The biggest battles for House Republicans are still a few months away, but there’s plenty of opportunities to divide Democrats in the meantime, and GOP leaders think they may have found the Democrats most willing to split from their party: freshmen.
Two bills in the last week — the Laken Riley Act and the Preventing Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act — split Democrats over immigration. And at the center of that split were many of the Democratic caucus’ newest members.
While a handful of Democrats changed their votes on the bills from when both pieces of legislation came up last Congress, a large group of moderate freshmen also joined the GOP to support the measures.
“Really immediately, you saw folks not afraid to stand up and offer advice and ask questions and really talk about places where we can compromise on the other side of the aisle and places where we really need to hold our ground,” said freshman Democratic Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet, who voted for both of the bills.
“Which surprised me, honestly. I mean, I sort of expected most of us to sort of just watch,” she said. “But that did not happen. You see the freshman class coming in really strong.”
McDonald Rivet is one of three freshmen to win in a district Trump won. She’s also the freshman representative for the New Democrat Coalition, a moderate group in the Democratic Caucus.
Twenty-five of the 33 first-term lawmakers joined the New Dems this year, while just seven joined the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Many in the New Dems ran on strong immigration enforcement, curbing inflation and working with Republicans — even the Trump administration.
“The center of gravity of the caucus has clearly moved to the middle,” New Dem Coalition Chair Rep. Brad Schneider told NOTUS.
No. 3 House Democrat Pete Aguilar told NOTUS that, while he doesn’t support the Laken Riley Act, he understood why some of the new Democratic members voted for it.
“They’re a reflection of the districts that send them here,” Aguilar said. “Sometimes those districts are very purple, and that’s the type of member and the response you’re gonna get to issues about immigration and border security.”
“We welcome that, we like that, we appreciate that diversity of thought and experience that they bring to the table,” he said.
The group has now faced its first tests in the form of those two immigration measures. Depending on which Democrat you ask, both pieces of legislation were just messaging bills. They were intended to divide the Democratic Caucus. But to the Democrats who voted for them, they see it differently.
“I’ve always been pro-public safety, pro-law enforcement. The goal of that particular act was to keep communities safer, and I think that’s a goal that’s worthy of my support,” Rep. Adam Gray said of the Laken Riley Act.
“I’m a Democrat who won in a district where Trump won by five. So what message did my voters send? Is it that they want Trump, or do they want Adam Gray?” he said. “What they want is people who are going to get something done.”
To Rep. Chuy García, a progressive caucus leader who was outspoken against the Laken Riley Act, the freshman Democrats can be swayed. All it will take is Democrats telling their colleagues “about the facts and realities on the ground.”
“When the dust settles and when facts are shared with our members, then we will be in a good place,” García said. “Will it be unanimous? Well, perhaps not. Some are in real, real tough districts, so they naturally are going to be more cautious.”
But not all the first-term lawmakers supporting the bills were from frontline districts. And some, like Reps. Sarah McBride and Kelly Morrison, voted for one bill — the Preventing Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act — but didn’t support the other (the Laken Riley Act).
Rep. Shomari Figures — who represents a newly drawn, majority-Black district in Alabama — supported both pieces of legislation. He said he values House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ approach of letting the new members vote as they see fit rather than trying to arm-twist them into going with the party.
“More so than anything, it may show a bit more of a streak of people exercising their own individual thought and judgment, and not so much relying on what other groups or other people are telling them to do,” Figures said. “It’s certainly not some sort of massive revolt or anything.”
“It’s also symbolic of the type of leadership that we have in this caucus that’s different from our other counterparts across the aisle,” he said. “We don’t all have to necessarily fall in line out of fear of something that’s going to come top down from one person.”
Still, García argued that Democratic leaders needed to get the new members in line. He criticized caucus leaders for not whipping against the immigration legislation.
“We need to be doing more, and more quickly,” he said.
But it’s unclear if trying to pressure the new Democrats to vote with the party would even work. McDonald Rivet said the freshman Democrats’ divergence from the party on an issue like immigration comes from the fact that many ran in hard races, either flipping seats or now sitting in ones that Trump won or only narrowly lost.
That perspective, along with the fresh eyes most have for Washington, gives the group a different perspective from others in the caucus.
“We’re really keenly aware that most people do not trust either party,” McDonald Rivet said. “We’re really just interested as new Democrats, how can we not just communicate differently, but legislate differently in a way that has a practical implication in the day-to-day people in our districts.”
“It’s early,” she said. “We all know that dynamics change, but right now, it’s just a really tight-knit group of really committed people.”
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Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.