The Republican majority in the House of Representatives is shrinking again as Congress faces critical issues

And then there were two.

With Democrat Tom Suozzi's victory in a special House election in New York on Tuesday, the shrinking Republican majority in the House of Representatives has shrunk even further, leaving the Republican Party with only two deviations from the party line if all members are present .

That gives them virtually no buffer to deal with the inevitable absences caused by illness, travel delays, weddings, funerals and unforeseen events that could keep Republicans away from the House for votes. It comes as Congress faces a slew of issues, including early March deadlines for funding the government and a pending national security spending bill to send aid to Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies.

It also gives each individual Republican in the House of Representatives even more influence over Speaker Mike Johnson, who is already struggling to steer his uncontrollable majority.

“I would be constantly on the defensive, I would try to avoid defeats, and I would be very, very careful,” former chairman Newt Gingrich said in an interview.

The dangers of the slim margin were evident Tuesday night, even before Suozzi won the Long Island seat previously held by George Santos, the Republican lawmaker who was expelled from the House of Representatives in December.

In their second attempt to oust Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas, Republicans succeeded by just one vote after three of their members broke with the party to oppose it. If either of the two absent Democrats had shown up, the impeachment that Republicans had been promising their voters for more than a year would have failed again. (The two Democratic absentees were Rep. Judy Chu of California, who said she was isolating after testing positive for the coronavirus, and Rep. Lois Frankel of Florida, who was grounded due to a delayed flight.)

“That impeachment resolution cannot be passed now,” said Aaron Fritschner, a longtime adviser to Representative Don Beyer, Democrat of Virginia, who said the reversal of Mr. Suozzi's seat would “impair the ability of both Republicans to House of Representatives in November if it jeopardizes their ability to govern. until then.”

“Under Republican control, the House of Representatives has seen historic amounts of chaos and paralysis, and it's about to get a little crazier,” Mr. Fritschner added.

After Mr. Suozzi is sworn in, Republicans will hold 219 seats to Democrats' 213, three fewer than when they won a narrow majority in November 2022, due to a combination of coincidence, scandals, health concerns and political unrest.

On Wednesday, watching their majority shrink even further, some Republicans blasted their colleagues' decision to expel Mr. Santos, who served as a reliable Republican voice in Congress despite being a fabulist, a figure of national mockery and the subject of a 23-count federal indictment.

Rep. Byron Donalds, Republican of Florida, told CNN that Mr. Santos had not yet been found guilty of any crimes when he was deported and that “it was stupid to prejudge that to score political points.”

The minuscule majority will be Chairman Mike Johnson's reality in the coming year. In April, Democrats will likely fill a safe seat occupied by Rep. Brian Higgins, Democrat of New York, who left Congress earlier this month to become president of the Shea Performing Arts Center. That seat won't change the margin of control, but it will leave even less room for Republican absentees.

There will be some modest relief for Republicans in late spring and early summer, when they are likely to fill two safe seats vacated by Representative Bill Johnson, the Ohio Republican who left Congress to become president of Youngstown State University. become; and former Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who resigned from his California seat late last year after being removed from the speakership.

But with a Republican conference more often divided against itself than as a united front, it will remain difficult for Mr. Johnson to pass bills that rely strictly on votes from his own party.

Mr. Gingrich said the only way forward for Mr. Johnson was to vastly lower expectations of what Republicans in the House of Representatives could achieve.

“Johnson needs to sell the country that having Republicans in the House of Representatives who use the investigative tool and block those bad ideas is the only thing you can get until the election,” he said. “And then we will see if we have a better future. He should not exhaust himself doing things he cannot do.”

Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota, said the Republican Party had made a bad situation worse because of deep internal divisions.

“At the beginning of this Congress, you might have imagined that the tight margins would push Republicans to unite,” Mr. Weber said. Instead, he said, the slim majority had encouraged the hard right to stage internal uprisings to push its own agenda, rather than lining up to help the party put up a united front against President Biden and the Democrats.

Mr. Johnson, like Mr. McCarthy before him, has responded by finding ways to sidestep right-wing rebels and work with Democrats to pass critical measures. Mr Johnson recently did this by relying on a procedural motion that allows him to temporarily suspend House rules and speed up legislation, but requires a two-thirds majority.

Mr Johnson has recognized the limiting reality of wielding such a vulnerable majority.

“We deal with the numbers we have,” he said on CBS's “Face the Nation.”

But as his first failed attempt to oust Mr. Mayorkas humiliatingly demonstrated, with inevitable absences, he won't always know what numbers he's up against.

Republican leaders in the House of Representatives have stepped up efforts to monitor the whereabouts of their members, but that can sometimes seem like herding cats. Lawmakers often travel without informing leaders of their plans, despite the obligation to provide notice whenever possible. Sometimes a leader only learns where an MP is when he or she posts a video or photo on social media.

“Illnesses, funerals, weddings – all these things need to be taken into account in a way that they weren't before,” Mr Weber said. “Members are not used to always being accountable for where they are. The House of Representatives is primarily a group of individual entrepreneurs. They don't like having to tell someone where they will be and when they will be there.

For major votes, members said, it is now clear that everyone will be there unless they have said they cannot be there. On Tuesday, for example, Rep. Brian Mast, Republican of Florida, informed leaders that his flight was delayed and that he would not vote.

It was uncomfortably close for Republicans.

“Fortunately, despite mechanical failures on my flight, we still had enough votes to depose him tonight,” Mr. Mast posted on social media after the vote against Mr. Mayorkas.