Re­pub­li­cans have won enough seats to con­trol the U.S. House, com­plet­ing the par­ty’s sweep in­to pow­er and se­cur­ing their hold on U.S. gov­ern­ment along­side Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump.

A House Re­pub­li­can vic­to­ry in Ari­zona, along­side a win in slow-count­ing Cal­i­for­nia ear­li­er Wednes­day, gave the GOP the 218 House vic­to­ries that make up the ma­jor­i­ty. Re­pub­li­cans ear­li­er gained con­trol of the Sen­ate from De­moc­rats.

With hard-fought yet thin ma­jori­ties, Re­pub­li­can lead­ers are en­vi­sion­ing a man­date to up­end the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and swift­ly im­ple­ment Trump’s vi­sion for the coun­try.

The in­com­ing pres­i­dent has promised to car­ry out the coun­try’s largest-ever de­por­ta­tion op­er­a­tion, ex­tend tax breaks, pun­ish his po­lit­i­cal en­e­mies, seize con­trol of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment’s most pow­er­ful tools and re­shape the U.S. econ­o­my. The GOP elec­tion vic­to­ries en­sure that Con­gress will be on­board for that agen­da, and De­moc­rats will be al­most pow­er­less to check it.

When Trump was elect­ed pres­i­dent in 2016, Re­pub­li­cans al­so swept Con­gress, but he still en­coun­tered Re­pub­li­can lead­ers re­sis­tant to his pol­i­cy ideas, as well as a Supreme Court with a lib­er­al ma­jor­i­ty. Not this time.

When he re­turns to the White House, Trump will be work­ing with a Re­pub­li­can Par­ty that has been com­plete­ly trans­formed by his “Make Amer­i­ca Great Again” move­ment and a Supreme Court dom­i­nat­ed by con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices, in­clud­ing three that he ap­point­ed.

Trump ral­lied House Re­pub­li­cans at a Capi­tol Hill ho­tel Wednes­day morn­ing, mark­ing his first re­turn to Wash­ing­ton since the elec­tion.

“I sus­pect I won’t be run­ning again un­less you say, ‘He’s good, we got to fig­ure some­thing else,’” Trump said to the room full of law­mak­ers who laughed in re­sponse.

House Speak­er Mike John­son, who with Trump’s en­dorse­ment won the Re­pub­li­can Con­fer­ence’s nom­i­na­tion to stay on as speak­er next year, has talked of tak­ing a “blow­torch” to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and its pro­grams, eye­ing ways to over­haul even pop­u­lar pro­grams cham­pi­oned by De­moc­rats in re­cent years. The Louisiana Re­pub­li­can, an ar­dent con­ser­v­a­tive, has pulled the House Re­pub­li­can Con­fer­ence clos­er to Trump dur­ing the cam­paign sea­son as they pre­pare an “am­bi­tious” 100-day agen­da.

“Re­pub­li­cans in the House and Sen­ate have a man­date,” John­son said ear­li­er this week. “The Amer­i­can peo­ple want us to im­ple­ment and de­liv­er that ‘Amer­i­ca First’ agen­da.”

Trump’s al­lies in the House are al­ready sig­nalling they will seek ret­ri­bu­tion for the le­gal trou­bles Trump faced while out of of­fice. The in­com­ing pres­i­dent on Wednes­day said he would nom­i­nate Rep. Matt Gaetz, a fierce loy­al­ist, for at­tor­ney gen­er­al.

Mean­while, Rep. Jim Jor­dan, the chair of the pow­er­ful House Ju­di­cia­ry Com­mit­tee, has said GOP law­mak­ers are “not tak­ing any­thing off the ta­ble” in their plans to in­ves­ti­gate spe­cial coun­sel Jack Smith, even as Smith is wind­ing down two fed­er­al in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to Trump for plot­ting to over­turn the re­sults of the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and hoard­ing clas­si­fied doc­u­ments at his Mar-a-La­go es­tate.

Still, with a few races still un­called the Re­pub­li­cans may hold the ma­jor­i­ty by just a few seats as the new Con­gress be­gins. Trump’s de­ci­sion to pull from the House for posts in his ad­min­is­tra­tion — Reps. Gaetz, Mike Waltz and Elise Ste­fanik so far — could com­pli­cate John­son’s abil­i­ty to main­tain a ma­jor­i­ty in the ear­ly days of the new Con­gress.

Gaetz sub­mit­ted his res­ig­na­tion Wednes­day, ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly. John­son said he hoped the seat could be filled by the time the new Con­gress con­venes Jan. 3. Re­place­ments for mem­bers of the House re­quire spe­cial elec­tions, and the con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts held by the three de­part­ing mem­bers have been held by Re­pub­li­cans for years.

With the thin ma­jor­i­ty, a high­ly func­tion­ing House is al­so far from guar­an­teed. The past two years of Re­pub­li­can House con­trol were de­fined by in­fight­ing as hard­line con­ser­v­a­tive fac­tions sought to gain in­flu­ence and pow­er by open­ly de­fy­ing their par­ty lead­er­ship. While John­son — at times with Trump’s help — large­ly tamed open re­bel­lions against his lead­er­ship, the right wing of the par­ty is as­cen­dant and am­bi­tious on the heels of Trump’s elec­tion vic­to­ry.

The Re­pub­li­can ma­jor­i­ty al­so de­pends on a small group of law­mak­ers who won tough elec­tions by run­ning as mod­er­ates. It re­mains to be seen whether they will stay on­board for some of the most ex­treme pro­pos­als cham­pi­oned by Trump and his al­lies.

House De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Leader Ha­keem Jef­fries, mean­while, is try­ing to keep De­moc­rats rel­e­vant to any leg­is­la­tion that pass­es Con­gress, an ef­fort that will de­pend on De­mo­c­ra­t­ic lead­ers uni­fy­ing over 200 mem­bers, even as the par­ty un­der­goes a post­mortem of its elec­tion loss­es.

In the Sen­ate, GOP lead­ers, fresh off win­ning a con­vinc­ing ma­jor­i­ty, are al­ready work­ing with Trump to con­firm his Cab­i­net picks. Sen. John Thune of South Dako­ta won an in­ter­nal elec­tion Wednes­day to re­place Sen. Mitch Mc­Connell, the longest serv­ing par­ty leader in Sen­ate his­to­ry.

Thune in the past has been crit­i­cal of Trump but praised the in­com­ing pres­i­dent dur­ing his lead­er­ship elec­tion bid.

“This Re­pub­li­can team is unit­ed. We are on one team,” Thune said. “We are ex­cit­ed to re­claim the ma­jor­i­ty and to get to work with our col­leagues in the House to en­act Pres­i­dent Trump’s agen­da.”

The GOP’s Sen­ate ma­jor­i­ty of 53 seats al­so en­sures that Re­pub­li­cans will have breath­ing room when it comes to con­firm­ing Cab­i­net posts, or Supreme Court jus­tices if there is a va­can­cy. Not all those con­fir­ma­tions are guar­an­teed. Re­pub­li­cans were in­cred­u­lous Wednes­day when the news hit Capi­tol Hill that Trump would nom­i­nate Gaetz as his at­tor­ney gen­er­al. Even close Trump al­lies in the Sen­ate dis­tanced them­selves from sup­port­ing Gaetz, who had been fac­ing a House Ethics Com­mit­tee in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­le­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct and il­lic­it drug use.

Still, Trump on Sun­day de­mand­ed that any Re­pub­li­can leader must al­low him to make ad­min­is­tra­tion ap­point­ments with­out a vote while the Sen­ate is in re­cess. Such a move would be a no­table shift in pow­er away from the Sen­ate, yet all the lead­er­ship con­tenders quick­ly agreed to the idea. De­moc­rats could po­ten­tial­ly fight such a ma­noeu­vre.

Mean­while, Trump’s so­cial me­dia sup­port­ers, in­clud­ing Elon Musk, the world’s rich­est man, clam­oured against pick­ing a tra­di­tion­al Re­pub­li­can to lead the Sen­ate cham­ber. Thune worked as a top lieu­tenant to Mc­Connell, who once called the for­mer pres­i­dent a “de­spi­ca­ble hu­man be­ing” in his pri­vate notes.

How­ev­er, Mc­Connell made it clear that on Capi­tol Hill the days of Re­pub­li­can re­sis­tance to Trump are over. —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by STEPHEN GROVES and LISA MAS­CARO | As­so­ci­at­ed Press