Living With the Freedom Caucus

Wyoming Democrats are scarce on the ground; of the state’s 279,487 voters, only 28,311 are registered Democrats (just under 10%). Wyoming cast 71.6% (192, 633) of its votes for Trump in 2024. Today, only six of the 62 members of the Wyoming House are Democrats; two of the 31 state senators are Democratic.

Wyoming attained another first in November 2024, when the Wyoming Freedom Caucus became the first state-affiliate of the House Freedom Caucus to gain control of a state. Thirty-six of Wyoming’s House Republicans are now linked to the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, according to a report by Better Wyoming Action + Research, a nonpartisan, grassroots group formed by Wyoming journalists Nate Martin and Kerry Drake.

2024 was hardly the first time that out-of-state, would-be politicians, or their backers, identified Wyoming as a place to launch careers. As the saying goes, Wyoming is a small town with long streets; with under 600,000 people, it is the least populous state. This makes campaigning both relatively cheap and comparatively easy. It is also easy to acquire and use dark money in Wyoming. (Dark money refers to political spending where the donor is not disclosed and the source of the money is unknown.) Wyoming is one of only four states that allow businesses to be incorporated without disclosing the names of members or managers. That means that shell corporations, including Limited Liability Companies, can funnel candidates money without disclosing any actual donor names. In fact, Wyoming is the birthplace of the LLC; in 1977, it became the first state to allow their creation. 

Since the Freedom Caucus’s founding in 2015 in the U.S. House of Representatives as an outgrowth of the Tea Party movement, the Freedom Caucus has been a growing, insurgent force within the Republican party, backing Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and, in 2023, helping oust former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The movement, which now counts 31 House representatives among its members, has focused on stripping away government spending and social welfare programs, asserting independence from the federal government, and waging broad assaults on the rights of immigrants, transgender people and voting access.

Freedom Caucuses have since appeared in state houses from Arizona to Pennsylvania, in conjunction with the State Freedom Caucus Network, established in 2021 by Mark Meadows, former North Carolina congressman and White House chief of staff in the first Trump administration. The network is said to provide a full-time paid staffer to each state Freedom Caucus chapter and even tell legislators how to vote. Members of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, for instance, reportedly receive such text messages daily on the topic.

Wyoming is one of 15 state legislatures that now have an official chapter of the State Freedom Caucus Network. Most are formed in Republican-dominated states like Idaho, Missouri and Louisiana, but many have been growing in states with Democratic strongholds or a Democratic governor, such as Pennsylvania, Maryland and Minnesota.

State Freedom Caucuses have championed causes like school vouchers, which divert state funds for public schools to support private and religious schools, to removing books from public libraries. A 2024 study by Matthew Green, a politics professor at the Catholic University of America, found that the top-down model of the State Freedom Caucus Network has contributed to state-level polarization and intraparty conflict, as the caucus often appeals to lawmakers who lack internal party influence and are electorally vulnerable.

The Wyoming Freedom Caucus first emerged in 2018, indicating it would be Wyoming-directed. But, by 2020, it had eight legislators aligned with the national Freedom Caucus who, according to Better Wyoming, began working as “a secretive group of legislators that votes according to orders they receive from their leaders in Washington, D.C.”

On its website, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus says it is comprised of Wyoming House Representatives who share an ideology of “limited government, individual liberty, and American prosperity.” Under the leadership of chair State Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, who represents District 50 in northwest Wyoming, they “plan together, work together, and pray together in pursuit of policies that promote truth by protecting life, private property rights, and Judeo-Christian family values.”

Immediately after it gained control of the Wyoming House, in 2025, the Freedom Caucus executed its “Five and Dime Plan,” passing five bills within the first 10 days of the general session. These included repealing gun-free zones (including around schools), a series of onerous “election reform” measures, a DEI ban in higher education, ending state investment in environmental, social and governance funds and property tax reform. For good measure, it ushered in a wave of anti-trans bills. It didn’t get everything it wanted in 2025, but it came close.

Despite such success, not all members who support or align with the Freedom Caucus agenda are willing to say they do, even though their votes are clear. For example, Rep. Daniel Singh, from Cheyenne House District 61, maintains he has “left” the Wyoming Freedom Caucus. However, he supported all 28 of its 2025 priority bills and voted with its chair 84% of the time on bills tracked by Better Wyoming that year. In January, Singh and several other Cheyenne Representatives were invited to a forum hosted by the Cheyenne chapter of Braver Angels, a citizens group working to unite the country’s political divide. When questioned about his legislative decision-making practices, he tried to dispel rumors of outside pressure via “mass text messages” (from Freedom Caucus operatives) on how to vote.

One attendee, Martin L. Hardscog, Sr., was so frustrated by his encounter there with Freedom Caucus member Rep. Ann Lucas, House District 43, that he wrote the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, Cheyenne’s local paper, about it. He attempted to talk to Lucas about property tax reductions, trying in vain to point out that other letter writers and columnists were opposed to cuts championed by the Freedom Caucus. Hardscog wrote that he came away from their exchange “feeling undone/outgunned/dismissed.” 

Marguerite Herman, another attendee, has lobbied on behalf of the Wyoming League of Women Voters for 20 years. Established in the 1950s, the nonpartisan League has members statewide and active chapters in five of Wyoming’s 23 counties. Interviewed separately, she tells Barn Raiser, “Freedom Caucus members (including her own, House District 11 Rep. Jacob Wasserburger, who “declined” caucus membership but routinely votes with it) show little interest in trying to understand a different point of view or learning much about the issues.” She says they display “group think” and seem to believe their “constituents are more ideological than geographical.” 

Lobbyist and former Rep. Sara Burlingame’s experience with the Freedom Caucus is similar.  (Burlingame served a Cheyenne constituency from 2018-2020 and is now the executive director of Wyoming Equality, an LBGTQ+ advocacy group and is no stranger to working across party lines.)

Burlingame and Herman say Freedom Caucus members appear to vote according to regular (outside) communiqués. Burlingame calls working against bills promoted by the Freedom Caucus “brutal” and says there’s “no pretense that they care about trying to understand (an) issue or coming to any kind of consensus.” 

She and Herman note that Freedom Caucus committee chairs have not enforced traditional rules of hearing decorum. Burlingame says some even allow witnesses testifying against Freedom Caucus-favored bills to be “treated with contempt.” In times not so long past, Burlingame says, the Republican supermajority would at least engage in productive conversation with people holding opposing views. Current “alt-right” members of the legislature, she says, no longer wish to even be seen with Democrats.

In January, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus announced its top priorities for the February/March budget session, only 20 days long. These included:

• Returning state spending to pre-pandemic levels
• Requiring all Wyoming counties to use pen and paper ballots
• Expanding “parental rights,” giving parents a path to pursue civil litigation against state agencies or school districts
• Banning “obscene pornographic materials” from children’s sections in public libraries (a label applied to books containing LGBTQ representation)
• Codifying public access to judicial opinions and court documents
• Overhauling the judicial nominating process in light of a January Wyoming Supreme Court decision protecting abortion access  

None became law; two failed to be introduced in the Freedom Caucus-dominated House and two got no traction in the Senate. Only one of its six lower-tier goals, concerning protection of pregnancy resource centers, was signed into law in 2026. So much for their top priorities.

Why these defeats? At its press conference on the last day of the session, Freedom Caucus Chair Rodriguez-Williams said:

Many of our priorities did fail. Some in the House, due to the two-thirds threshold for a budget session that’s required, and many in the Senate, due to the upper chamber calling it quits. Regardless of where our priorities failed, it’s clear that we need reinforcements here in Cheyenne, in the state capital, in both chambers.

More experienced Republicans had a different take on why the Freedom Caucus didn’t fare as well as it expected. Its bare-bones budget proposal would have gutted the Wyoming Business Council, and cut other governmental programs and services long embraced by Wyoming people, including public media.

Interviewed by Wyoming Public Radio a few days after the 2027-2028 budget passed March 2, Sen. Ogden Driskill, (R-Devil’s Tower) said, “[The Freedom Caucus] went out of their way to cut the budget, and they showed what would happen if they truly got control.” He continued, “They cut to the point that it was absolutely unacceptable to almost everyone in the state. They overran their skis pretty hard on that.”

Also, a remarkable thing quickly dubbed “Checkgate” occurred as the session began, which did not reflect glory upon the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, much less augment popular support for it. On February 9, a self-styled “conservative activist” with caucus connections appeared on the House Floor after adjournment for the day to hand out $1,500 checks to some Freedom Caucus members. (Reportedly 10 Freedom Caucus-aligned lawmakers received checks, though not all on the House floor).

One check delivery was photographed by a Democratic lawmaker and soon shared with the press. Controversy, blame, an executive order and internal investigation quickly ensued. The matter made statewide news for months. As things stand now, an external criminal investigation is pending and there’s talk of ethics training for legislators and better signage on chamber floors. 

Tellingly, the Wyoming Legislative Service Office has been tasked with seeing how neighboring states handle seamy incidents and reporting back to legislative management. Who knows? Perhaps “Checkgate” will prove to be yet another first for Wyoming, embarrassingly enough.

Legislative management recently announced a list of 90 topics it will address over the summer wyoleg.gov, but August 18 is likely to really reveal where the Wyoming legislature is headed next. In Wyoming, it is almost a foregone conclusion that whoever wins any Republican primary will go on to win in the general election. Better Wyoming and many others will be working hard to get out the vote and make sure potential voters know how to navigate unfamiliar restrictive rules. They will be hoping mightily that voters will know as much as possible about candidates, and particularly their voting records, regardless of whether candidates acknowledge their affiliations with the Freedom Caucus. After the exploits of the 2026 session, few Wyoming voters can be said to have no opinion on the Wyoming Freedom Caucus. In due course, the vote will show what that collective opinion is.

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Marion Yoder, a Wyoming native, writes from Cheyenne, its capital. She believes in citizenship and supporting the American promise of liberty and justice for all. Marion can be reached at mycolumn52@gmail.com.