CNN
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Crowded around a white board Monday night, members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus plotted over burgers their next big battle.
They’d press to claw back more federal funding in line with the Department of Government Efficiency’s cuts, maybe even draft up a deficit shrinking sequel to Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” said GOP Rep. Keith Self, who was among those in attendance.
But the optimism in the group’s first meeting since Trump’s agenda bill passed belied a grimmer outlook. They ultimately backed that legislation after expressing serious misgivings in public, and many in the GOP now view them as likely to put on a show over red lines – then cave, if that’s what the president wants.
“This happens all the time,” Ohio Republican Rep. Max Miller told CNN. “They will take you to the nth degree. They will make everyone uncomfortable, making it appear as if they’re fighting for something that they will never end up accomplishing, but yet saying that they’ve accomplished it. And they haven’t.”
House Freedom Caucus members argue their objections to – and eventual reversals on – Trump’s sweeping tax and spending cuts bill were just part of the process: they push legislation to comport with their ultra-conservative worldview, compromising on some points but not others as they look to what lies ahead.
But their strategy of going public with concerns, only to set them aside under pressure, has affected how some in the party say they’ll approach negotiations with the group in the future. Their power as a voting bloc, some members say, is waning as Republicans attempt to navigate their razor-thin majorities through a government funding fight and push to slash more federal spending.
The pattern repeated Tuesday, less than two weeks later. Twelve hardline conservatives, many in the House Freedom Caucus, initially voted to block a cryptocurrency bill – an embarrassing blow to House Speaker Mike Johnson on the floor. But after the group was summoned to meet with Trump at the White House later Tuesday night, the president got the group on board in a “short discussion” where few assurances were made.
After breaking their own record for the longest House vote in modern history, the lawmakers ultimately voted to advance the legislation late Wednesday evening after it came up for a second time – a move the Freedom Caucus chairman insisted was from a position of strength after striking a deal directly with Trump.
House GOP Conference Chair Lisa McClain told CNN that she sees the group’s maneuvering as part of the process to land the most conservative bills possible. It hasn’t changed how she understands their public stances, she said. “Me personally, I take members at their word. So, if one of those members say it’s a no, I believe that it’s a no,” McClain said.
But a Republican source reacting to how the vote was playing out said: “It’s Groundhog Day.”
“I don’t think anybody takes them seriously. They don’t know how to negotiate,” another GOP lawmaker, granted the anonymity to speak freely about their interactions with the group, told CNN of the Freedom Caucus. “They don’t know how to define a win or take yes for an answer, and they constantly move the goal posts.”
When approached by CNN to address criticisms within the House GOP conference, the group’s chairman, Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, raised his voice.
“That’s bullsh*t,” Harris said. “You only wish that we were actually ineffective in it. Interview is over.”
The way Trump and House GOP leadership handled the opposition from the caucus on the eve of the final vote on the president’s agenda bill offered a blueprint for calling the lawmakers’ bluff.
Trump initially aimed to play nice, inviting caucus members to the White House to meet with him and Vice President JD Vance for hours. The president heard them out, listened to questions and concerns and sent them on their way with the understanding that they were moving toward pushing his signature domestic policy bill across the finish line, a senior White House official told CNN.
But when the caucus’ demands didn’t stop for hours after that meeting, even after some members communicated to House GOP leadership that they were ready to vote “yes,” proponents of the bill – including the White House – became frustrated, the official said.
As Trump put it on Truth Social, “the time for negotiating was over.”
“Once you open the vote, they get there,” a senior GOP aide told CNN about the strategy with the House Freedom Caucus. “It’s easy to be a ‘no’ when the vote isn’t open. You’ve got to force the issue and roll the dice. If you never force the issue, they’ll never get to ‘yes.’”
GOP leaders intentionally kept various factions of the House GOP conference separate when the process stretched during the holiday recess week from Wednesday night into Thursday morning, knowing that tempers would flare if members were given the opportunity to address each other in an open forum, the aide said.
Those resentments, though, have only continued to build.
GOP Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania, who came to Congress during the rise of the Tea Party movement, said the ultraconservative group, which he supports, could learn from an old warning that former House Speaker John Boehner would give during the height of government shutdown fights.
“He said, ‘I want you to all remember this. Never say what you’ll never do. It’ll come back to haunt you,’” Kelly recalled.
One senior GOP lawmaker compared the members of the group to children who all wanted something different for dinner, arguing their 15 points of opposition had been too many – and as such were easier to turn down.
“Unless all the kids are unified, that’s what’s coming for dinner,” the lawmaker said. “And you might as well just get to yes and recognize that’s what’s for dinner.”
Pointing to how public the group was in its opposition, another senior GOP lawmaker questioned how serious the caucus was at negotiating.
“There are the folks who like to get things done. And they’re the folks who like to be on TV,” the second senior GOP lawmaker told CNN. “It’s kind of devolved into a group of celebrities.”
GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who ultimately was one of just two GOP votes opposed to the final version of the bill, kept his concerns to private conversations with leadership. Members of the House Freedom Caucus, by contrast, made regular television appearances voicing their objections.
Another GOP aide close to the House Freedom Caucus found its arc from opposition to support so unsurprising that they sent a message days ahead of the final vote predicting the exact way it played out.
“The Freedom Caucus went from the all-star team to the island of misfit toys,” the source said.
The final days of the president’s sweeping agenda bill in the House also crystalized that Trump, not the House speaker, is the one calling the shots. Members needed to hear from the president, not just Johnson, that the time for negotiating was over.
When Johnson would hit a wall with a member, he’d often reach out to the president for help, two sources familiar with the dynamic said. At the bill signing ceremony, Johnson presented Trump with the gavel that was used to close out the final House vote passing the bill.
“I think president’s personal influence on it was the difference. It was the deal maker,” GOP Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana said, reflecting on the bill’s progress through the chamber.
“This bill would not have been passed if Trump wasn’t president,” another senior Republican told CNN. “Trump is the speaker. Johnson couldn’t get any of the votes.”
House Freedom Caucus members argue their constant pressure throughout the megabill’s months-long legislative process pushed their party to embrace deeper cuts to Medicaid and spending.
Moments after the president’s agenda passed, Harris, the group’s chairman, denied that he was “caving” by changing his vote and pointed to “significant agreements” struck with the White House.
Rep. Ralph Norman, who was considered part of the face of the caucus’ opposition, argued that Trump’s willingness to sit with members of the group for two hours to walk them through the bill before the House voted on it was a sign of how powerful the group has become.
“We’re stronger now than we’ve ever been. Why do you think Trump had 14 of us in the White House? Why do you think he took the time to explain? He did a great job. And I trust him,” the South Carolina Republican said.
Responding to direct criticisms from his colleagues on the group’s tactics, Norman said, “Our holding it up improved it. Now, the criticism that we voted, that we made no changes and we ended up voting for it, that’s because we wanted the tax cuts and we knew that the Senate acts on its own and they’re a bunch of liberals over there. So would I have sacrificed the whole bill? No.”
GOP Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri, a Freedom Caucus member, touted the group’s strategy to notch conservative wins in the final legislation. Trump, he noted, often jokes with them that he considers himself a member of the group, adding that the assurances from the president about how he would implement the bill were meaningful to winning the their support.
“At the end of the day, our goals are aligned nearly perfectly with the president,” Burlison, who was involved in the negotiations last week, told CNN. “Because of that, it puts us in a different dynamic with Trump.”
GOP Rep. Diana Harshbarger of Tennessee, another HFC member, told CNN that “there’s always room for improvement” when it comes to the group’s negotiating strategy, but ultimately defended its role within the House GOP conference.
“If there is a caucus at all that’s held in high esteem, it’s going to be the Freedom Caucus,” she said.
Rep. Tim Burchett, who is often aligned with the group though not a member, said Republicans walked out of their pre-vote meeting with Trump and Vance essentially with “an agreement on the intent” of the bill and that was enough for them.
“You can knock them but you should never underestimate them. And I think a lot of members do,” the Tennessee Republican said.
CNN’s Manu Raju contributed to this report.
