Midterms 2022: What happens if … (the likely scenarios)

The 2022 US midterm elections are vital for how the final two years of Joe Biden’s presidency play out as well as predicting who might run in the 2024 presidential election.

At present, the Democrats control both the House and Senate – meaning they have full control of Congress. But if they lose control of one or even both chambers of Congress it could determine if Biden runs for reelection – and whether Donald Trump could potentially run for the presidency again.

If Congress stays under Democratic control, Biden has another chance to pass major liberal priorities but under a split or full Republican control, the final two years could be difficult – he could find that his administration spends this time defending itself from investigations and struggling to pass laws.

Here are the three likeliest scenarios.

Republicans take the House, Democrats keep the Senate

A split Congress is on the cards – with the Democrats keeping control of the Senate whilst the Republicans take control of the House of Representatives.

If this is the case it seems unlikely any major legislation gets passed and US lawmaking would effectively grind to a halt for the final two years of Joe Biden’s term.

If the Republicans take the House …

What would Republicans do if they take the house? It’s likely they will disband the Jan 6 committee as Republicans have expressed no interest in investigating the Jan 6 2021 attack on the Capitol.

It’s likely they would try to investigate Hunter Biden. There are dealings with a Chinese energy company, allegations of tax fraud and he reportedly lied to get a gun. There’s a lot to keep the GOP busy if they control the House – and a big part of it will be many investigations into the president’s son.

*Midterms 2022: What happens if … (the likely scenarios)*

But there likely be even more investigations, around the whole Biden administration. If the GOP control the House they’ll want to dig up as much as they can – including the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search, border policies and anything they can find to help support their claims the 2020 election was stolen (it was not).

Impeachment could also be on the cards as far-right GOP members want President Biden impeached for “intentionally opening our border and making Americans less safe” Rep. Bob Good said.

If the Democratic continue to control the Senate

If Democrats can hold onto the Senate whilst Republicans take the House, they won’t be able to do much to stop the GOP from investigating the President.

But they would help the president by continuing to approve his nominations for judges.

It might be the only thing they can do if control of Congress is split.

Republicans win both chambers and control Congress

If Republicans take control of both the House and the Senate they will have full control of Congress.

And figures show that the party out of power almost always picks up seats in Congress during midterm elections.

Republicans need to pick up just five (out of 435) in the House to take the majority and just one out of 35 in the Senate.

If they take control of both, they will likely block Biden’s agenda. That means the president can expect the GOP to block any spending requests for pandemic aid, climate change and other issues that arise.

*US midterms: The Texas governor’s race*

Though it’s not expected that a vacancy will open up on the Supreme Court, if it did, it’s likely a Republican Senate would slow down or even block many of Biden’s picks to be federal judges. The GOP would want to wait for the next Republican president to elect another Republican to the Court.

Republicans got the ball rolling when Sen Lindsey O. Graham introduced legislation to ban abortion across the nation after 15 weeks. And whilst Senate Republican leaders distanced themselves from the idea, if their party had control of both chambers, there’ll likely be a big push to bring a national abortion ban up for a vote.

Democrats keep control of both chambers

It’s the least likely of the three but if the Democrats kept control of both chambers of Congress…

Democrats would have a second shot at trying to pass national protections for abortion, same-sex marriage and voting rights. There will likely be more climate policy and expanding the government safety net.

They could (unlikely) even expand their majority in the Senate by two seats. If they did, they would have enough votes to break through a filibuster to do some of this, because they wouldn’t need the votes of Sens. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) to end the filibuster.

If they hang on they could also limit Donald Trump – or other like-minded candidates – for the presidency. They already proposed legislation to make it harder for a president to filter out federal government workers who don’t agree with them or to protect whistleblowers in the federal government. The New York Times reports that some Dems are drafting legislation to prevent Trump from running for president again – due to his role in the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol. But still it would be unlikely they could.