WASHINGTON — Tucked into a moderately sized ballroom inside the Willard Hotel just two blocks away from the White House, members of Congress mingled with state leaders over coffee and a continental breakfast spread.
Lawmakers and out-of-state guests alike were buzzing with excitement as they exchanged niceties and hunkered down for two days of panels and remarks from top officials in Washington. The group was there to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the House Freedom Caucus, the well-known conservative bloc within the House of Representatives that prides itself on disrupting business as usual and breaking the status quo.
“This is just stunning,” Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., told attendees during the closing breakfast on Friday. “From secretly meeting in a basement somewhere afraid of leadership, now you’re in a ballroom in Willard where the speaker came through that door yesterday to praise us.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., wasn’t the only Republican leader to recognize the group during its festivities. Top White House officials such as border czar Tom Homan and Budget Director Russ Vought as well as Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rick Scott, R-Fla., gave remarks throughout the summit to tout the group’s work over the last several years.
“For 10 years, the House Freedom Caucus has courageously battled the Washington swamp, defending liberty and prosperity for all,” Lee told the Deseret News. “The American people could not ask for better champions in Congress, nor I for better comrades. It was wonderful to gather with them today to celebrate their achievements and plan more victories for our country.”
Freedom Caucus pushed for big changes in House
The Freedom Caucus was first established in 2015 to split from the Republican Study Committee as GOP lawmakers lamented that party leadership was not conservative enough. Since then, the group has gained notoriety and national recognition for their willingness to buck leadership — at times, even President Donald Trump — to get what they want.
One of their most notable rebellions occurred in 2023 shortly after Republicans won control of the House, giving them one avenue of resistance to the Biden White House and Democratic-led Senate.
Kevin McCarthy at the time was vying for the speakership, and he was forced to make agreements with several members of the House Freedom Caucus to win their support and secure the gavel — backroom deals that eventually led to his own ouster.
The caucus held “whiteboard sessions where we’re figuring out what we’re going to, what we’re going to get in return for Mr. McCarthy becoming the speaker,” Harris recalled.
Many of those handshake agreements are still in play and regularly shape how the House operates, such as the placement of caucus members Ralph Norman and Chip Roy on the powerful Rules Committee.
Members of the group credit those kinds of successes to their grit and commitment to stick together.
“When I think about the big moments, like getting into the speaker’s fight, (it’s) people joining together, prepping for eight months, iron sharpening iron to make sure that we’re going to have what it takes to win the battle,” Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, one of the eight Republicans to vote to oust McCarthy, said on Friday. “That battle and other battles since then.”
Those clashes have even stretched into the most recent administration — even as Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the White House.
About a dozen of the caucus members were instrumental in securing conservative deals in Trump’s massive tax package, including quickened phaseouts of clean energy subsidies and deep cuts to welfare programs. Those deals didn’t come easily, and often led to multiple meetings with the White House itself.
“When we’re down in the trenches getting called over to the White House at midnight to go talk to them, and you go thinking you’re going to talk to the Treasury secretary, and all of a sudden the president says, ‘Come on over here,’” Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, told attendees on Friday. “That’s what we need. That’s what we need you to do, because this is a fight that everybody is in.”
But while the group has elevated itself to one of the biggest power players on Capitol Hill, that could change over the coming years. At least five of the group’s most prominent members have already announced they won’t run for another term, instead seeking election to another office.
“Yes, we’re going to have to replace some real heavy hitters,” Self told the Deseret News in an interview. “And I have no doubt that the next man up, the next woman up, will find the right people to do the job, because this is absolutely mandatory.”
Freedom Caucus super PAC has its eye on next generation
The Freedom Caucus-aligned super PAC, the Freedom Caucus Foundation, has already begun efforts to identify and support candidates who can replace departing members as well as recruits who can challenge sitting incumbents.
“Even a year and a half out from the elections, we have a lot of people in different states coming to us now and saying, ‘Please take a look at me. I want to be part of the Freedom Caucus,’” Harris told the Deseret News after his closing remarks on Friday.
Harris likened the group to college athletes training for the professional leagues: When you have prominent team players heading to bigger and better things, you become more appealing to incoming candidates.
“The Freedom Caucus is actually a launching pad for success and spreading our philosophies,” Harris said. “If you’re a college football team and you have a great team and a whole bunch of good seniors, and they go on to the NFL, you have no problem finding freshmen who want to go to that school because they know that that’s that the people who have been there a while go to do something. I think that’s what’s going to happen.”
Of course, the future could also be uncertain as it will have a major Trump-sized hole after the current administration expires. Members of the group have long aligned themselves with the president as they navigate their policy stances, and despite temporarily holding out on some of his biggest agenda items, they consider themselves his biggest warriors on Capitol Hill.
But that partnership, Harris argues, will make the group all the more relevant — and powerful — when it comes to choosing Trump’s successor.
“I do suspect that probably next year, we’re going to start hearing rumblings of who’s running, who’s going to succeed President Trump,” Harris said. “I fully expect whoever is interested, we will become kind of the New Hampshire of groups you have to visit.”
He elaborated: “I think they’re going to come to us and go, ‘Gee, you know, I’d love to have the support of the Freedom Caucus to continue.’ I suspect that we’ll be seeing a lot of those presidential hopefuls come speak with us early on.”