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The House Republican majority just got reduced to a perilously slim one-vote margin thanks to a Democrat’s victory in Texas over the weekend.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., swore in newly minted Rep. Christian Menefee, D-Texas, on Monday evening, bringing the overall House of Representatives margin to 218 Republicans and 214 Democrats.
That means if a bill gets no Democratic support and the House is in full attendance, losing more than one GOP vote will result in a 216-216 tie — meaning it would fail to pass.
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Johnson is no stranger to dealing with slim margins and has eked out significant GOP victories while dealing with majorities between two and three seats.
But this is a particularly difficult week for House GOP leaders who are scrambling to end an ongoing partial government shutdown.
The House is expected to vote on a funding compromise hashed out between Senate Democrats and the White House sometime on Tuesday, and Republicans will need nearly everyone in lockstep for the legislation to survive a chamber-wide “rule vote.”
Rule votes are procedural hurdles that traditionally fall along partisan lines.
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Menefee, a former attorney for Houston’s Harris County, won a special congressional election in a left-leaning district in Texas that has been vacant for nearly a year.
He’s replacing the late Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Texas, who died while in office in March 2025.
The Associated Press reported that Menefee defeated former Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards, a fellow Democrat, in Saturday’s runoff election to fill the seat left vacant when Democratic Rep. Sylvester Turner died last March.
Sylvester, a former longtime state lawmaker, served two terms as Houston mayor before winning election to Congress in 2024 to fill the seat of the late longtime Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee.
While Texas has redrawn its congressional maps for the 2026 midterms, as part of the high-stakes redistricting battle between President Donald Trump and Republicans versus Democrats, the special election used the state’s current district lines.
The addition of another lawmaker into the House Democrats’ ranks will give Republican leadership in the chamber further headaches.
And House GOP leaders are painfully aware of the politically difficult situation they’re in.
“They’d better be here,” Johnson said of his Republican members last month. “I told everybody, and not in jest, I said, no adventure sports, no risk-taking, take your vitamins. Stay healthy and be here.”
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