CNN
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As President Donald Trump attempts to muscle his GOP agenda through a narrow House majority, Rep. Chip Roy is perhaps the most important holdout to win over. He may also be the toughest.
Speaker Mike Johnson and his team have been confident they can pass Trump’s massive reconciliation bill, because they don’t believe any Republican will want to stand in the way and face Trump’s wrath. But Roy, the unapologetic fiscal hawk, is the rare GOP lawmaker willing to publicly challenge the president. He has already survived multiple calls by his own party to oust him — including from Trump himself.
“Chip Roy has got courage,” said Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, who has worked behind the scenes with Roy to force party leaders to seek deeper cuts in the legislation. Asked why few other Republicans are willing to speak up against Trump’s bill, Norman said: “A lot of them are more interested in coming back to Congress and doing whatever it takes to appease each little group.”
Roy, a fast-talking, 52-year-old Texan, has become the de facto leader of a small gang of GOP hardliners who has publicly vowed to oppose Trump’s “megabill” unless party leaders make dramatic changes that rein in trillions of dollars of government red ink. Those changes could cost the votes of Johnson’s more moderate members, some of whom are also threatening to bolt from the legislation if it doesn’t include a higher cap on state and local “SALT” tax deductions.
Trump made clear Tuesday he’s most concerned with getting the bill over the finish line — but for Roy and the other conservative hardliners, the policy details and the price tag are what matter most. In their minds, this legislation is their best — and possibly last — chance to significantly narrow the scope of the federal safety net, particularly Medicaid, which they argue is otherwise on a path to insolvency.
Behind the scenes, Roy has mobilized his fellow fiscal hawks at every turn, from crafting amendments on the House Budget Committee to seeking changes to federal programs like Medicaid even after Trump himself trekked to Capitol Hill and told the GOP conference directly not to “fuck around” with that program.
But Roy is also working closely with the White House, including a weekend session in which he went deep into policy details with key leadership and administration officials, trying to get to an agreement.
Now the package is in the Rules Committee, which gaveled into session at 1 a.m. ET Wednesday, where House GOP leaders hope to fast-track the legislation to the floor for a vote later Wednesday. It would take just two GOP votes — besides Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky — from Roy and his allies to defeat the bill.
Ahead of that marathon Rules meeting, Roy sounded more upbeat, adding that the holdouts and leadership “have all been sitting and meeting.”
“We’re in a better spot than we were even 48 hours ago, but there’s still a lot of things we’re ironing out,” Roy said Tuesday evening.
But on Wednesday morning, Roy told reporters the current bill was “not good” and that he was still opposed.
“Things ARE NOT going well!!!” texted Norman, an ally of Roy’s.
GOP leaders still had not yet unveiled the final bill as of Wednesday morning — with the many changes Roy has sought. Even if the bill ends up passing the House with Roy’s backing, he may have to be persuaded all over again if — as expected — the Senate changes the measure.
People close to Roy insist he is trying to get to a yes, sitting at the leadership table with Johnson, rather than coming out as an early no, like his colleague, Massie, who was the primary source of Trump’s ire after Tuesday’s closed-door House GOP meeting with the president.
Massie, another staunch fiscal hawk, said Tuesday that he doesn’t know yet if Roy and others will be willing to stand with him against the bill: “I don’t know. We’ll get to find out here in just a few hours.”
Most of his colleagues, he said, just aren’t unwilling to say the hard things.
“It’s a big, beautiful bill, it’s got a lot of things they’re afraid to be against, when it’s coupled all together,” Massie said.
Roy’s position — and willingness to defy the party — has caused deep consternation among the House GOP ranks.
“Some guys just can’t take a win. There’s like 10 guys in our group that just cannot take a win. They want perfection,” Rep. Don Bacon, a moderate Nebraska Republican, told CNN.
The frustration has been building for months. Asked about Roy, one GOP member gestured to the Senate side of the Capitol: “Do you see that over there?” this member said angrily.
“These guys in the Freedom Caucus don’t seem to understand there’s a whole other half of Congress over there,” the member said. “This bill is gonna pass.”
Roy was one of four Republicans on the House Budget Committee last Friday who voted against the bill, tanking the committee vote and briefly throwing the House plans into chaos.
“I am a no on this bill unless serious reforms are made today, tomorrow, Sunday. We’re having conversations as we speak, but something needs to change or you’re not going to get my support,” Roy said Friday.
After furious weekend talks, which included the speaker, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and administration officials, Roy and the other hardliners backed the bill in committee in a rare Sunday night session. But his full support hadn’t been won yet.
Roy has long been a thorn in Trump’s side — and a repeat target of the president’s outbursts on social media.
Even before he was elected to Congress, Roy didn’t shy away from his willingness to stand up for his hardline conservative ideology. Roy said in a podcast with Politico in 2018 that he wanted to get elected to Congress to “Make Article One great again” — an argument that the White House had gained too much power over Congress, the first branch of government in the Constitution.
Roy was sworn into the House in 2019 and wasted little time making a name for himself. In May 2019, he single-handedly blocked a disaster aid bill, delaying it from going to Trump’s desk, by objecting to a unanimous consent request, arguing that the House should have the chance to vote on the package.
After Trump lost the 2020 election, Roy initially offered to help then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ efforts to overturn the election result, according to Meadows’ text messages first obtained by CNN.
But Roy ultimately soured on the effort when nothing emerged to substantiate Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud, and Roy objected to Trump’s plan to try to use Congress to block Joe Biden’s win on January 6, 2021.
“If POTUS allows this to occur… we’re driving a stake in the heart of the federal republic…” Roy texted Meadows five days before Trump supporters violently tried to stop the certification of the election.
Later that year, Roy challenged Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, a close Trump ally, for the House GOP conference chair position. Trump endorsed Stefanik.
“Can’t imagine Republican House Members would go with Chip Roy – he has not done a great job, and will probably be successfully primaried in his own district,” Trump said in a statement, adding, “I support Elise, by far, over Chip!”
In 2023, Trump lashed out after Roy endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president, writing on Truth Social: “Has any smart and energetic Republican in the Great State of Texas decided to run in the Primary against RINO Congressman Chip Roy. For the right person, he is very beatable. If interested, let me know!!!”
After Trump won the 2024 election, Roy vocally objected to a Trump-backed funding plan that would have suspended the debt ceiling for two years before Trump took office. Conservative hardliners defeated the proposal in a December vote, and Trump once again went after Roy.
“The very unpopular ‘Congressman’ from Texas, Chip Roy, is getting in the way, as usual, of having yet another Great Republican Victory – All for the sake of some cheap publicity for himself,” Trump posted.
“I hope some talented challengers are getting ready in the Great State of Texas to go after Chip in the Primary. He won’t have a chance!” Trump wrote in a subsequent post.
On Capitol Hill, Roy was a holdout when both Kevin McCarthy and Mike Johnson struggled to cobble together the Republican votes needed to be elected House speaker.
Roy was one of the Republicans who initially opposed McCarthy but ultimately backed him to be speaker in January 2023 after a marathon 15 ballots. As part of the deals McCarthy cut, Roy was given a seat on the powerful House Rules Committee, giving him sway over what legislation went to the floor.
This year, Roy was once again one of the holdouts for speaker when Johnson needed nearly the entire GOP conference to support him because the margins in the House are so tight.
“I remain undecided, as do a number of my colleagues, because we saw so many of the failures last year that we are concerned about that might limit or inhibit our ability to advance the president’s agenda,” Roy said in a Fox Business interview on December 31, 2024.
Roy got behind Johnson, but he quickly made clear he would not support legislation to extend and expand the Trump tax cuts if it did not also cut the deficit. His comments in January previewed the opposition he’s now mounting to the reconciliation bill.
“I believe that we should make permanent the Trump tax cuts from 2017,” the Texas Republican said in a floor speech in January. “What I do not believe in is making up numbers. What I do not believe in is magic fairy dust that says the budget will magically balance if you cut taxes and never cut spending. Because that is simply not true.”
Trump has made his attempts to cajole Roy and the other hardliners to get on board with the proposal. In early April, Trump hosted a group of far-right conservatives at the White House along with Johnson after they balked at a Senate proposal. (It was in that meeting when Roy expressed some openness to accepting less than $2 trillion in cuts — as he and others had publicly demanded — in what one person in the room described as a “big win” for GOP leadership.)
“We have to take what’s in front of us, and we have to do the math and decide whether or not that’s going to produce deficits that are bigger or smaller,” Roy told CNN after returning from the White House. “All I see are promises. I do not believe in promises in Washington.”
This article has been updated with additional developments.
