Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is championing the kind of hardline stances in the government shutdown fight long favored by the House Freedom Caucus.
The Speaker has canceled previously scheduled votes in the lower chamber and kept the House in extended recess as he aims to put maximum pressure on Senate Democrats to accept the "clean" stopgap to re-open the government, declining to negotiate as the minority party makes demands on health care policy.
He dismissed the prospect of moving a stand-alone measure to pay the troops in the shutdown, saying Democrats should vote for the continuing resolution (CR) funding measures if they don't want service members to miss a paycheck — though President Trump seems to have made the issue moot by directing the Pentagon to use other funds to pay their salaries.
Those are exactly the kind of shrewd move long advocated by the Freedom Caucus: Pass a "righteous bill" in the House, and then try to jam the Senate by leaving town.
And it's earned him heaps of praise from the group, a dynamic that was once unthinkable from the caucus that has spent most of the last decade exerting pressure on GOP leaders.
The Freedom Caucus hosted a press call with Johnson on Friday — the first-ever Freedom Caucus-hosted event featuring a House Speaker. Members spent the whole call backing up Johnson's moves.
House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) called the call "history in the making" that "reflects how far we've come as a movement from a small group of conservatives …. to a leading voice shaping the direction of the policy in the country."
The Freedom Caucus has been much-criticized this year as its members repeatedly held up action on the GOP's "One Big Beautiful Bill" of Trump's tax cut and spending priorities, before folding to allow the legislation to move forward, sometimes without substantive changes. But the group's members argue that the steep cuts in that legislation were much larger than anyone predicted would be possible, due in part to stands it made early in the process, and that its conservative influence on legislation is greater than ever.
This shutdown fight shows how confrontational conservative politics is no longer a thorn in congressional leaders' side, but core to the Republican legislative strategy.
It's a change that other rank-and-file members aren't necessarily happy with.
Several members have publicly criticized the Speaker's move to cancel House votes indefinitely, including ex-Freedom Caucus member Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.), while sources tell The Hill that other members privately voiced concerns with the strategy on a members call last week. Those members argue the House should negotiate
Johnson in a Monday press conference dismissed the vocal minority, arguing that the vast majority of his GOP members agree with the strategy.
"You can poll individual House Republicans, maybe you should, and 98.7 percent of them will tell you that this is the right thing," Johnson said of keeping the House out.
"We are working on appropriations," Johnson said. "The next package of bills is being prepared."
The discontent is all the more reason for the Freedom Caucus to back up the Speaker for taking its preferred actions in the fight.
"We're aligned with the Speaker," Harris said Friday, mentioning that it is the group's expectation that a balanced budget amendment will be brought to a vote on the House floor.
"We both view — the Speaker and the Freedom Caucus view — the federal debt and the federal deficit as an existential threat, and we're working arm in arm with him to address that," Harris said.
It helps that Washington is not only under trifecta government control, but that Freedom Caucus members have long worked hand-in-hand with White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought to advance their conservative aims, and trust the judgement of the Trump administration.
Johnson was never a Freedom Caucus member, but does sincerely favor more conservative policies — having previously chaired the Republican Study Committee, the largest conservative caucus in the House that is more focused on policy and less on tactics.
As Speaker, he has entertained the Freedom Caucus-preferred tactics before, but with the tiny House GOP majority there was not always the Republican support necessary to effectively execute such a plan.
Ahead of the September 2024 end-of-fiscal-year funding deadline, for instance, members of the group had pitched attaching a bill requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote to an otherwise clean stopgap measure, and then leaving the Senate to deal with the legislation. Johnson did put such a bill on the floor that month, but it failed due to opposition from some Republicans, and Congress later passed a "clean" three-month funding fix.
This time, there are no partisan measures attached to the funding stopgap to elicit moderate GOP reservations. Republican leaders argue that should make it easy for Democrats to vote to fund the government.
But the length of the shutdown has surprised many Republicans who had expected Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to quickly fold, as he did in March. On day 14 of the shutdown, the two sides are dug in, with no end in sight.
That naturally calls into question the prudence of continuing the stay-away-from-Washington tactic, especially if the public starts to turn to more decisively blaming Republicans and Trump for the shutdown.
I asked Harris what it means for the legitimacy and effectiveness of Freedom Caucus tactics if the shutdown does ultimately end with the House coming back into session or making health care policy commitments to Democrats.
"We exist within the framework of a Congress, of a legislative body where there are many opinions have to be taken into account before a final conclusion is reached," Harris said. "We're happy that we are increasingly, over time, more of a part of that decision making process, and we expect to be part of that decision making process going forward."
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