How the "MAGA Squad" is building power to control the next Congress

Democrats and many Republicans deride the group as gadflies, irrelevant to the serious business of lawmaking. But in fact, the MAGA Squad has been cannily building leverage and clout in the halls of Congress. Now, with the primary season in full swing across the country, they’re looking to pad their numbers, recruiting like-minded firebrands in red districts, endorsing and campaigning for fellow insurgents in intra-party contests, and even, in some cases, campaigning against their own colleagues. (Gaetz boasts that a rally he headlined last year for Harriet Hageman, a primary opponent of Representative Liz Cheney, was at that time “the largest political event in Wyoming history without a rodeo element.”)

Most political observers expect Republicans to win the House in November, putting McCarthy in line to be the next Speaker. But to win that position, McCarthy will need the backing of 218 of his colleagues. There are currently 208 Republicans in the chamber, and election handicappers project the party will win another 15 to 20 seats. Depending on how many they gain, McCarthy is likely to need the support of even some of the party’s most extreme members. “At this point, not knowing the size of the potential majority, leadership is about keeping all the frogs in the wheelbarrow, even if some of the frogs are pretty ugly,” says a former GOP leadership aide who estimates there are about a dozen members of the “real cray cray.”

Particularly if the majority is a narrow one, the MAGA Squad will have ample leverage—and McCarthy has been acting like he knows it. For a time, McCarthy made a feeble effort to rein in his party’s nut jobs and conspiracy theorists. Now he seems more eager to curry favor with them. Last year, he condemned Greene for comparing mask mandates to the Holocaust; more recently, when Greene was kicked off Twitter, he issued a fiery statement in her defense. When the New York Times released audio recordings of McCarthy privately condemning Trump and expressing alarm at the rhetoric of Gaetz, Greene and Boebert in the aftermath of Jan. 6, the House Republican leader rushed to make amends with his members. (McCarthy’s office declined to comment on the record for this story.)