A political void trade of sorts played out dramatically on March 27, when President Donald Trump rescinded Rep. Elise Stefanik‘s (R-NY) nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Trump didn’t mince words. He cited House Republicans’ narrow majority and the possibility that the seat she holds for the 21st Congressional District, which covers North Country and part of the Albany area, could flip Democratic in a special election.

However, the analogy has its limits. Stefanik tried to leave Congress voluntarily, without being forced from her professional home, as Knecht was through a trade. Yet the similarities are striking, playing out under two of the brightest spotlights in American life — Congress and professional basketball, no less with the NBA’s most prominent team, the Lakers.

Little breathing room for House GOP

Stefanik, 40, was expected to be easily confirmed to the U.N. post by the Senate until concerns bubbled up from the Trump White House about creating a vacancy and triggering a special election, which can cause political upsets.

Trump said on Truth Social that he asked Stefanik, a former House Republican Conference chairwoman, the fourth in the House GOP hierarchy, to stay in Congress and help him accomplish his agenda, calling her one of his “biggest allies.”

“With a very tight Majority, I don’t want to take a chance on anyone else running for Elise’s seat,” Trump said.

Stefanik, who was elected to Congress in 2014, has been a longtime Trump backer in the House. She came to prominence during the 2019 impeachment hearings as one of his most loyal and vocal defenders in her chamber.

House Republicans hold 220 seats, compared to 213 for Democrats. Two seats are vacant in deep blue districts in Arizona and Texas, and one special election is set for just after fall starts, while the other hasn’t been scheduled yet.

House GOP leaders will each need to vote with legislation looming on extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Trump’s signature domestic achievement from his first term, and a debt ceiling increase, which could be rolled into a broader tax bill.

Stefanik gave up her leadership post and House Intelligence Committee slot to await a Senate confirmation, which never came. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said he would find a place for Stefanik in Republican leadership, though it’s not clear what that would look like.

If Stefanik left the House, Trump has alluded to a nontrivial chance that Democrats could win a district in which he beat former Vice President Kamala Harris about 60% to 39%.

Expecting Stefanik to step down, local Republicans delayed picking a replacement candidate. Meanwhile, Democrats long ago rallied around dairy farmer Blake Gendebien, who said in March that he already raised $2.5 million for his campaign.

Another electoral threat to House Republicans loomed: One candidate seeking the GOP nomination, wealthy sticker magnate Anthony Constantino, threatened to wage a third-party bid if Republicans tapped state Sen. Dan Stec as their nominee. Stec had recently secured the endorsement of the Conservative Party, but Constantino savaged him as an “anti-Trump” candidate and “a friend of the far-left teachers’ unions.”

In recent weeks, Democrats have also succeeded in special elections. In a marquee April 1 Wisconsin State Supreme Court election for an open seat, Democrat Susan Crawford defeated Republican Brad Schimel, 55% to 45%.

That same night, Democratic House candidates in Florida dramatically outperformed the party’s 2024 presidential ticket. Rep. Jimmy Patronis (R-FL), in Florida’s 1st Congressional District, and Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), in Florida’s 6th Congressional District, won by less than half the margins of their GOP predecessors in 2024, former Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, and national security adviser Mike Waltz, respectively.

Additionally, in late March, East Petersburg, Pennsylvania, Mayor James Andrew Malone flipped a deep-red state Senate district. So far in 2025, Democrats are performing an average of more than 10 points better than they did at the top of the ticket in 2024 when Harris lost to Trump. That kind of overperformance compares favorably for Democrats to the 2017-18 cycle, the midterm elections of Trump’s first term, which concluded with Democrats winning the House majority.

Special elections take on outsize importance

House Republicans do have a few months of relative respite due to special election dates still somewhat in flux. First up is the 7th Congressional District in southwestern Arizona and western Tucson area in a Sept. 23 special election. The late Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva planned to retire at the end of this term after treatments for lung cancer caused him to miss 88% of House votes in 2024. He died on March 13.

The special election to replace Grijalva will take place on Sept. 23, the first full day of fall. However, the key electoral calendar date is July 15, when the Democratic primary is set in a district where Harris beat Trump about 60% to 38% in 2024.

The special election situation is murkier in the 18th Congressional District of Texas, which covers parts of central and northern Houston. The late Democratic Rep. Sylvester Turner died March 5 after just two months in office.

More than a month later, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) still hasn’t called a special election. Texas Democrats are making noises about suing, intending to force Abbott to issue a special election date. However, Texas law gives the governor wide latitude over when to call an election.

Abbott could, in theory, keep the seat through the 2026 midterms, with a Turner successor not taking office until the opening of the 120th Congress on Jan. 3, 2027.

House Democrats have forfeited any moral authority to complain about that possible turn of events. After it appeared Stefanik was about to leave Congress, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) discussed slow-walking the setting of a special election date.

They never got the chance to do so. It was a political turn of events similar to the kind of karmic justice often meted out in classic Twilight Zone episodes, in which characters of the 1959-64 series faced consequences for their actions and personality foibles, often in a supernatural or surreal way, serving as a cautionary tale about morality. In this case, the very election delay plan plotted by top House Democrats may get turned on them, limiting the size of the party’s ranks in the chamber.

Making the best of an extended House stay

Trump has vaguely alluded to finding another administration role for Stefanik, but his word is famously untrustworthy. So, for now, Stefanik is back in the House. She’s put on a brave political face, emphasizing in interviews the need to be a “team player.”

Though Stefanik’s vanquished 2022 Democratic opponent said that line is deeply unconvincing.

“Let’s be clear: Stefanik hates this job. She’s not from NY-21. She loathes the people,” Matt Castelli said in a March 28 X post.

“She invested a decade of her life with one aim: to get ahead. House leadership, VP stakes, UN Amb nominee-all dashed to end up back in the job she hates. She will be miserable and unbearable,” added Castelli, a former CIA employee and counterterrorism official in the Obama administration who, in 2022, lost to Stefanik about 59% to 41%.

If there’s any silver lining for Stefanik in her forced House return, Knecht’s similar basketball experience offers a clue.

Since rejoining the Lakers, Knecht has performed strongly, as he did before the voided trade, which made him attractive to other teams in the first place. The 23-year-old averaged 9.3 points in 70 games for the Lakers, including a career-high 37 points and nine 3-pointers on Nov. 19 in a win over the Utah Jazz. He’s also secured a few presumably lucrative commercial endorsement deals.

In the political arena, Stefanik is showing signs of picking up right where she left off. In late March, the congresswoman raised questions about whether the new acting president of Columbia University, Claire Shipman, was sufficiently committed to battling antisemitism on campus.

STEFANIK VOWS TO BE ‘A LEADER’ FOR TRUMP’S AGENDA IN HOUSE

Stefanik earned widespread praise over her grilling of university presidents 15 months earlier. She pressed them over their timidity in confronting campus anti-Israel protests that effectively supported the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, which killed about 1,200 people and left more than 200 people in Hamas captivity.

“It’s already come out that she has criticized and belittled the House investigation and the accountability measures and has failed to protect Jewish students,” Stefanik said March 31 on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures.