House Freedom Caucus (HFC) members delivered three tough-minded messages during a Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday that was by turns somber about the midterm election disaster for Republicans and pugnaciously determined to spend every remaining moment of the 119th Congress enacting conservative reforms.

The HFC is the tip of the conservative reform spear in Congress, with 31 members from across the country, including newly elected House Minority Leader Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), one of the co-founders of the caucus. Rep. Andy Harris, the Republican who represents Maryland’s 1st Congressional District, is the current HFC chairman.

Message number one left no doubt whatsoever that the HFC warned repeatedly before the election of the tsunami that replaced GOP control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives with a radically left-wing Democratic Party determined to bury President Donald Trump and his White House team in subpoenas, adversarial hearings, and corruption charges, and to enact unprecedented expansion of federal power, spending, and debt. 

“You know this is not exactly a ‘we told you so’ speech, this is more of a ‘you told us so.’ This is a group that listens to the American people, and we’ve been listening for quite some time. This is not the first time we’ve made these points; we stood at this very podium in January and then again in June and said to our Republican colleagues in our conference if we don’t go big, we’ll be going home because the American people are telling us that we’re going to send you home if you don’t go big,” Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) said, citing the GOP’s talk about radically reforming or repealing Obamacare without actually doing so, as one example of many issues on which Republicans in Congress failed to deliver what they promised.

“Well, now a lot of our Republican colleagues are going to go home, and health care is one of the top issues they really care about,” Burlison continued. “The average family in America is paying $28,000 a year in health insurance premiums, premiums that have doubled and tripled over the last 20 years, since [the] passage of Obamacare. Six out of 10 Americans said this was one of the most compelling items for them in this election, yet we ignored it. Instead of fixing or replacing Obamacare as we have been talking about for 16 years, we simply talked about it.”

Burlison said Congress should do what Trump has proposed, which means giving back those premium dollars to the people and enabling them to decide their health care needs, instead of having federal bureaucrats decide for them, as will happen if Democrats succeed in enacting their “Medicare-for-All” program.

“The alternative is going to be a one-size-fits-all bureaucratic nightmare. If you thought the bureaucracy did well with COVID, just wait until they get control of every aspect of your health care,” Burlison warned.

Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) was even more blunt in delivering message number two, that congressional Republicans get kicked out of Congress when they fail to deliver what they promise to voters.

“Last week was obviously not a good week for Republicans. Many of us saw it coming, many of us had conversations behind closed doors about how things were going and how this Congress was sleepwalking after we passed the Big Beautiful Bill and not getting done what the American people sent us here to do. In my opinion, this party needed a humbling from top to bottom, and I think that’s exactly what the American people gave us. We had an opportunity to go big and we didn’t do that and now we’re going home,” Crane declared.

Crane concluded his remarks expressing his fears that “we didn’t learn a damn thing” from the 2026 campaign results. “And so we’ll find out over the next couple of months if we learned anything from this massive loss that we just took,” adding that “God is still on His throne, He is not surprised by any of this, and if we as a nation turn back to Him and seek Him, and if we bring that back into the halls of Congress, I do believe God will bless this group, God will bless our party, and God will continue to bless this country.”

Message number three was repeated by every one of a dozen HFC members present for the Wednesday news conference and that message is, do not waste a single remaining minute the Republicans have as the majority in the 119th Congress.

North Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Harris said, “Fifty-three days is the time remaining for Republicans to unite and to deliver for the American people. We really do have a tremendous opportunity to do everything we can to protect the American people from the disruption and the chaos that we’ve been warning the Democrats will unleash come January. … While Republicans still control both chambers, we have a narrow window to pass the rest of the America First agenda, to protect the conservative wins that we’ve already secured and yes, to keep our government funded. Our work is far from over, and we are determined to fight for our country until the very last moment.”

Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) began by pointing out that “Republicans still control the House and the Senate, President Trump is still in the White House, and our work is far from over. I agree we should stay here until the time runs out. We have less than 53 days remaining in this Congress to codify all of our victories, and there is no excuse for wasting a single day.”

“President Trump has taken bold executive action to secure the border, to stop the Green Scam and to cut wasteful spending, and so much more,” she added. “Congress now has an opportunity to make these policies permanent. There are radical communists just outside this room who are determined to dismantle our nation, who even campaigned on that promise. We face a choice — secure our victories or wave the white flag to the radical Left. Surrender is not an option.”

Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) laid out the issues that he and his fellow HFC members believe must get first priority in the remaining 53 days of the 119th Congress and for which no effort can be spared in the mission to enact as much of the GOP agenda as possible.

“The bottom line is simple: Everyone needs to stay until the work is finished,” he emphasized. “No packing up early. Codify President Trump’s border policies. Under no circumstances, amnesty. Act fiscally responsible for once. Pass the Save America Act. Get as many of the president’s nominees through as possible. The folks back home are done with excuses, and that’s what we saw on Tuesday. We need to clear the decks, strip the Democrats of every leverage point. Let’s bring the cots into both chambers and get ’er done.”