When President Donald Trump declared last month that he was willing to risk a partial government shutdown to secure funding for a wall on the southern US border, most observers scratched their heads. Shutdowns cause significant economic and social disruptions, and those who instigate them usually lose favor among voters.

Yet Trump ignored the warnings of Senate leader Mitch McConnell and other party leaders. He refused to sign a spending bill that passed the Senate and was teed up for a vote in the GOP-led House, and even offered to take full responsibility for a shutdown. As a result, we are now in the midst of the longest government shutdown in American history.

That Trump would place such emphasis on building a border wall is not a surprise. It was a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, and he believes that failure to build it would seriously damage his standing among his core supporters who want one. But why would Trump believe that refusing to sign funding bills without money for a wall is the best strategy to get what he wants?

The answer likely lies with the House Freedom Caucus, an organized group of conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives. The caucus advocated for the shutdown — which reflects the kinds of tactics used by the group in the past — and it has developed key ties to Trump that allow its members to shape the president’s strategic decisions.

What is the House Freedom Caucus?

The Freedom Caucus was formed in early 2015 by several House conservatives frustrated with their lack of influence and by policy compromises between GOP leaders and President Obama. The group quickly grew to more than 30 members, and while that was not enough to pass its desired bills in the House, the caucus was sufficiently large and unified to be a pivotal bloc on highly partisan votes.

As I show in my forthcoming book on the caucus, this allowed the group to credibly threaten the defeat of legislation they disliked and force GOP leaders to allow votes on proposals they wanted. In its first two years, the Freedom Caucus had an impressive 83 percent success rate when it tried to block bills or force votes on bills, amendments, or procedural motions.

The Freedom Caucus also took credit for the early retirement of Speaker John Boehner, whose proclivity toward compromise and punishment of the group’s more rebellious members had rankled conservatives. Though caucus’s role in Boehner’s early departure was in some ways overstated, it nonetheless helped cement the image of the Freedom Caucus as a powerful group that could cause major headaches for noncompliant party leaders.

The shutdown reflects the Freedom Caucus’s hardball tactics

During its first two years, the Freedom Caucus developed a reputation for using threats and other hardball tactics with both Republican leaders and the Obama White House to get what it wanted. That included, in 2015, threatening to sink appropriations bills — thereby shutting down the federal government — if they contained funding for Planned Parenthood. The group moderated its approach to some degree after Trump was elected, but not entirely; for instance, in November 2017 it threatened to kill a floor rule when GOP leaders tried to alter the funding mechanism for the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

The Freedom Caucus tends to employ threats and other aggressive legislative tactics on issues over which its members have strong preferences. Illegal immigration is one of them — in fact, the group’s first successful use of hardball legislating occurred over a border security bill. It is thus unsurprising that the Freedom Caucus has been among the biggest advocates of following a shutdown strategy to secure money for a border wall. And when the president was expected to sign a GOP spending bill without money for a wall, Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) and other caucus members mounted an aggressive campaign to oppose the bill with floor speeches, social media, and appearances on Fox News.  

Also worth noting is that the caucus frequently endorsed assertive tactics in Congress as a means of showing voters that they are fighting hard to fulfill their campaign promises. Its members have used the same rationale to argue for the current shutdown. Former Caucus Chair Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) told the White House it should insist that congressional Republicans fund a border wall “because they told voters they would,” while Meadows lamented on the House floor that too many politicians “forget what they promised the American people.”

The Freedom Caucus has the ear of the White House

Members of the Freedom Caucus have not relied solely on pushing publicly for certain White House strategies. One of the important but underappreciated tactics of the caucus is to develop ties to sympathetic political actors in positions of power. Those ties allow the group to exercise far more influence than it would otherwise be able to, given its small size. 

Trump’s election gave the caucus a unique opportunity in this regard. Trump, a nominal Republican and novice politician, lacked both political experience and a network of party professionals he could draw on to staff the White House or provide advice. The Freedom Caucus filled the vacuum. Not only have some of its members been Trump’s biggest public advocates, but several have moved into the executive branch or developed personal connections that allow them to advise the president informally.

Meadows, for instance, has routinely defended the president on national television, and he reportedly speaks with Trump on a regular basis. His relationship with the president is so close that he was briefly considered as a replacement for John Kelly as White House chief of staff.

Though Meadows wasn’t selected, another Freedom Caucus co-founder was — former Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) — placing a caucus ally in a uniquely powerful position to advise the president on political strategy. As chief of staff, Mulvaney can also be a key conduit for Freedom Caucus members seeking White House access. In fact, when he was director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, Mulvaney met with caucus members more often than with leaders of the Republican Party in Congress.

These personal and professional connections have given the Freedom Caucus an additional means of shaping presidential decision-making. When Trump was expected to sign a GOP spending bill without wall funding, Meadows called Trump directly and urged him to defy Republican leaders in Congress by letting the government close. Later, when Trump threatened to declare a state of national emergency and build the wall without Congress’s cooperation, he backed off after multiple Freedom Caucus members expressed opposition.

The shutdown could make the caucus more influential … or less

Trump’s embrace of government shutdowns as a negotiating tactic suggests that the influence of the House Freedom Caucus is greater than ever. And if it ultimately yields some funding for a border wall, the president’s esteem for the caucus will likely grow. But if the current record-breaking shutdown goes on for too long or ends in defeat for the president, the group may find it harder to maintain that influence.

In fact, there are already signs of disagreement between Trump and the Freedom Caucus over how to resolve the impasse. Although presidents are regularly tempted to exercise power unilaterally, the Congress-centered, limited-government Freedom Caucus has traditionally opposed giving greater power to the executive branch. Trump did agree with caucus members who urged him not to try to build the wall via a declaration of emergency, but he may find it too tempting to refrain from expanding his executive authority in order to build his long-sought-after border wall.

Another, related possibility is that Trump simply decides to fold, or is compelled to do so by other congressional Republicans, as the partial shutdown continues to damage his image and the GOP brand. Some initial surveys already suggest that the reputation of the party and the White House is being harmed by the shutdown. Should Trump subsequently blame the caucus for recommending that strategy, it could further hurt the group’s standing in the White House. (Interestingly, Mick Mulvaney is reportedly “open to anything that will bring the shutdown to a close.”)

But regardless of how this government shutdown ends, the fact that we have one is a testament to the outsize West Wing influence of the House Freedom Caucus.

Last Wednesday, by a vote of 202-32 (plus three blank ballots), Nancy Pelosi was elected to be her party’s official nominee for speaker. While this was a decisive victory for the long-time Democratic leader, it was only the first of two votes that Pelosi must win if she wants to be the next speaker of the House. The second, which takes place at the start of the next Congress in January, requires gaining the assent of a majority of all House members who cast ballots for individual speaker candidates.  

Pelosi is far from guaranteed to win that second vote. For one thing, the number of votes cast against her last week is well above the number she can afford to lose. Though anti-Pelosi Democrats Marcia Fudge (OH), Brian Higgins (NY), and Stephen Lynch (MA) have softened their opposition or have pledged to vote for Pelosi, other legislators, including Ron Kind (WI) and Gil Cisneros (CA), came out of the woodwork to oppose her.

In addition, while Pelosi has been able to flip some opponents in exchange for concrete concessions, there may be limits to that technique. Josh Huder argues that Pelosi has only a finite number of leadership posts, committee positions, and noncontroversial agenda items she can offer dissenters, and the availability of such goods dwindles with each holdout she appeases. 

And in a preliminary statistical analysis, we found that lawmaker age and district conservatism are statistically significant predictors of opposing Pelosi. These variables likely capture concerns about reelection and an aging leadership team — concerns that cannot be easily negotiated away, especially in a party with many young members and incoming lawmakers who will represent swing or GOP-leaning districts.

Despite these challenges, however, Pelosi has at least four major advantages over her opponents in the House-wide vote for speaker. First, as Matt Glassman notes in his explanation of the speaker voting process, Pelosi can win a majority on the floor if some of her opponents choose to vote “present” or abstain from voting altogether. 

This reduces the absolute number of votes needed to get elected speaker, while still allowing lawmakers to fulfill a pledge to not cast a ballot for Pelosi. Pelosi is reportedly asking some Democrats to do so, aided by the fact that her opponents do not have an agreed-upon alternative candidate to vote for.

Second, a public, chamber-wide vote for speaker is fundamentally different from a private vote for the same post. Although the public vote allows lawmakers to take electoral credit for voting against an unpopular nominee, it also opens one up to punishment by the nominee (assuming she is elected), criticism by other party members, and retribution by outside advocacy groups. Indeed, one Pelosi opponent, Kathleen Rice of New York, has already been lobbied hard to support her. As we note in our forthcoming book, this makes the floor vote for speaker a powerful test of lawmakers’ loyalty to their party.

This helps explain why there is usually a steep decline from the number of lawmakers who oppose their party’s nominee in a secret ballot to the number who oppose the nominee on the floor. In 2010, for instance, 43 Democrats voted in caucus against Pelosi as their nominee, but only 19 did so on the House floor. In 2015, 45 Republicans opposed Paul Ryan in the GOP conference, yet only nine voted against Ryan on the floor. The next year, 63 Democrats rejected Pelosi in the party, a number that dwindled to just four in the final speakership vote.

Third, last week’s caucus votes served as an escape valve for those who promised to oppose her. Leadership ballots are usually cast for specific candidates, but Pelosi allowed the caucus to vote up or down on her candidacy.

As a result, members of Congress who publicly stated that they would vote against Pelosi could argue they kept their commitments to constituents in the caucus, without casting a ballot on the floor that might elect Kevin McCarthy as speaker or throw the House into the potential chaos of multiple ballots. Indeed, Pelosi’s aides may have suggested to Democrats that they publicize their anti-Pelosi ballots with this in mind.

Finally, the predicted probability of any Democrat opposing Pelosi is not that large. In our statistical model, we found only a few Democrats had a greater than even chance of publicly opposing her election. In fact, Pelosi seems to be picking the low-hanging fruit by successfully flipping Democrats who were least likely to oppose her: Fudge, Higgins, and Lynch were among the six Democrats with the smallest likelihood (less than 10 percent) of opposing Pelosi. 

This is not to say that Pelosi has smooth sailing between now and the January vote for speaker. If she has been successful thus far in shoring up support in the caucus and flipping some of her erstwhile opponents, she still must find a way to persuade more Democrats to support her (or at least not vote for another candidate) while stemming any additional defections. Also, as Brian Gaines and Gisela Sin point out, there is precedent for a bloc of dissenters to extract major concessions from speaker nominees. 

Even if Pelosi wins election as speaker, it may come at the price of pledging to adhere to a term limit, something she has steadfastly resisted. But as Pelosi has proven many times before, she has the skills and tenacity to win votes with minimal compromises, especially when the stakes are high, as they certainly are when the House is trying to decide its next speaker.