Since its inception in 2015, the House Freedom Caucus has made a significant impact on Republican members of Congress and the way legislation has evolved. Now, it has branched out and begun plotting similar operations at the state level. According to its website, the State Freedom Caucus Network says the issue of unelected bureaucrats has significantly impaired the legislative process in state capitols:
Today, the federal government is larger and has more authority than ever before. The permanent administrative state, filled with unelected bureaucrats, has run roughshod over our state legislatures and consolidated power. The principles enshrined in the 10th Amendment have never been more critical:
“Those powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Building on the success of the House Freedom Caucus (HFC), the SFCN will help establish State Freedom Caucuses (SFC) and provide the high-level staff, strategy, and community conservatives need to take ground across the country.
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In an interview with PJ Media, SFCN President Andy Roth said the fight against federal overreach needs to start at the state level. Unfortunately, he says, the swamps in each of the 50 state capitols may be even swampier than D.C. He cited early successes by Freedom Caucus members while acknowledging that their work has only begun. They’ve begun with branches in ten states, with plans to expand across the nation.
“It started a little over a year ago,” Roth told PJ Media, “in discussions with then-chair of the Freedom Caucus, Andy Biggs from Arizona, Mark Meadows, and a few other folks. It was pretty clear to us that if we were going to save this country, we really have to get involved in the states. We know that the House Freedom Caucus, as a business model, worked. Our goal was to bring that business model down to the states.”
Just like the House Freedom Caucus, Roth said, the State Freedom Caucuses are made up of the most conservative state lawmakers. “They are willing to take on members of either party,” Roth said, “in order to advance conservative policies, or block bad legislation.”
Roth made sure to point out how bad things have gotten at the state level, mostly due to a complete lack of media coverage. “You think D.C. is corrupt and is swampy,” he said, “but I can assure you that the state capitols are just as much, if not worse, simply because they operate largely in the dark. A lot of media is focused in D.C., but these state capitols, a lot of them have barely any coverage at all.”
Roth cautions that deep red states often see their legislatures taken over by liberals, despite having Republican majorities. “That’s systemic,” he said, “that the deep red states like Mississippi that we’re in, or South Carolina, have Republican majorities, or even supermajorities, but these states are controlled by moderates and Democrats that are able to form a coalition bigger and stronger than conservatives.”
Breaking that apart and exposing it will not be easy, he warns.
Even a small minority of conservatives, however, can have an outsized impact on state policy. Roth cited South Carolina, in which a public records request revealed that the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), a public university, had provided sex change operations, and offered gender and hormone care for children as young as four years old, in violation of state law. A letter from the South Carolina Freedom Caucus (SCFC), signed by a handful of conservative legislators outside of the regular legislative session, was all it took to get MUSC to stop providing puberty blockers and other gender treatments to minors.
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Jacyn Gallagher, a freshman legislator in Idaho, jumped at the chance to join the State Freedom Caucus when she got elected. “Our Senators on the Freedom Caucus are doing amazing things,” she told PJ Media in an interview. “The Freedom Caucus offers a unified team of legislators to vote as a block when bills come up, giving conservative credibility to our stance on the hot topics. Freedom Caucus will help us get our message out on issues surrounding school choice, Medicaid expansion, and tax relief. We have a great director here in Idaho.”
The entire mission of the State Freedom Caucus Network is to advance conservative lawmaking in state legislatures. As Roth points out, “The entire culture, the entire establishment is built and designed to thwart conservatives. The governor of any state is a full-time job. They operate around the clock, year-round. The governor’s office is very well-informed and very well-advised. Same thing with the woke bureaucracies that run state agencies. These folks work year-round. Same thing with the lobbyists that are trying to extract rents from the government. Most state lawmakers are part-time. Who’s minding the store?”
The full discussion with Andy Roth is worth a listen. Check it out at the Behind the Curtain podcast.
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