CHEYENNE, Wyo. – As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to make significant moves during his initial days in office, conservative lawmakers in Wyoming are also gearing up to enact changes. Wyoming is the first state where members of the Trump-friendly Freedom Caucus have gained control of a statehouse chamber.
This development poses a major challenge for the Freedom Caucus movement, which has expanded beyond Washington to various state capitols over the last decade, including Missouri and Oklahoma last year. On Tuesday, a 13th chapter will be established in Democratic-led Maryland, further solidifying the conservative network’s influence.
As Wyoming’s legislative session commences, the Freedom Caucus majority in the House is gearing up to implement an ambitious agenda. They aim to pass five key bills within 10 days, focusing on issues such as addressing illegal immigrants, rolling back diversity programs, restricting state investments favoring green energy over fossil fuels, and reducing property taxes.
“What we are here to do is get the job done. The people have clearly given us a mandate,” incoming House Speaker Chip Neiman said.
So far, the Freedom Caucus has existed largely as an opposition faction to more moderate or mainstream Republicans in charge of legislative chambers. But now, its members will get a chance to lead.
“Wyoming is, I think, a Poli Sci 101 case study,” said Andrew Roth, president of the State Freedom Caucus Network, who’s hopeful that success in the Cowboy State can be replicated elsewhere. “If conservatives enact policies that they said they would on the campaign trail, it’s infectious with voters, and the voters will continue to reward them.”
Though not a majority, the Freedom Caucus significantly expanded its ranks last year in Louisiana and joined with new GOP Gov. Jeff Landry to enact a sweeping conservative agenda that included stronger gun rights, the display of the Ten Commandments in public classrooms, and the authority for police to arrest migrants who enter the U.S. illegally. Neither of the latter two laws are currently being carried out as legal challenges continue.
Wyoming, the nation’s least-populated state, has long trended Republican. Growing GOP dominance in recent years has made Democrats downright hard to find in some places, so divisions instead have become significant within Wyoming’s GOP. That fault line could start deepening as the Freedom Caucus in the House contends with Wyoming’s more traditionally Republican state Senate and Gov. Mark Gordon, whom Trump criticized in 2023 as “a very liberal guy.”
Gordon, who vetoed a Freedom Caucus-backed bill to cut property taxes last year, said he remains open to cooperation.
“There are a lot of issues we see eye to eye on,” Gordon said. “It will be interesting to see the bills that they bring forward.”
A Washington movement into the states
The Freedom Caucus has been active in the U.S. House since 2015, gaining widespread attention when some of its members helped topple former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy during the last session of Congress.
An outgrowth of the group, the State Freedom Caucus Network, launched in 2021 in Georgia and has been spreading to other states since then. It has about 175 members this year — up more than a quarter since the 2024 elections, Roth said.
The Freedom Caucus nearly doubled its ranks in South Dakota after last year’s elections and now counts the House leaders — though not members — as allies who “see things in a very similar light as far as legislation goes,” said Rep. Aaron Aylward, vice chairman of the state’s Freedom Caucus chapter.
In Wyoming, the list of incumbents ousted by Freedom Caucus-endorsed candidates included House Speaker Albert Sommers, who was attempting to move up to the Senate, and House Speaker Pro Tem Clark Stith.
Though they suffered some losses, candidates aligned with Freedom Caucus also toppled prominent Republicans elsewhere, including South Carolina’s assistant House majority leader.
Caucus members often portray themselves as the Republican Party’s true conservatives, sometimes pressing colleagues into uncomfortable votes on amendments and blocking or slowing debate to make a point. As a result, they tend to clash with Republican legislative leaders.
Freedom Caucus members in Missouri and South Carolina recently made longshot bids to win House speaker elections. But both were soundly defeated.
Five and Dime Plan
In a bit of sloganeering rare for Wyoming, the state Freedom Caucus chapter is billing its five-issue, 10-day agenda as the ” Five and Dime Plan.” It’s seeking to move at an unusually quick pace, even for a legislature that meets for just two months this year.
At the top of its list are two immigration-related measures. One would require voters to prove their Wyoming and U.S. citizenship; the other would invalidate driver’s licenses issued by other states to Wyoming residents living in the country illegally.
Other prongs of the plan would target diversity requirements at colleges and universities, prohibit environmental and social factors from being taken into consideration in state investments and slash residential property taxes by 25%.
The Freedom Caucus says its polling shows strong support for its plan.
The agenda is “probably the most responsive we’ve seen government in decades in Wyoming,” said Freedom Caucus member Rep. John Bear.
Gordon is skeptical the Freedom Caucus has as much support as it claims, pointing to low turnout in last year’s Republican primary that chose many of the Legislature’s new Freedom Caucus members.
“We didn’t hear from a very large portion of the state,” Gordon said. “But here they are, and I look forward to seeing what they can accomplish.”
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Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Missouri.
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