The 2026 Battle for Control of Congress

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. As 2026 gets underway, so does a midterm election year for control of Congress, a campaign that will determine whether Democrats can operate as a check against the extraordinary power of President Trump or whether Republicans can hold on to every lever of influence in Washington. Today, my colleagues, Annie Kearney and Shane Gold Maher, on the opportunities and perils for both parties. It's Wednesday, January 7. Annie, twenty twenty six elections, here we come. Here we come. Or I guess here we are. This episode is going to be kind of a road map and a primer for this year ahead in American politics because while a lot of eyes are on Venezuela right now, in congress, which you cover, the focus is on the reality that it is an election year, a very big midterm election year coming up in November. And November sounds very far away, but as you know well, in politics, that really isn't very much time at all. And there's just a ton at stake in this election. So we are turning to you to talk about the Republican side of that election and how Republicans in Congress are now thinking about planning for or perhaps dreading this coming election? I think that dreading is the correct word here. Republicans ended last year feeling very pessimistic about their chance of holding on to control of the House. And that's in a really large part because their party has failed to fix what ails the American economy right now. Namely high prices. High prices, high utility bills. Americans can look at their receipts, and they are not doing well right now. Right. The receipts for the failure are literally the receipts. Correct. And nothing better illustrates the dire situation the Republicans are walking into this election year than the fact that Republicans set themselves up to start the year on an issue, health care, that has for years been their biggest weakness politically. And just explain that, why Republicans are gonna be kicking off 2026 on health care. Because in the final weeks of 2025, congressional Republicans were so despondent about their overall failure to confront affordability that a handful of them actually break with their party leadership and join with Democrats to force a vote on extending subsidies to the Affordable Care Act. So this vote is coming to the floor against Mike Johnson's wishes Mhmm. And highlighting an issue where voters, by and large, think Democrats are much stronger when it comes to health care. Right. And just as a political matter, what the Republicans did in the final weeks of December was enormous because they basically voted to endorse in a real sense the Affordable Care Act, which is public enemy number one for many congressional Republicans. It has been for a decade, and and you're suggesting that they're gonna reinforce that approval for the ACA in the coming days. …