WASHINGTON — Democrats may have swept to comfortable new majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate, but they won't take control until next year — and Congress has a lot to do before it changes hands.
The Republican-held chambers have lengthy lists of must-pass legislation to wrap up before the new year, from avoiding a government shutdown to renewing critical defense and farm programs.
Lawmakers are set to return to Capitol Hill on Nov. 9 after a seven-week recess in the House and a recess of more than a month in the Senate. They'll be completing the work of the 119th Congress, with a short break for Thanksgiving, until just before holidays in late December.
The 120th Congress will be sworn in on Jan. 3, 2027.
Already, there are concerns
about attendance issues among lawmakers who lost getting in the way of the legislative branch's must-do business. Even before the elections, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, was operating on razor-thin margins that allowed GOP rebels to regularly grind legislating to a halt.
And Democrats might capitalize on their new political momentum to extract concessions from Republicans in a government funding fight.
Here's what to watch as Congress comes back.
Hegseth impeachment likely
The most politically fraught fight set to occur in this Congress' final weeks will be over Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth's future.
In mid-September, GOP Rep. Thomas Massie, a consistent critic of President Donald Trump and the Iran war, moved to force a vote on articles of impeachment against Hegseth. He said he'd gained enough support, even among some Republicans, for the measure to pass the House. But before that could happen, Johnson sent lawmakers home early, narrowly avoiding an embarrassing pre-midterm rebuke for a key member of the Trump administration.
Massie, who is exiting Congress at the end of the year after losing his primary to a Trump-backed challenger, has promised to continue his push upon Congress' return, and there's wariness among Republicans that he'll be successful. The day after the election, Massie posted on social media that his only contingency for not following through on the impeachment articles against Hegseth would be if the Pentagon chief immediately resigned.
Expect another Epstein vote
That's not all Massie's pushing for.
After reaching the requisite number of signatures, he'll also be able to force another vote on making the Department of Justice release more of the Epstein files, the documents related to the deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act II would close loopholes in the first version of the legislation, which Congress passed almost unanimously in 2025, while holding the federal government more accountable for withholding any information related to the disgraced financier.
Shutdown brinksmanship
In September, Congress sent Trump a bill funding the government at current levels until Dec. 11. The likeliest scenario in the near future, experts say, is that lawmakers will look to pass another short-term stopgap measure through January or March of next year.
Neither party seems to want a dramatic shutdown brawl in the coming months after two record-breaking shutdowns during the current Congress. But there are some nascent signs that Democrats, before they even return to power, may want to use the upcoming funding fight as a way to express disapproval of the Iran war.
Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement to USA TODAY that "Democrats will absolutely not fund Trump’s war of choice with Iran that has increased costs on American families and made us less safe."
"We are having conversations now on the best path forward and the tools we can use in final funding bills to bring a swift end to this costly, deadly war," she said.
Key deadlines for farm, defense and highway bills
In the coming months, the federal government is facing deadlines for critical programs, over which lawmakers will have to reach bipartisan agreements on at least temporary extensions.
Congress, for one, still has not passed its annual defense policy bill. Lawmakers have until mid-December to negotiate a longer-term reauthorization of federal highway and railway programs, too. And they will need to coalesce around a framework for renewing portions of the farm bill before key agricultural programs start to feel the effects of gridlock next year.
Zachary Schermele is the congressional correspondent for USA TODAY. Reach him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com and on Signal @zachschermele.02. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The GOP controls Congress until January. And there's a lot to do
