DailyMail.com breaks down what to expect in the new Congress trends now
Tuesday will bring the return of divided government to Washington – featuring intensive probes of the President Biden's family and administration to the fore while his legislative agenda slams into Republican opposition.
Republicans are preparing to use new investigatory tools to batter the Biden administration from the House while continuing to try to stall his remaining agenda in the Senate.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is preparing to hand over her gavel to Republicans inside the House chamber, bringing a return to a split in party control of the White House and at least one chamber that has happened eight times this century.
If recent examples are a guide, that division will bring about angry clashes between the White House and Congress, with unknown consequences.
When House Republicans took the House in 2010 riding a Tea Party wave, it set the table for furious fiscal fights with the Obama administration that soon had the nation confronting a 'fiscal cliff.'
President Joe Biden is back in Washington, but his days of major legislative accomplishments during his term may be over with Republicans taking House control
House Republicans have vowed to probe Hunter Biden's business dealings, armed with subpoena power information from his infamous laptop
When House Republicans seized control in 1994 on the heels of New Gingrich's attacks on a 'corrupt' Democratic establishment, it helped set up a presidential impeachment, which brought with it an implosion in the GOP leadership ranks.
House Republicans have already made clear they intend to probe President Biden and his family – starting with first son Hunter Biden and his business dealings, armed with revelations from his infamous laptop.
But before they can do that they must sort through a messy potential series of votes to try to elect a speaker – with Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy facing opposition from conservative holdouts. If he doesn't win on the first ballot, it would be the first time that hasn't happened in 100 years.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee, said he wants to identify 'waste, fraud, abuse, mismanagement and corruption within the federal government.'
'The one thing that we can do in a divided Congress is put the brakes on runaway spending,' he told Fox and Friends on Monday. 'Our investigations start tomorrow,' he said.
'We've been working on it for over a year. We'll start tomorrow with hopefully bringing people in to do interviews,' he said – when asked specifically about past claims of probing Hunter Biden and Big Tech.
'If Mr. Biden's family members have deals with foreign adversaries, it could compromise his decision-making as president in a way that threatens national security,' he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed – although freewheeling hearings could allow Judiciary members to probe a whole cast of characters who turned up in communications found on Hunter Biden's laptop.
Comer also dismissed the Biden administration's gambit of saying it would not respond to prior requests for information from Comer and incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), because they were made while in the minority. That was taken as an early sign the White House was prepared to play hardball.
'Tomorrow we're going to be in the majority and we're simply going to resend every one of those requests. We expect the White House to work with us to do our job,' said Comer.
Republicans have said they
