Withdrawal of Stefanik UN nod puts spotlight on slim House margin

The withdrawal of Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (R-N.Y.) nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is putting a spotlight on the House GOP’s razor-thin majority and the anxiety about upcoming special elections to replace President Trump’s Cabinet picks.

Trump referenced concerns about both in a Truth Social post announcing Stefanik would no longer be his U.N. pick.

“As we advance our America First Agenda, it is essential that we maintain EVERY Republican Seat in Congress,” Trump said, adding: “With a very tight Majority, I don’t want to take a chance on anyone else running for Elise’s seat. The people love Elise and, with her, we have nothing to worry about come Election Day.”

Currently, the House has 218 Republicans and 213 Democrats, with four vacancies — meaning Republicans can afford to lose just two votes on any party-line measure, assuming full attendance.

Trump and congressional Republicans have a tough task ahead as they work to craft and advance his ambitious legislative agenda on tax cuts, energy priorities, spending cuts, and a debt ceiling increase in “one big beautiful bill” that will allow them to use a special reconciliation process that bypasses the need for Democratic support. 

House GOP leaders were warning about the tough math and how Trump’s picks for his administration would complicate it as soon as he was elected back in November.

Trump got a taste of how tough it is to keep the slim House GOP majority together when the chamber voted last month to adopt a blueprint for his legislative agenda.

Republicans could only afford to lose one person, and the president was on the phone with one of the remaining holdouts — Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) — until the last minutes before the vote to help get it across the finish line.

Republicans got a little more wiggle room with the unexpected deaths of two House Democrats — Reps. Sylvester Turner (Texas) and Raúl Grijalva (Ariz.) — giving the GOP its current two-vote margin. A special election for Grijalva’s seat is on Sept. 23. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has the sole authority to set a date for the special election to fill Turner’s seat, and the Republican governor, who has little incentive to rush the special election, has not yet done so.

The House breakdown numbers will change again after a Tuesday special election in Florida for vacancies created by two former lawmakers who were chosen by Trump to be in his administration: The 6th District vacated by now-national security adviser Mike Waltz, and the 1st District vacated by former Rep. Matt Gaetz, who withdrew from consideration for attorney general the week after Trump made the pick.

If Republicans win both seats, there will be 220 Republicans and 213 Democrats, with Republicans being able to afford three GOP defections on any party-line measure until one of the vacant Democratic-leaning seats are filled. Without Stefanik, that would tick back down to being able to afford two defections.

But Republicans have gotten spooked about one of those Florida races.

Both Florida districts were considered safe GOP strongholds, with both Waltz and Gaetz winning by more than 30 points in 2024. But in the 6th District, Democratic nominee Josh Weil reported an eye-popping $9.7 million fundraising haul, while GOP nominee Randy Fine raised less than $1 million.

Plus, an internal poll conducted earlier this month by Tony Fabrizio, Trump's pollster, found Weil with a 3-point lead over Fine, according to a person familiar with the poll — a data point that, if accurate in the deep red district, could indicate a historically massive shift in voter sentiment. 

Stefanik’s seat is also still considered safe. She won her seat by 24 points in 2024, and a March poll conducted by GrayHouse and released Thursday found a generic Republican with a 17-point lead over the Democratic candidate in the expected special election, New York Politico Playbook reported.

Republicans publicly worried, however, that New York Democrats could get around the special election timelines set in New York state law to delay the election, leaving the seat vacant for longer than anticipated.

“It really came to a culmination today, but it was a combination of the New York corruption that we’re seeing under [Gov.] Kathy Hochul [D], special elections and the House margin,” Stefanik said on Fox News Thursday night.

Even if they had not delayed the special election, the timeline of major congressional action would be tricky with Stefanik’s absence.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) set out an ambitious timeline for passing Trump’s legislative agenda, eyeing Easter or Memorial Day as target dates. Republican senators, meanwhile, see the August recess as a more realistic deadline.

A looming debt limit deadline is also a factor. Trump wants Republicans to raise the nation’s borrowing limit without Democratic help so as to not give the minority party any negotiating leverage, and so House Republicans included a debt limit hike in their budget resolution framework for the “one big beautiful bill.”

The Congressional Budget Office this week estimated that the Treasury Department will exhaust “extraordinary measures” around August or September, meaning Congress will have to act before then to raise the nation’s borrowing limit to prevent default — but it added the deadline could shift earlier based on federal revenue and spending.

Aside from vacancies, expected and unexpected absences can alter the House math for GOP leaders.

For instance, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) announced her pregnancy this week — and assuming the House does not adopt a divisive proposal to allow proxy voting for new parents (an issue that is intensifying and may come to a head next week), she may be absent for her child’s birth and infancy.

Cammack, for her part, joked to Johnson when she revealed her pregnancy at a White House event: “'Mr. Speaker, don't worry. Margins are fine. I'm due in August.” And she responded to concern about her attendance on social platform X: “My pregnancy is a blessing - not ‘a problem. … Pregnant or not, I am more than capable of doing the job my constituents elected me to do.”

Democrats, for their part, are hailing Stefanik’s nomination withdrawal as an admission from the GOP that voters are turning away from Trump and their party.

“[Trump] withdrew her nomination to be U.N. Ambassador because the extremists are afraid they will lose the special election to replace her,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said in a statement. “The Republican agenda is extremely unpopular, they are crashing the economy in real time and House Republicans are running scared. What happened to their so-called mandate?”