GOP wins control of the House

Nov. 16 (UPI) -- More than a week after Election Day, the Republican Party captured 218 seats in the House of Representatives and a guaranteed majority.

The full picture of the Republican majority is still unclear with seven races still too close to call. No matter how those races ultimately play out, the GOP's performance in the race to take the House fell well short of the "red wave" many in the party said was coming.

The loss of the House majority throws a significant hurdle in front of President Joe Biden and his administration. Republicans have clearly stated their intentions to challenge what he has done in his first two years and hinder his agenda for the next two years.

Biden expressed some sense of victory on the day after the midterms, relishing in Democrats outperforming expectations in the House while keeping control of the Senate.

"While we don't know all of the results yet, at least I don't know them all yet, here's what we do know. While the press and the pundits predicted a giant red wave, it didn't happen," Biden told reporters at the White House.

The Republican majority stands in the way of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) remaining House speaker. Her second tenure as speaker will end when the 118th Congress begins in January. There is division among the Republican party over who their speaker will be.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) won the nomination of House Republicans Tuesday in a closed-door vote, but he was not without a challenger. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), representing the House Freedom Caucus, the most right-wing bloc of the party, lost to McCarthy 188-31. Though the vote looks like a landslide, it underlines a sense of division within the party.

Mike Garcia, the Republican incumbent in California's 27th District, won the 218th seat needed to flip the House majority in favor of the GOP. The Los Angeles Times reported Garcia defeated Democratic challenger Christy Smith Wednesday. Garcia declared victory on Sunday.

Garcia was a co-sponsor for the Life at Conception Act which would ban abortion nationwide as well as some forms of birth control. He has indicated he would be in favor of exceptions for rape and incest, according to the Los Angeles Times. He was elected to Congress in a special election in 2020 before winning a full term in the general election later that year.