The US Democratic Party took control of the Senate, now dominating both houses of Congress and the White House.
Progressives took control of the Upper House after Georgia’s two new senators, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, took office.
The new vice president of the United States and therefore the new president of the Senate, Kamala Harris, took the oath of Warnock and Ossof, as well as Alex Padilla, who replaced her precisely as senator for California, a position from which she resigned last Monday.
The Senate is now divided with 50 Democratic senators and another 50 Republicans, but Harris, as speaker of the House, breaks the tie in favor of progressives.
New York Senator Chuck Schumer assumed the position of Majority Leader in the Upper House, replacing Republican Mitch McConnell, who has led the Conservative majority in the Senate for the past six years.
“With the change of the majority in the Senate, the Senate will function differently. This Senate will legislate, it will be active, responsive, energetic and bold,” said the new leader of the Upper House.
Democrats won the White House in the November elections and revalidated the Lower House, but control of the Senate was left open with the Republicans as favorites in the absence of determining Georgia’s seats in a second round.
However, the Democrats managed to seize those two seats that will allow them to mark the legislative agenda for at least the next two years, until the 2022 legislative ones, and avoid the presumed blockade that the Republican opposition was going to exercise.
Among the first challenges facing the Democratic majority in the Senate are the rapid confirmation of Biden’s Cabinet, as well as the holding of the impeachment trial against former President Donald Trump for “inciting insurrection”, with his followers storming the Capitol last January 6.