Freshman GOP lawmaker reflects on first 90 days in Congress and previews what’s next: ‘Really rewarding’

EXCLUSIVE: Freshman GOP Congressman Gabe Evans revealed during an interview with Fox News Digital how Republicans have fared, and what’s next, after 90 days of the new session of Congress have now passed.

“Obviously, the Republican conference has come together three times to do things that all the pundits said weren’t going to happen,” Evans told Fox News Digital this week. 

“We had a speaker on the first ballot and people said we weren’t gonna be able to do that. We passed the reconciliation resolution out of the House. Folks said that that was gonna be a long shot. And we kept the government funded by passing a clean CR. And so three different times we’ve seen the conference pull together to do things many folks were doubtful that we could get done.”

Evans said he believes that success will continue to “breed success.”

“I think that is going to lay just some absolutely fantastic foundational groundwork for being able to actually deliver the big things that we need to deliver, particularly around cost of living and affordability,” Evans said. 

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Evans, a former captain in the National Guard and former police officer, was elected to Congress in November, defeating incumbent Democrat Yadira Caraveo in Colorado’s 8th Congressional District. 

Evans told Fox News Digital he has been very “excited” over the past three months to work on issues he campaigned on, including securing the border, ending the “scourge of fentanyl” and working to lower crime rates. 

“It’s been really, really rewarding to be able to do things like pass the the Halt Fentanyl Act out of the U.S. House, introduce my bill, the Uplift Act, unhandcuffing police to locate and interdict foreign transgressors so that we can empower state and local law enforcements and sanctuary states like Colorado to work with their federal counterparts to get violent criminals and cartel members who are illegally present in the country and committing other crimes out of the community. For me that’s been the flavor of the first three months.”

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Evans, who has introduced six bills since becoming a member of Congress, said he is looking forward to continuing moving legislation forward, including the bipartisan Medicare and Medicaid Fraud Prevention Act and the Uplift Act. 

Over the next few months, Evans told Fox News Digital that his constituents in Colorado want Congress to focus on issues like cost of living. 

“We actually just did a town hall earlier this week. We had over 8,500 people dial in and stay on the line for that town hall and we did some just unofficial polling with all of the people who were on the line and the number one issue, no surprise, that came up was cost of living,” Evans said. “So being able to deliver relief in that cost of Living space by being able to work on cutting through just some of the absolute punitive red tape that’s out there that particularly impacts my district around things like energy production, like agricultural production, like air quality permitting.”

Evans told Fox News Digital that Republicans will also continue to address crime and illegal immigration, which he says the president has already made important strides on. 

“In the crime space, what we’re really seeing now is a push-pull between the priorities of the new administration and Congress and blue sanctuary cities and states like Colorado and like Denver,” Evans explained. “So here’s the fact, Denver’s homicide rate in 2024 was double San Francisco’s homicide rates. Colorado is number one in the nation again, three of the last five years running, for our auto theft rate. We’re number two in the nation for teenagers overdosing and dying on fentanyl. We’re the third most dangerous state in the country and so that fixing that problem requires a partnership between the federal state and local government.”

“Under the new administration in this Congress, the federal government has suddenly gotten back to business and is doing their part. The border is secured. Border crossings are at historic lows and we have federal law enforcement agencies. who are going out into communities like mine and getting violent criminals and gangs and drug traffickers out of the community.”