiple states, including Alabama, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia, to report to a plantation to pick cotton, an offensive reference to past enslavement of Black people in the United States.

It remained unclear which individuals or entities were behind the reported texts, or how many people had received them.

People in at least 21 states received the texts, including high school and college students, CNN and the Associated Press reported.