When Democrats take control of Congress on January 3, 2027, the committees that handle federal policy for the five United States territories will pass to a party whose US House members backed a binding plebiscite on Puerto Rico’s political status 217 to 0 in 2022, and whose top member on the panel that oversees the territories has said the federal government “has broken its promise to Puerto Rico.” The territories’ own delegation flips as well. After the November 3, 2026, elections, three of the five members who represent the territories in the US House will be Democrats.
What the results do not change is the territories’ place in the system. Those five members can vote in committee but not on the final passage of bills, and the territories have no senators, since the US Senate is composed of two senators from each state. Any bill the new Congress passes will still need the signature of President Donald Trump (R), who after the election threatened to use his veto against the Democratic agenda, or a two-thirds vote in each chamber to override him.
“We could not vote for this Congress, but every decision it makes will be felt here: at the pharmacy, at the gas station, and in the emergency room,” Luis Dávila Pernas, president of the Puerto Rico Democratic Party, said.
Democrats will hold a US House majority “well past the 218 needed” and at least 54 of the 100 US Senate seats, the Associated Press reported, after flipping Republican-held US Senate seats in seven states: North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Kansas, Iowa, and Maine. The US House Democratic Leader, Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D) of New York, is poised to become speaker and, if elected, would be the first Black speaker of the US House. US House Speaker Mike Johnson (R) of Louisiana will not seek reelection as his party’s leader, two people familiar with his decision told the AP, and US Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D) of New York has said, “I’ll be reelected as majority leader.”
A delegation that flips
Guam produced the change. Former Guam Attorney General Alicia Limtiaco (D) defeated Delegate James Moylan (R) by 662 votes in unofficial results, making Guam the first Republican-held US House seat to flip to Democrats in the midterms, KUAM reported. She will be the first woman of Chamoru descent and the first attorney to represent Guam in Congress, the station reported. “The people of Guam have spoken, and I respect their decision,” Moylan said as he conceded.
In the US Virgin Islands, former Senator Janelle Sarauw (D) won the seat that Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D) is leaving to become governor, and she will be the first openly LGBTQ+ person to represent the territory in Congress. Republicans held the other two seats. Delegate Kimberlyn King-Hinds (R) won a second term in the Northern Mariana Islands with 63.7% of the vote, and Delegate Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen (R) won a seventh term in American Samoa with 60.7%. Puerto Rico, which votes next in 2028, had no federal race on the ballot, so Resident Commissioner Pablo José Hernández Rivera (PDP, D) stays in office.
That turns the current split of three Republicans and two Democrats into three Democrats—Limtiaco, Sarauw, and Hernández—and two Republicans. The five members formed the bipartisan Congressional Territories & Commonwealths Caucus in November 2025, with Moylan and Hernández as co-chairs for the 119th Congress. “Whether it’s healthcare access, infrastructure, cost of living, or federal program parity, our voices are stronger when we speak together,” Moylan said at the time. Two of its five founding members, Moylan and Plaskett, will not be in the new Congress.
Being in the majority will not give the three Democrats a vote on final passage, but it places them in the party that will chair the committees, where delegates do vote. Committee assignments matter for that reason. Plaskett, for example, is the only one of the five who sits on the US House Committee on Ways and Means, according to the Clerk of the US House, and that committee is where a bill to extend Supplemental Security Income (SSI) to four of the territories has sat since July 2025. On the US House Committee on Natural Resources, Radewagen ranks fifth among Republicans and Hernández tenth among Democrats, and both sit on its subcommittee for the territories.
The two Republicans move into the minority. During the campaign, King-Hinds argued that as a Republican she was better positioned than a non-Republican to work with the White House, where her office has been building a case to lift the United States Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) suspension of a visa-free travel program for Chinese visitors, which took effect on October 30. That argument still applies to the executive branch, but in the US House, her party will no longer control the agenda.
Puerto Rican members and their seniority
Puerto Rico also has a voice through members elected in the states, who, unlike Hernández, vote on final passage. Five members of Congress with Puerto Rican roots won in the midterms: Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) and Ritchie Torres (D) of New York, Representative Nellie Pou (D) of New Jersey, and Representatives Darren Soto (D) and Maxwell Frost (D) of Florida. Frost was unopposed. Soto declared victory after unofficial results put him ahead 50.26% to 49.74%, just outside the margin that triggers an automatic recount in Florida.
One veteran is leaving. Representative Nydia Velázquez (D) of New York, who was born in Yabucoa and was first elected in 1992 as the first Puerto Rican woman in Congress, did not seek reelection, El Vocero reported. She is the top Democrat on the US House Committee on Small Business. Claire Valdez (D) was elected to succeed her.
None of the Puerto Rican members returning in January is now the top Democrat on a full committee, according to the Clerk’s rosters, which rank each party’s members on every committee. Several, however, sit on committees that will handle the territories’ most pressing deadlines. Soto ranks 14th among Democrats on the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce, whose chair has said it must find a solution to Puerto Rico’s Medicaid funding cliff, and Ocasio-Cortez ranks 18th there and sits on its health subcommittee. Soto also ranks 18th on the US House Committee on Natural Resources. Hernández ranks tenth among Democrats on the US House Committee on Homeland Security, where Pou ranks 11th. Torres ranks 17th on the US House Committee on Financial Services, and Frost is the top Democrat on a subcommittee of the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Soto could also take on a leadership role. He chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute and could lead the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in January, El Nuevo Día reported, noting that the institute’s chair usually takes that step next.
The committees that write territorial policy
The most direct shift comes on the committees with jurisdiction over the territories. The US House Committee on Natural Resources coordinates legislation for the territories, and its Subcommittee on Indian and Insular Affairs oversees relations between the federal government and Native Americans and US territories. Representative Jared Huffman (D) of California, the committee’s top Democrat, is poised to lead it.
Huffman has criticized the administration’s handling of Puerto Rico. When Trump moved to fire members of the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico in August 2025, Huffman said, “The shocking reports of another sudden Trump firing spree raise serious questions: Who made this decision, and why now?” He added that “the people of Puerto Rico deserve better.” In July, he released a federal watchdog report finding that about $10.7 billion of the $14.3 billion obligated for Puerto Rico’s power grid had not reached the islands, nine years after the hurricanes. The report, he said, “makes clear that the federal government has broken its promise to Puerto Rico.”
He has also said he does not want the board to last indefinitely. In June, Huffman told El Nuevo Día that he did not like having an oversight board with so much power, but that it was protecting Puerto Ricans from a bad deal on the debt of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), and that the board’s future would be on his agenda. That is a different emphasis from the committee’s current chair, Representative Bruce Westerman (R) of Arkansas, who has insisted that the board must meet its objectives and who, during the 2022 debate over Puerto Rico’s status, proposed blocking any status change until the board finished its work, the newspaper reported.
On status itself, Huffman has been more cautious. A cosponsor of the 2023 version of the Puerto Rico Status Act, he said in February 2025 that Congress was getting mixed messages from Puerto Rico. “It’s not always clear what they want,” he said. At a March 2025 hearing, the subcommittee’s top Democrat, Representative Teresa Leger Fernández (D) of New Mexico, focused on health care, warning that “the Medicaid cuts that are proposed in the budget resolution would hit these territories incredibly hard.”
The US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources has jurisdiction over territorial policy, including changes in status. Senator Mike Lee (R) of Utah chairs it, and its top Democrat, Senator Martin Heinrich (D) of New Mexico, introduced the US Senate version of the Puerto Rico Status Act in 2023, saying Puerto Ricans “deserve an overdue, permanent, and democratic answer on their political status.” Schumer cosponsored that bill in 2024.
Jeffries, who voted for the 2022 status bill, called in May for respecting Puerto Rico’s self-determination, aligning himself with Hernández, El Nuevo Día reported. Hernández welcomed the results the morning after the election. “Puerto Rico will benefit from having a friend like Hakeem Jeffries presiding over the House of Representatives and Chuck Schumer as majority leader in the Senate. We wake up with hope!” he said.
Status, four years after a US House vote
The last time the US House voted on Puerto Rico’s status, on December 15, 2022, the Puerto Rico Status Act passed 233 to 191, with every Democrat and 16 Republicans voting yes. The bill would have let voters choose among statehood, independence, and sovereignty in free association, excluding the current territorial status, and its last action was being received in the US Senate. Soto, who has said he helped lead that effort, predicted in December 2025 that Democrats would try again. “Next Congress, when the Democrats take over the House, we will have a real shot to pass another PR Status bill,” he said.
Democrats have since split over what that bill should say. On June 10, Hernández introduced the Puerto Rico Democratic Self Determination Act, which adds the option of keeping and improving the current territorial status. If that option won, Hernández said, the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) “would cease to apply within two years.” Ocasio-Cortez and Velázquez, who led earlier status legislation, opposed the bill. “The Resident Commissioner’s bill denies the colonial character of the Commonwealth,” they said, adding, “This is too vital an issue to be sullied by individual political aspirations.” In an October 16 statement on a statehood bill, Hernández said, “Status is not going to change; what has to change are the priorities of the government, which should focus more on fixing the power and water than on status.”
Statehood led among Puerto Rico respondents in Pasquines’ October 2026 poll, with 56.0%, and national Democrats have raised it as well. In July, former Vice President Kamala Harris (D) listed “Enacting statehood for Washington, DC and Puerto Rico” among the changes that “must be on the table to ensure power stays with the people.”
- CommitteeCommittees vote on bills first. The delegates and the resident commissioner can vote here.Territories vote
- US House floorFinal passage. The five territorial members cannot vote on it.No territorial vote
- US SenateEnding debate on most bills takes 60 votes. Democrats have at least 54 seats. The territories have no senators.No territorial vote
- PresidentPresident Donald Trump (R) signs or vetoes the bill. He has threatened to use his veto.
- OverrideA veto stands unless two-thirds of each chamber votes to override it.
Trump has cast the same idea as a threat. Democrats want to make DC and Puerto Rico states “and many other highly destructive things,” he posted in October 2025. In April, he wrote that “if they pull off adding these two States, these Country Destroying Sleazebags will dominate politics in America,” and called for ending the filibuster. Under US Senate rules, ending debate on most legislation takes 60 votes, six more than the 54 seats Democrats have secured so far.
The president of the Puerto Rico Republican Party, Ángel Cintrón, rejected the argument that a state of Puerto Rico would be reliably Democratic, describing the islands as conservative outside the San Juan metropolitan area, and called on Democrats to keep their public commitments on statehood. “I think now they have to put their action where they put their word,” he said. Dávila Pernas made a similar case from the other party. “Statehood is not only what is fair for Puerto Rico: it also benefits the Democratic Party,” he said. “With majorities in both chambers, the time has come for Congress to stop postponing this conversation.”
Two lame ducks
The territories now face two kinds of lame-duck politics. The first is immediate. Republicans keep their majorities until January 3, and current federal funding runs out on December 11. Republican hopes for a lame-duck sprint “seem dim,” the AP reported, and the government could face a shutdown if Congress fails to pass a funding bill. The only territory named in the current stopgap law is the Northern Mariana Islands, which received $21.4 million in added Medicaid funding as disaster relief, and King-Hinds has said she asked for relief for the CNMI government and public schools in the December funding bill.
The second lasts for the final two years of Trump’s term. “I don’t want to be just sitting there for two years vetoing everything,” Trump told Politico, the AP reported, as he warned of gridlock. Democrats, for their part, plan a 100-day agenda on costs and “vast oversight and investigations” of the administration, according to the AP.
Much of what is at stake for the territories does not require Congress at all. On November 19, before the new Congress convenes, the federal Marine Minerals Administration plans to auction seabed mineral leases off American Samoa. A council of matai, or chiefs, from the Manu’a Islands and two community groups, represented by the nonprofit environmental law organization Earthjustice, have sued to block the sale, arguing that the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act does not authorize mineral leasing in any US territory, including American Samoa. Radewagen, who has called for a moratorium, said in May that federal officials “must follow the law and not contemplate any shortcuts just because we are a territory and not a state.”
The oversight board is another. On August 1, 2025, Trump sent dismissal notices to five of its seven members. Three members challenged their removal in court, and in September a federal judge made permanent an injunction blocking it while the case continues. Trump has left three seats vacant that would correspond to Republican appointments, El Nuevo Día reported. The new majority changes how such seats are filled. PROMESA calls for the president to select most board members from lists submitted by congressional leaders, including two from the speaker of the US House and two from the US Senate majority leader. When a seat opens, the corresponding leader submits a new list, and an appointee from outside the lists requires US Senate confirmation. In January, both of those posts pass to Democrats.
Citizenship is a third. An executive order Trump signed on August 6 bars federal agencies from issuing documents recognizing US citizenship to a person neither of whose parents is a citizen if that person was born “in a territory or territorial waters of the United States where citizenship is not conferred by Federal statute.” American Samoa is the only territory whose residents are labeled “nationals, but not citizens.” In Congress, Representative Morgan Griffith (R) of Virginia introduced the End Birthright Citizenship for Territories Act in July, a bill referred to the US House Committee on the Judiciary and to the US House Committee on Natural Resources, which Huffman is poised to lead.
Other federal decisions affecting the territories are also moving forward. The United States Census Bureau’s proposed rules for the 2030 census, which closed for comment on November 2, do not mention Puerto Rico or any other territory. In late October, as immigration agents carried out operations in San Juan, White House Border Czar Tom Homan visited Puerto Rico to meet with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, The Washington Post reported. Hernández, who sits on the US House Committee on Homeland Security, said he has sought explanations from federal authorities about ICE operations in Puerto Rico, through official communications and public hearings, since January 2025.
The deadlines ahead
Puerto Rico’s Medicaid funding runs on a fixed clock. Federal law sets the territories’ standard Medicaid matching rate at 55%, but Congress raised it to 83% permanently for American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the US Virgin Islands, and to 76% for Puerto Rico only through September 30, 2027. After that, Puerto Rico’s capped federal allotment “will be calculated from the much lower FY 2019 base without a legislative change,” according to KFF. A committee convened by Puerto Rico’s government estimated that at least 860,000 people would lose coverage if Congress does not provide more funding before October 1, 2027. The government is seeking $4.8 billion a year, compared with the $4.2 billion a year the program now provides, according to El Nuevo Día.
“The Medicaid clock is already running,” Dávila Pernas said, calling for a permanent solution. In an interview with El Nuevo Día, he described the challenge of putting the funding back on the table and getting it “approved in the committees of jurisdiction, approved by the full chamber, and then handled or included in budget legislation.” US House Democrats plan to move quickly to reverse Trump’s Republican “cuts to the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid,” the AP reported. But priority issues for Puerto Rico such as Medicaid and SNAP “will still require bipartisan agreements,” El Nuevo Día noted before the election. Cintrón expressed confidence that Governor Jenniffer González-Colón (PNP, R) can use the relationships she has built with lawmakers in both parties to secure the funding. “If anyone can achieve it, it is the governor of Puerto Rico,” he said. EFE reported on November 4 that the governor had not yet commented on the results.
- November 19, 2026Seabed lease sale off American SamoaThe Marine Minerals Administration plans to auction seabed mineral leases off American Samoa. A council of matai from the Manu’a Islands and two community groups have sued to block the sale.
- December 11, 2026Federal funding runs outCurrent federal funding runs out. The government could face a shutdown if Congress, still under Republican majorities, fails to pass a funding bill. The Northern Mariana Islands is the only territory named in the current stopgap law.
- January 1, 2027Medicaid’s new requirement starts in the statesStates must implement Medicaid’s community engagement requirement, which does not apply to the territories.
- January 3, 2027Democrats take control of CongressThe 120th Congress convenes with Democrats holding a US House majority and at least 54 of the 100 US Senate seats. Alicia Limtiaco and Janelle Sarauw join the US House.
- January 4, 2027Plaskett takes office as governorStacey Plaskett becomes governor of the US Virgin Islands.
- September 30, 2027Puerto Rico’s enhanced Medicaid funding endsPuerto Rico’s 76% federal Medicaid matching rate expires. Without new legislation, its capped allotment will be calculated from a much lower base, according to KFF.
Recent federal changes have treated the territories differently in both directions. Medicaid’s new community engagement requirement, which states must implement by January 1, 2027, does not apply to the territories. But the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program, established under Public Law 119-21, made its awards to “all 50 states.” And starting in October 2027, under Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, states with payment error rates above 10% in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program must pay 15% of benefit costs. Guam, with an 11.7% rate, is at risk of shouldering that share.
SSI is a longer-standing gap. The benefit for older and disabled people with little or no income is available only to residents of the 50 states, DC, and the Northern Mariana Islands. In 2022, the US Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Vaello Madero that the Constitution does not require Congress to extend SSI to Puerto Rico, leaving any extension to Congress. The bill to extend it to the four territories without it, sponsored by Moylan and cosponsored by Plaskett, has not moved since it was referred to the US House Committee on Ways and Means, and both are leaving Congress. Limtiaco campaigned on equal treatment for Guam under SSI, Medicaid, and veterans care.
Disaster recovery is the third pressure point. In July, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) suspended the US Virgin Islands Housing Finance Authority “from receiving another cent,” saying it had spent less than a third of $1.9 billion in disaster recovery funds. For Puerto Rico, the government has yet to disburse more than 70% of the HUD disaster funds allocated since 2017, El Nuevo Día reported in February. In Guam, the Federal Emergency Management Agency denied Individual Assistance for households hit by Typhoon Sinlaku, finding the impact was “not of such severity and magnitude” to warrant it.
New governors meet a divided Washington
The territorial elections also changed who will deal with this Congress from the islands, and several of the new leaders will work across party lines from the start.
In Guam, Vice Speaker Vicente “Tony” Ada (R) of the Guam Legislature and his running mate, Edward John “EJ” Calvo (R), won the governor’s race and will succeed Governor Lou Leon Guerrero (D), and Republicans look poised to take eight of the Legislature’s 15 seats in unofficial results. Guam’s delegate in Washington will be a Democrat in the majority. Ada has called for removing the federal funding limits on Guam’s Medicaid program, a goal that overlaps with Limtiaco’s. “If a party position conflicts with Guam’s interest, I am clear: I choose Guam,” Limtiaco said during the campaign. Moylan, in conceding, said, “Alicia has my full support as she prepares to take on the responsibility of representing Guam.”
In the US Virgin Islands, the party that will control the US House will also hold the governorship, the delegate seat, and the Legislature of the US Virgin Islands, where Democrats won ten of 15 seats. Plaskett, who takes office as governor on January 4, 2027, said on election night that she would seek technical and administrative help from Washington to move recovery money into projects more quickly, drawing on relationships from her years in Congress, and she pointed to her longstanding relationship with Jeffries as a potential advantage for the territory, the St. Thomas Source reported. Asked about a proposal for a federal oversight board for the territory, like Puerto Rico’s, she rejected it. “What the Virgin Islands needs is a Marshall Plan, not an oversight board,” she said. She also named González-Colón, with whom she served in Congress, as someone whose experience could help inform the territory’s approach to recovery.
The Northern Mariana Islands’ next governor will be chosen in a runoff between former Governor Ralph DLG Torres (R) and Northern Mariana Islands House of Representatives member Blas Jonathan “BJ” Attao (I), which must be held 14 days after the results are certified. Attao has tied his platform to federal grants. “We need to clean the books. We need to fix our audits. We need to get the information to the federal government,” he said at a debate. Whoever wins will work with a Republican delegate in the minority.
In American Samoa, Radewagen returns as a member of the minority as the lease sale off the territory approaches. In Puerto Rico, the governor and the resident commissioner sit on opposite sides. González-Colón, a Republican, announced in an address this year that she would take a statehood bill to Washington, and she is an ex officio member of the oversight board. She will deal with a Democratic Congress in which Hernández, the president of the opposition Popular Democratic Party, caucuses with the majority.
The first tests come quickly: the lease sale off American Samoa on November 19, the federal funding deadline on December 11, the Northern Mariana Islands runoff after certification, Plaskett’s inauguration on January 4, and, nine months later, the end of Puerto Rico’s enhanced Medicaid funding on September 30, 2027. Results from all territorial elections are on the Pasquines elections center.
Results from Congressional actions on the territories will be seen over the next two years.
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