It remains unclear who will lead House Democrats in the coming two years. The new Congress will convene for the first time on January 3, 2023….reports Asian Lite News
Mitch McConnell has been re-elected as Republican leader in the US Senate.
A longtime Senate Republican leader from Kentucky, McConnell defeated US Senator Rick Scott of Florida reportedly in a 37 to 10 vote on Wednesday, Xinhua news agency reported.
McConnell, 80, tweeted on Wednesday afternoon that he’s honored to have been re-elected to lead Republicans in Senate.
He vowed to fight what he called “Democrats’ recklessness” and “promote our commonsense conservative vision.”
McConnell’s reelection came days after Democrats were projected to retain majority status in the upper chamber after the 2022 midterm elections.
Senate Majority Leader and Democrat Chuck Schumer on Tuesday accused Republicans of running with “extreme MAGA candidates” in the November 8 races.
MAGA stands for Make America Great Again, a political campaign slogan popularized by former US President Donald Trump.
A Republican, Trump announced Tuesday night that he would run for the White House again in a speech that critics said was full of false and misleading claims.
McConnell, who has had a tense relationship with Trump, told reporters on Wednesday that he’s going to “stay out of” the 2024 presidential primary season.
“I think it’s going to be a highly contested nomination fight with other candidates entering,” he predicted.
All 435 seats of the US House of Representatives were contested in 2022, with the control of the lower chamber still undetermined.
Republicans have won 217 seats, only one seat away from securing the House majority, versus 207 for Democrats with 11 seats still too close to call, according to media projections.
House Republicans nominated Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California congressman, on Tuesday to be the chamber’s speaker next term, a position that will make him second in line to succeed the president after the vice-president.
It remains unclear who will lead House Democrats in the coming two years. The new Congress will convene for the first time on January 3, 2023.
McCarthy was elected in a closed-door voting, beating Representative Andy Biggs, a leading member of the Republican party’s Freedom Caucus, a group of ultra-conservatives.
McCarthy will be officially elected speaker in a vote on the floor of the House on January 3. He will need 218 votes in the 435-member chamber to make it through. The Republicans are still one vote shy of the majority number – they were at 217 to 204 of the Democrats, with 14 seats still undecided.
Republicans will get the House with a razor-thin majority, while Democrats will keep the Senate, which is a result few people could have anticipated on November 3, when polling ended for the 2022 US midterms.
