Session Recap

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

The first year of the 2025-2026 legislative session featured plenty of wins for the South Carolina Freedom Caucus and the conservative movement, specifically by stalling bad bills and fixing problematic bills. But rather than passing an overwhelming majority of bad bills (though there were plenty of bad bills passed), the establishment instead decided to use its supermajority republican status to allow truly transformative, conservative legislation to languish in committee. The following content will hopefully break down the wins we experienced this year, the losses in the bad legislation that passed, and the disappointment of leadership not legislating with the boldness instilled in them through the mandate by which they were elected last November. 

“It’s much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones”- Calvin Coolidge

Bad Bill Killing: 

1. Tax Hike Bill:

• H.4216 was Leadership’s tax hike bill on which they spared no expense, including time to actually unveil its broken pieces. The only time they actually saved related to this bill was the legislative time in which they decided to rush it through without proper vetting. The bill proposed increasing taxes on at least 60% of South Carolinians. Once SCFC members and grassroots called them out for their faux pau, leadership scrambled to fix the bill by only increasing taxes on 25% of the state without any clarification on who the 25% would be, but from the best educated guesses, that number would include taxpayers in every bracket, including many in the middle class. Despite not killing the bill in its entirety, the SCFC were able to reduce the damage this bill would wreak while stalling enough for it to not have time to be debated in the Senate. 

2. Hollywood Tax Subsidies:

• Coinciding with the tax hike debacle, leadership was attempting to pass legislation which would further contribute to the moral delinquency of the state by handing over gobs of tax incentives to Hollywood film producers to film in South Carolina. The South Carolina Freedom Caucus happily exposed leadership for the willing role they were playing in the destruction of our culture while doing it at taxpayer expense, resulting in the bill being stalled until next year. 

3. Rules Changes:

• As you may recall, there was an effort to legislatively silence conservatives by limiting who could offer amendments and how many amendments could be offered on the floor. Thanks to the calls and emails from the grassroots, that effort was defeated. At the beginning of this year, House Leadership began pushing for new rules again. Once again, the grassroots made their voices heard that under no circumstances could any new rules limit debate or discussion. While we were successful in defeating that part of the proposal, Leadership was able to amend House Rules to remove the one rule available to all legislators to bring legislation up for immediate consideration. Though the rule is rarely used, it was a powerful tool conservatives could wield in order to create movement for conservative priorities. We will be working next session with the grassroots to ensure House rules revert back to include this necessary accountability rule. 

“The spirit that prevails among men of all degrees, all ages and sexes is the spirit of liberty”- Abigail Adams

Advancing Liberty: 

4. DEI:

• After years of exposing our state-sponsored addiction to institutional racism and affirmative action, the SCFC experienced a huge win working with Education Chairlady, Shannon Erickson, passing legislation to eliminate DEI in South Carolina. Shepherded through by members like Josiah Magnuson, this bill is arguably the most comprehensive DEI prohibition bill in the country, extending to higher education and state agencies. While the Senate didn’t pass it this year, the bill can still be passed next year if they so desire. 

5. Regulatory Reform:

• In the age of DOGE, there is no excuse for a supermajority of Republicans to not reduce the regulatory burden on SC businesses. This year, we passed legislation which would create more transparency and a solid process for the elimination of swaths of regulatory code. As with DEI, this bill is awaiting final passage in the Senate. 

6. School Choice:

• We fully agree with President Trump that it is a fundamental and necessary right for parents to dictate the upbringing of their children both educationally and otherwise. This year, both chambers passed and the Governor signed into law a modest school choice bill which could eventually become full universal school choice for all South Carolina students. School choice is proven to shrink state budgets, eliminate wokeness, and improve outcomes for students. 

7. Enacting MAHA:

• SCFC members, Jackie Terribile and Stephen Frank, led the charge on ending the subsidization of chronic disease on our children through unhealthy school lunches. With the help of Chairlady, Shannon Erickson, we were able to pass legislation to remove dye-laced foods and unhealthy processed foods in our school lunches. This bill awaits passage in the Senate. 

“Politicans are masters of the art of deception”- Martin Gross 

Establishment Campaign Promises Left Unfulfilled:

8. Closed Primaries:

• For the 19th year in a row, House Leadership refused to move a closed primary bill despite South Carolina Republican voters overwhelmingly issuing their support to close primaries on ballot box questions. 

9. Illegal Immigration Enforcement:

• While President Trump and Border Czar, Tom Homan, are cleaning up streets and reducing crime by enforcing our immigration laws, South Carolina’s Republican supermajorities did nothing to stop the incentivization of illegal immigrants in the Palmetto State. Members of the SCFC filed legislation which would end these incentives but none of the legislation received hearings. 

10. Protecting Our Girls’ Spaces:

• A simple piece of necessary legislation to protect our young ladies’ bathrooms and locker rooms from biological males also remained untouched this session. SCFC founding members like Ashley Trantham and current members like April Cromer have fought tirelessly to protect our children from the dangerous onslaught of the woke left and their radicalized gender ideology, but House Republican Leadership does not see the issue with the same lens that we do. 

11. Pro-Life Legislation:

• Yesterday, the SC Supreme Court upheld the Heartbeat bill, but South Carolina still permits 2,000 babies annually to be murdered. 3 Republican Senators lost their re-election for their opposition to pro-life legislation. Sadly, House Leadership and 2/3rds of the House Republican Caucus did not see protecting those lives as important enough to deal with this year. 

In Conclusion, while this year may have been slightly less egregious because we didn’t pass AS many bad bills, we still are trailing far behind states with much smaller Republican majorities on major conservative issues. House leadership must prioritize passing conservative legislation to close our primaries, protect the unborn, advance medical freedom, cut spending, stop any handouts to illegal immigrants, and protect our girls’ spaces this session The SCFC will continue to serve as an accountability agent for the Republicans who campaign one way but legislate another.

For liberty,

SCFC