Congress is divided along political lines again, for the first time since 2018.

In the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans gained a majority of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, taking back control of the lower chamber of Congress. Seat totals were a mirror image of the previous election, with Republicans this time around controlling 222 and Democrats holding 213. Not all of those elections were finished on Election Day. Vote counting in some cases took a few days to complete. Colorado's 3rd District total was so close that state law mandated a recount; the result of that recount mirrored the initial count, keeping the seat in Republican hands.

In the 2020 congressional elections, Democrats won control of 222 of the 538 seats in the House, giving them four more than needed (218) for a majority. Republicans controlled the other 213 seats.

The U.S. Senate elections in 2020 resulted, after two runoffs (both in Georgia), in an even split between Democrats and Republicans, with each party controlling 50 Senate seats. That technically put the Democratic Party in charge of the Senate because any tiebreaking vote was cast by the Senate's presiding officer, Vice-president Kamala Harris, a Democrat.

In 2022, Democrats gained one Senate seat overall, running their total to 51, leaving Republicans with 49. One late change to that total was the December announcement of Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema that she was renouncing her membership in the Democratic Party and registering as an Independent. Technically, Democrats still outnumber Republicans in the Senate 50–49 and so still control the Senate.

The next congressional elections will be in 2024, also the year of the next presidential election.

The last time that one of the country's two main political parties controlled one house of Congress and the other main party controlled the other house was 2018, when the Democratic Party took control of the House (while Republicans maintained control of the Senate). The Republican Party had won control of both congressional houses in 2016, when Donald Trump was elected President.