MAGA bloc in Congress makes one last stand before losing total relevance

U.S. Congresswoman Lauren Boebert speaking with attendees at the 2022 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona

The House Freedom Caucus has long been the political home of the most conservative lawmakers in the House of Representatives. Yet according to a recent report, they are in the midst of losing their relevance due to the Democratic takeover in the 2026 midterm elections — and they are going out by taking one last stand.

"When Democrats are in control of Congress, the House Freedom Caucus loses its raison d’être, its esprit de corps, and even its joie de vivre," reported The Bulwark's Joe Perticone on Thursday. "This is because its ability to steer the chamber by making demands for legislative concessions and even by forcing changes to the congressional schedule depends on whether it can make credible threats. In a closely divided chamber where the Republican party is in the majority, the Freedom Caucus can easily obstruct regular business and extract concessions. In a lopsided chamber where their party is a diminished minority, no one has any reason to listen to them at all."

Perticone continued, "These are their final days of relevancy before their banishment to the chamber’s peripheries in January. So, with their end date in view, the Freedom Caucus announced Wednesday a set of objectives for the lame-duck period of the 119th Congress."

In one last ideological stand, they are demanding that Congress "pass a reconciliation package to slash $1 trillion in federal spending;implement national voter ID; codify the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies and ban so-called 'sanctuary cities'; reauthorize expiring federal programs only “if they are fiscally responsible”; pass legislation to create congressional term limits; ban stock trading for members of Congress, as well as the executive branch (including the president) and the judiciary; confirm 'as many Presidential nominees as possible' in the Senate; and pass the permitting reform bill."

While the permitting reform bill may actually pass, Perticone observed, the rest of them are mainly useful "as a preview of how the far right will narrate the ascent of the new Democratic-led Congress: Republicans only lost because they did not go MAGA enough, not because Americans suffered as a result of MAGA policies."

This is not Perticone's first time calling out the House Freedom Caucus.

“The House Freedom Caucus, a group of former congressional rebels who have over the past few years evolved into Trump lackeys, is on the verge of total irrelevance,” The Bulwark’s conservative commentator Joe Perticone wrote in June. “In a scenario where House Republicans become the minority, the caucus will lose whatever semblance of leverage it has, and current members know it; half a dozen of them will be leaving Congress at the end of the year.”

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