WASHINGTON — In the span of two weeks, the House Freedom Caucus made two moves long seen as unimaginable for a band of far-right rebels formed to pressure Republican leaders to shrink the federal government.
First, they all unanimously supported a budget blueprint for President Donald Trump’s agenda that contained a $4 trillion debt limit increase.
Then, they unified to support a six-month government funding bill that largely continued the spending status quo established under President Joe Biden, with modest changes to expand military spending and reduce domestic funding.
The shift was illustrated by the chairman of the Freedom Caucus, Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., appearing alongside Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and his leadership team at a news conference Tuesday before the government funding vote to show solidarity. He drew smiles as he made a joke about how unusual it is to be a Freedom Caucus leader in that setting.
“We want to be Trump’s greatest asset, because we’re so aligned,” Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., a Freedom Caucus member, told NBC News. “We want to be the engine that helps his team. We actually agree with Trump and the things that he campaigned on almost universally.”
The decision to rally around the two measures — once unthinkable for the Freedom Caucus — points to a transforming identity for the ultraconservative group in the Trump 2.0 era. With a Republican trifecta in Washington and a wafer-thin majority in the House, every lawmaker is viewed as either an ally of Trump or a target of his ire — and members of the Freedom Caucus are perhaps the most eager to prove they belong to the first camp.
Their support for this week’s spending bill, however, only came after an all-out lobbying blitz from the White House. Both Trump and White House budget director Russell Vought directly dialed up holdouts and held private meetings with the Freedom Caucus, where they made assurances to use other tools to claw back federal spending.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, one of the staunchest fiscal hawks in the House who just a few weeks ago was skeptical of a continuing resolution, said the Trump White House — not congressional leaders — is central to the group’s willingness to “give some grace” and sing “from the same sheet of music” as the rest of the party.
“The DNA of the Freedom Caucus is to say, ‘Why am I going to vote to continue to fund the things I don’t want to fund?’” he said in an interview. “What we’re seeing now is, well, you’ve got an administration willing to carve a lot of that back. … Are we going to get every inch of it? Nope. Are we going to move the ball quite a bit? Yep. And we should be willing to do that.”
A decade-long transition for the Freedom Caucus
Founded in 2015, the Freedom Caucus was designed by a few-dozen Republican hard-liners to be a vanguard of fiscal conservatism and smash the status quo.
They didn’t fear government shutdowns; they welcomed them. Their signature move was to collectively withhold votes unless House GOP leaders met their demands. Before this year, most members of the conservative crew had never supported a stopgap spending bill or debt ceiling increase in their entire House careers.
But almost exactly 10 years later, Trump has transformed the party, including its most loyal voters, from fiscal conservatives worried about spending into culture warriors who see Trump as battling a liberal movement that is an existential threat to traditional values. They want their representatives to show loyalty to a president who once called himself the “king of debt” and has, when setting aside lip service, been uninterested in reducing red ink. Trump has wielded the strong support of the GOP base to threaten to end the careers of party lawmakers who cross him.
And as Harris acknowledged, Freedom Caucus members represent some of the most pro-Trump districts.
“They voted for him,” he said.
The House Freedom Caucus, an invitation-only group, has several dozen members, though it doesn’t publicize the full list.
Freedom Caucus members are keenly aware that their recent chair, Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., lost to a Trump-backed primary challenger in 2024 after he endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president.
Some have seen their districts change, like Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., who faced a competitive race last fall, and Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., whose upscale suburban district around Phoenix trended blue during Trump’s first term and dovetailed with him quitting the Freedom Caucus. One of the founding members, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, has climbed high enough to become Judiciary Committee chairman and has become a firm ally of leadership.
Newer members arrived after Trump took over the party in 2016, when deep-pocketed outside groups that backed fiscal conservatives began to transition into pro-Trump outfits to evolve with the times.
Now, the Freedom Caucus has been working to solidify its reputation as the most pro-Trump group on Capitol Hill. Caucus members are quick to point out that so far this year, it has been non-Freedom Caucus members — or the “adjacents” — who have been the biggest problem spots for the Trump-backed budget blueprint and the continuing resolution.
And some Freedom Caucus members were annoyed by a recent interaction involving Trump and Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, who was kicked out of the group last year for backing a primary challenger to Good.
During a meeting at the White House last week, Davidson remarked how glad he was that Good was no longer a member of Congress, according to three sources with knowledge of the interaction. Some House Freedom Caucus members felt the comments were inappropriate for the setting, and suspected Davidson was trying to remind Trump that the group hasn’t always had a leader supportive of the president.
The Freedom Caucus had been considering inviting Davidson to rejoin the group, but after that meeting, the group is now unlikely to extend an invitation, the sources said. Davidson did not respond to a request for comment.
Freedom Caucus puts its faith in Trump
Despite all that, Freedom Caucus members insist they aren’t acting in fear of political retribution from Trump. But there are signs they are still sensitive to the matter.
During a closed-door party meeting on Tuesday morning, Roy said he didn’t appreciate that Trump threatened to primary Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, the only Republican who opposed the six-month spending bill, according to two sources in the room. While Massie is not part of the Freedom Caucus, Roy called on GOP leadership to stand up for Massie, which Johnson later did at a news conference.
The Massie-Trump debacle hit close to home for Roy, who himself was on the receiving end of a Trump primary threat in December after opposing a debt ceiling increase and stopgap government funding bill. But Roy, who has demanded that spending be slashed at least down to pre-pandemic levels from 2019, has since become a reliable vote for Trump and party leaders. And in turn, Trump had laid off Roy on social media, and even publicly and profusely praised the Freedom Caucus this week.
“Thank you to the House Freedom Caucus for just delivering a big blow to the Radical Left Democrats and their desire to raise Taxes and SHUT OUR COUNTRY DOWN!,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday.
Freedom Caucus members insist they haven’t abandoned their views. Harris argued that the short-term government funding bill is unlike previous ones because it largely freezes federal spending for an entire fiscal year.
Harris also said the budget resolution last month came with assurances from GOP leaders that they would pursue meaningful spending cuts, even though the language of the blueprint allows a multitrillion-dollar increase to the deficit.
Freedom Caucus members also say they’re putting their trust not in congressional Republican leaders, but rather in the Trump White House.
“Leadership has always said, ‘We will let you kick the ball next time, but right now we’re gonna yank it away.’ I think that this analogy is a little different now. It’s basically Trump saying, ‘Give me the ball and I’ll kick it,’” said Burlison, who has blasted past funding measures.
Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., a Freedom Caucus member who won a seat on the House Rules Committee that controls which bills come to the floor, said the group is backing legislation it usually doesn’t because it wants to be supportive of Trump.
“Do we want to stop his momentum? He’s desperately needing funds for [border czar] Tom Homan now. Do we want to stop that?” Norman said. “I don’t think I voted for a CR in a long time.” Asked when he last voted for a short-term funding bill, Norman said he couldn’t remember if he ever did.
On Tuesday, NBC News asked Roy whether his conservative voters want him to be more loyal to Trump. He paused to contemplate.
“There’s a mix,” Roy said. “You’re going to see people — ‘You suck, you’re not with Trump!’ Or whatever. And then they’ll say, ‘Oh, OK, good. You’re with Trump.’ And you’ll have someone over there going, ‘Oh, you’re just a lackey for Trump, and you’re not doing what you ought to do. You ought to be blocking the CR.’ It’s an oven.”
As Roy was speaking to NBC News in the Capitol on Tuesday about why he’s backing the government funding bill, Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, interrupted to joke, “Because Chip Roy is a team player!”
Roy didn’t react.
Source link
