The Freshman Congressman Fighting the Media

Recent elections have been framed as existential. No matter which side you’re on, the stakes are clear.

Voters aren’t imagining it — it truly feels that way. Washington press releases and comms shops echo this urgency, but once election season ends, the Capitol often returns to business as usual.

Amid this backdrop, a new Right has emerged — younger Republicans energized by the culture war. They see its downstream effects as poisoning our politics. They’ve studied the Left’s takeover of American institutions over the past 60 years — and are channeling that same energy to take them back.

They care less about preserving old norms and more about how government ought to run.

The Trump administration — accused by the Left of breaking norms and applauded by the Right for taking risks — is one expression of this shift. Yet while many Republicans voice support for Trump’s approach, few match his urgency in passing his agenda through Congress. One Republican who aims to do exactly that is Congressman Brandon Gill (R-TX).

He’s the youngest Republican in Congress. He’s also the freshman class president. And unlike many of his peers, he’s learned from the viral success of figures like Jim Jordan (R-OH) — focusing his firepower on the culture war and government spending in ways many establishment Republicans won’t.

In a recent interview, Gill put it bluntly: “We’ve got to start being a lot more aggressive with how we play politics. The Left plays to win. They play for keeps.” It’s a view he shares with his father-in-law, Dinesh D’Souza, the conservative filmmaker.

Gill isn’t shy about what lit his fire, citing “rabid leftists” as the ones who “red-pilled” him, a nod to the terminology of the online, anti-establishment wing of the political right.

An Ivy League graduate of Dartmouth and a former investment banker, Gill argues the conservative movement must embrace the new MAGA voters — with or without Trump.

On whether illegal migrants are constitutionally owed due process, Gill didn’t flinch: “The only due process migrants should get is deportation.”

“Do you think America is addicted to white supremacy?” Gill asked NPR’s CEO, pressing her on past support for reparations and her description of riots as “counterproductive.”

At a congressional hearing, he challenged a USA Fencing official who supported men competing in women’s sports: “Do you think parents who don’t want their daughters competing against men in women’s sports are whiny?”

After a House Republican account posted a message in Spanish, Gill responded quickly: “Is this a joke?” — slamming the group for pandering “in foreign languages.”

Conservative commentator Steve Bannon says, “Fortune favors the bold.” Stephen Miller says, “Be bold.” That spirit is the engine behind the Trump administration, the rightward shift of young voters, and the rise of the new freshman class.

I spoke with Brandon Gill about his first 100 days in Congress — and the priorities and initiatives he’s focused on as the youngest Republican in the chamber.

Ari: Recently, everyone was talking about a hundred days of Trump, but it's also been your first hundred days, and so I wanted to ask you if you have any reflections. If you can walk us through the reactions that you've had being in Congress for the past hundred days.

Brandon: A lot of what's been happening in Washington really is defined by the president, and everything that he's been doing to get our country back on track, issuing so many executive orders.

But I'll tell you a little bit about what we've been focused on. Of course, being a freshman, that means we're starting from zero.

We had to begin by just getting the basics of the DC and the district offices set up, getting basic processes in place, hiring staff, laying the groundwork for the real work that we came here to do, which is to promote the president's agenda and secure the border, to deport illegal aliens, to get men out of women's sports, and all the other things that we talked about on the campaign trail.

Whenever you're coming in, you have all three branches — essentially the House, the Senate, and the presidency — at a time of intense action. Nothing that we're doing right now is theoretical. It's all real policy. That makes this a much more exciting time to be here than what you typically get.

Everything that you run for office to be able to do — to be able to actually fight to get the border secure, to deport people — are things that we're able to do and to make a difference on right now. So it's a really unique time to be here.

Ari: One of the criticisms of Trump is that he's been doing everything he's promised, but has been doing it through the executive branch.

And there are some people who are saying, why not try to push through more of this stuff through Congress while you have it? Do you think that's part of the game plan, to be able to push through that policy through the Congress?

And do you think that Congress would be willing to enact the Trump agenda through that type of process?

Redshift: Members-Only