With weeks left on the congressional calendar, House and Senate representatives have a host of issues they still need to tackle

On their first day back in the Capitol after comprehensive defeats in last week’s midterm elections, Republicans were divided into two camps: those who saw the catastrophe coming, and those who did not.

“I told you exactly what was going to happen. Over and over and over, I told you,” said West Virginia senator Jim Justice. “I said really and truly, if you weren’t concerned and you were a Republican, you were living in a cave. That was my exact words.”

Midterms success gives party potent leverage over Trump – expect tough campaigns of investigating and lawmaking

“Costs, chaos, corruption”: after almost two years spent relentlessly criticizing Donald Trump for failing to address those three, broad political concerns, Democrats won a monumental return to power in Tuesday’s midterm elections that will give them potent new leverage over the president.

Now the question becomes: what will they do with it?

Landmark victories in Texas, Ohio, North Carolina and South Carolina set to give party control of chamber

• US midterm elections – live updates

• Track live results from all 50 states

Democrats are on the brink of returning to the majority in the US Senate, after their candidates won historic victories across the United States in a sweeping repudiation of Donald Trump.

Democratic victories in Texas, Ohio, North Carolina and South Carolina, projected by the Associated Press, will give them control of the chamber, assuming they can hold on to all seats they currently hold. It was a stunning turnaround for the party, two years after voters put them into the minority in Congress’s upper chamber as they returned Trump to the White House.