WASHINGTON — The U.S. is headed for another era of divided government in the new year, as Republicans are poised to claim control of the House of Representatives on Jan. 3. Democrats will wield an expanded 51-seat Senate majority and control the presidency.
As recent decades have shown, split control of Congress can get messy in an age of rising partisanship and political acrimony. And the dynamics on the two ends of Pennsylvania Avenue will set the backdrop for the 2024 presidential election.
Here are four battles that loom on Capitol Hill this year.
Can Kevin McCarthy win — or hold on to — the speaker’s gavel?
McCarthy, R-Calif., is facing a rebellion from a band of conservative flame-throwers vowing to deny him the speakership Tuesday when the House takes its first floor vote of the new Congress.
If the rebels — led by Reps. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and Andy Biggs, R-Ariz. — make good on their word, they could send the speaker’s vote to multiple ballots for the first time in a century.
McCarthy, who has led House Republicans in the minority for the past four years, won his party’s nomination for speaker in a closed-door, secret-ballot vote in November. In fact, he trounced Biggs, 188-31, winning 85% of his GOP conference.
But he’ll need 218 votes on the floor to secure the speakership.

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