WASHINGTON — Barely a week after midterm elections that Republicans are still calling catastrophic, both parties tore through a round of leadership elections that reshuffled who will run Capitol Hill for the next two years.

Senate Republicans voted to keep John Thune of South Dakota as their leader, even as the conference braces to hand over the Senate majority to Democrats. It's an unusual vote of confidence: lawmakers rarely reward a leader after a bruising election, but Thune's allies argued a mid-cycle shake-up would only compound the damage.

Across the Capitol, House Republicans delivered a genuine upset. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the brash Freedom Caucus founder and Judiciary Committee chairman, defeated Steve Scalise — the Louisiana Republican who has held a top House GOP post for most of the past decade — for the chamber's top Republican leadership role. The result stunned members on both sides of the aisle, who had widely expected Scalise to coast to another term. Jordan's win reflects a restless conference eager to blame its old guard for the midterm wipeout and looking for a louder, more combative face heading into 2027.

THE MIDTERM LOSSES CHANGED EVERYTHING ABOUT HOW THIS CONFERENCE SEES ITSELF.

The upheaval wasn't confined to Republicans. Senate Democrats are expected to pick their own leadership soon as they prepare to take the Senate majority, and the process is already getting messy. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the independent democratic socialist who caucuses with Democrats, announced he will not support Chuck Schumer's bid to lead Senate Democrats — making him the most prominent progressive to break publicly with the New York Democrat. Sanders has long argued that Schumer's caution cost Democrats politically; with the party suddenly back in position to run the chamber, Sanders and his allies want a leader they see as more willing to fight.

None of the three elections is final. Formal floor votes to install the next Congress's leadership won't happen until the new session convenes in January, and intra-conference jockeying — for committee gavels, whip positions and deputy slots — is expected to continue for weeks. But the early results make clear that last week's midterms didn't just cost Republicans seats; they scrambled the leadership map in both parties.

Jordan, a founding member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, is seen as a far more combative choice than the deal-making Scalise, and his elevation signals House Republicans intend to govern — or oppose — more aggressively than before. Schumer, for his part, has not conceded the fight for Senate Democratic leader and is expected to make his own case to colleagues in the coming days.

What happens next will shape how both parties approach a lame-duck session already consumed by a December government funding deadline, before the new leadership lineups take over in January.