Two more Democrats have joined the Congressional Freethought Caucus

Reps. Val Hoyle and Gil Cisneros have joined the group, which champions reason-based policies and opposes discrimination against atheists

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The Congressional Freethought Caucus has added two more members: Rep. Val Hoyle (D-OR) and Gil Cisneros (D-CA).

Hoyle first entered Congress in 2023, but she’s been in politics for much longer. She served as commissioner of Oregon's Bureau of Labor and Industries in the four years prior to that. And from 2009 to 2017, she was in the State House, where she spent two of those years as Majority Leader. She is now a member of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure as well as the Committee on Natural Resources. She’s also part of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and Congressional Equality Caucus.

She hasn’t always voted on the side of science, though; in 2023, she voted with Republicans to lift COVID vaccine mandates for health care workers, a move that put vulnerable people’s lives in jeopardy. She also initially voted for a racist immigration bill that the New Republic described as one that would allow “for the deportation and detention of any undocumented immigrant merely suspected of a nonviolent crime,” though she switched to a no vote for the final passage.

Cisneros is currently in his second (non-consecutive) term in Congress, and in between his terms, he served in the Department of Defense under the Biden administration. (Incredibly, this phase of his life began after winning the Mega Millions lottery in 2010.) He serves on the Armed Services and Small Business committees and is also a member of both the Congressional Progressive Caucus and Congressional Equality Caucus.

Like most of their colleagues in the CFC, neither Hoyle nor Cisneros is non-religious. The Pew Research Center, in their 2025 roundup, listed both as Catholic. Still, they support church/state separation and pledge to protect freedom of religion for everyone (including the non-religious).

The caucus now includes a record 35 members, all of whom are Democrats. As of this writing, the two have not made any public announcement about their CFC affiliation.

In case you need a refresher, the CFC was first announced in 2018 by Rep. Jared Huffman, currently the only openly Humanist member of Congress.

The 35 members now include:

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) (Co-cha)
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) (Co-chair)
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI)
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA)
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN)
Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA)
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)
Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL)
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.)
Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA)
Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA)
Rep. Julia Brownley (D-CA)
Rep. Kevin Mullin (D-CA)
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)
Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX)
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA)
Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL)
Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT)
Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-TX)
Rep. Laura Friedman (D-CA)
Rep. Andrea Salinas (D-OR)
Rep. Emily Randall (D-WA)
Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ)
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY)
Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA)
Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL)
Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR)
Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-PA)
Rep. Kelly Morrison (D-MN)
Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE)
Rep. Ami Bera (D-CA)
Rep. Herb Conaway (D-NJ)
Rep. Val Hoyle (D-OR)
Rep. Gil Cisneros (D-CA)

(Eric Swalwell was a member of the CFC until his recent resignation.)

To be clear, this isn’t an “atheist club” for Congress, as some critics have suggested. This is just a group of lawmakers dedicated to promoting reason-based public policy, keeping church and state separate, opposing discrimination against non-religious people, and championing freedom of thought around the world. There’s really no reason anyone should be against this. That’s why there’s nothing hypocritical about the fact that nearly every member of the Caucus is religious.

The hope is that the membership continues growing—making the Caucus more influential—while the stigma of being an atheist (or even being associated with non-religiosity) decreases across the country. Those two things are more closely linked than we might imagine. Keep in mind that the Congressional Prayer Caucus, which typically promotes a version of conservative Christianity, is much larger and has members from both major parties. By that metric, the Freethought Caucus has a long way to go.

As I’ve said before, perhaps the most shocking thing about the Caucus is that, based on the relative lack of media interest, people don’t seem to care who the members are… which is to say, no one—not even in right-wing media—thinks it’s a big deal for sitting House members to align with a group defending atheists.

That also means none of these lawmakers believes the Caucus will be a concern for them during the second Trump administration. That may come as a shock to anyone who remembers a time when aligning (even remotely) with atheism was considered one of the biggest taboos in politics.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

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