The 118th U.S. Congress will begin in 2023 with the inauguration of the elected officials in the November 2022 midterm elections and will end in January 2025 shortly after the end of President Joe Biden's term, which ends in 2024.

In the 2023-2025 cycle the Democrats have control of the Senate by winning 51 seats against 49 republicans. After winning a tie with 50 seats for each party in the preliminary results in mid-November, a runoff was called in Georgia where Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker competed. In the end, Warnock won the election, giving the Democrats a narrow victory.

In the House of Representatives, Republicans won the majority with 222 seats against 212 the Democrats and a vacancy of the late Congressman Donald McEachin, who died on November 28 after being the winner in the race for another term. The U.S. office will be vacant when the new Congress begins its activities and a special election for a new occupant will be held on February 21.

An expected “Red Tide” did not happen despite the fact that, in the previous Congress, elected in 2021, the Democrats won 222 seats against 211 of theRepublicans.

For the 118th Congress that is in place this month, there is a record number of women who will serve both in the U.S. House and Senate.  However, with 149 elected, the number of female representatives increased by only two members compared to the last formation of the Congress. Of these 149 women, 42 are Republicans, which is also a record.

“Also, a record number of black and Latina women will also participate in this Congress. There will be four more Latinas in the House for a total of 18, the most in US legislative history, and one more black woman, bringing the total from 26 to 27.

More than half of the 22 congresswomen entering the House for the first time are women of color, reflecting the growing diversity of that chamber”, according to CNN Español.

As for the new congressmen, there will be 75 newly arrived members to act in the new congress. Republicans defeated five acting Democrats, while Democrats defeated only two acting Republicans. According to CNN, “there are 41 new Republicans and 34 Democrats coming to the 118th Congress for the first time”.

The new Congress will also have the largest number of representatives of Latin origin in history. In the U.S. Senate, remain the six Senators of Latin origin elected so far: Republicans Marco Rubio (Florida) and Ted Cruz (Texas), as well as Democrats Catherine Cortez Masto (Nevada), Alex Padilla (California), Ben Ray Lujan (New Mexico) and Robert Menéndez (New Jersey), according to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials,  NALEO.

In the House of Representatives, parliamentarians of Latin origin went from 38 in the last Congress, to 47 from 2023, according to NALEO.

There will be even more people in the current Congress who identify as LGBTQIA+, according to the LGBTQ Victory Institute.  There are a total of 13 parliamentarians in both the House and Senate, who are thus divided: 11 in the House of Representatives, 10 Democrats and 1 Republican;  4 of them newly elected and 7 re-elected in the 2022 midterm elections.  In the Senate, there are two congressmen who identify themselves as belonging to this group.  Democrat Robert Garcia was voted the first LGBTQIA+ immigrant to Congress, according to CNN.

Finally, in terms of the age of the new congressmen, there is 25-year-old Democratic Congressman Maxwell Frost, for being the youngest member to reach the House of Representatives. He is also the first Generation Z member to serve in Congress. Democratic Congresswoman Grace Napolitano, 86, is the senior in the House of Representatives.

In the Senate, both Democrat Jon Ossoff, 35, and newly elected Republican Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, 38, is the youngest senators to serve in this term in Congress. Meanwhile, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein and Republican Chuck Grassley, both 89, are the oldest senators in the U.S. Senate.

Several veteran congressmen will bid farewell to Congress in 2023:

“Democratic leaders Steny Hoyer, 83, as well as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Jim Clyburn, both 82, represent a generational shift for the Democratic Party in the House. House Democrats chose current Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries of New York, 52, to replace Pelosi as the top Democrat in the House of Representatives. Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark, 59, will serve as minority leader, and California Rep.  Peter Aguilar, 43, will lead the Caucus. They are all a generation younger than their predecessors”, CNN notes.