What is the House Freedom Caucus?

Editor’s note (May 22nd 2023): This article has been updated since publication.

THEY HAVE been likened by fellow Republicans to “lemmings with suicide vests”, “legislative terrorists” and the Taliban. When they formed a voting bloc in 2015 they considered naming themselves the “Reasonable Nut Job Caucus”. Members of the House Freedom Caucus, a troupe of about 50 far-right Republicans in America’s House of Representatives (out of 222 Republicans in the chamber), are unabashed agents of chaos. In this Congress they became kingmakers. Nineteen of the 20 lawmakers who forced 15 rounds of voting for the position of Speaker belong to the group. Only after Kevin McCarthy granted them significant concessions did he win the job. What is the Freedom Caucus—and what power do its members now wield?

The caucus was formed by Republican members who considered the leadership of the House (then, as now, in Republican hands) too amenable to compromise with House Democrats and the Obama administration. Ironically the group was born of frustration with the Republican Study Committee (RSC), a once similarly minded caucus established during the Nixon administration, which had lost its insurgent character. Unlike the RSC, the Freedom Caucus’s membership was secret and invitation-only. Its bylaws stressed unity: on certain measures, if four-fifths of members agreed to vote one way, all had to follow suit. Its defiance of the House leadership quickly earned punishment. Some of its members were stripped of committee assignments and denied party funds for re-election. Yet its ranks have swelled in recent years.