A female-led ‘squad’ of upstarts is taking aim at power structures on Capitol Hill while pushing priorities such as healthcare and action on climate change

As the transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, addressed newly elected members of Congress at an orientation event in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a handful of Democratic freshmen slipped out into the winter cold to join a healthcare rally.

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With their brief absence from the biennial conference, a staid affair hosted by the Harvard Kennedy School, the progressive warriors of the House’s new majority sent a clear message.

“I was not sent to Washington to play nice,” the Massachusetts congresswoman-elect Ayanna Pressley told the crowd outside. “I was sent to Washington to fight, alongside all of my colleagues, to save and to improve lives.”

Pressley, who unseated a 20-year incumbent on a message of “change can’t wait”, is part of a women-led, social-media savvy “squad” of upstarts taking aim at the power structures on Capitol Hill.

Already, they have used a pitched leadership battle to demand coveted seats on powerful committees such as appropriations and ways and means, assignments typically reserved for senior lawmakers while continuing to agitate for priorities such as universal healthcare and action on climate change.

I was not sent to Washington to play nice. I was sent to Washington to fight, to save and to improve lives Ayanna Pressley

Such a noisy Washington debut has the political class – and Democratic leadership – wondering how these new faces intend to wield their power. Will they be a leftwing incarnation of the far-right Freedom Caucus or will they prove to be dependable bloc within the governing majority?

One thing is certain, says the House Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) chair, Mark Pocan: “This isn’t your mother and father’s progressive caucus.”

However, he rejects comparisons to the Tea Party renegades who consistently defy Republican leadership.

“The difference is the Tea Party liked to say no, and we like to say yes,” he told reporters while introducing the group’s newest members last month. “We’ve got lots of great policy ideas that we’re going to be advocating for.”

To many leftwing activists, the election of Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York and Rashida Tlaib in Michigan was a validation of the progressive agenda. They view many in the party establishment as insufficiently liberal and beholden to corporate interests – and are urging the newly elected members to seize the moment.

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But that could prove a headache for Democratic leaders, trying to protect the party’s fragile House majority. Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, has said their priority is to to improve the Affordable Care Act rather than rushing to replace it with a single-payer healthcare plan.

“There is a collective urgency among members in this room to get things done,” said Lori Trahan, an incoming House member from Massachusetts who joined the healthcare rally on Tuesday.

In her view, the Democratic caucus has little appetite for intransigence.

“Even if it’s something more narrow than what we talked about in our campaign,” she said, “building the muscle to work together on something small is a good place for us to start.”

The incoming progressives have so far fallen in line with Democratic leadership. Rebellion has instead come from a group of moderates demanding fresh faces and new leadership.

If Pelosi prevails in her bid for House speaker, it will be in no small part due to the support of newly elected liberals. Her victory could embolden them to push for hearings and votes on signature policy initiatives such as Medicare for All and a Green New Deal.

They are demystifying the halls of Congress and giving ordinary Americans a view on how their democracy truly functions Ro Khanna

Despite the high-profile progressive victories, the party’s majority runs through corners of the country that supported Donald Trump in 2016. Some moderates worry that allowing progressives to dominate the party’s messaging will hurt less liberal members, especially those in districts previously held by Republicans.

“The strategy of the caucus must be one of supporting the members who are most likely to lose,” Jim Himes of Connecticut, outgoing chair of the centrist New Democrat Coalition, told reporters.

Ideological differences between progressives and pragmatists are overblown, he said, suggesting that keeping control of the House in 2020 will require firing up liberals and swaying moderate voters.

“We need our young people,” he said. “We need our base. We also need persuasion.”

‘Welcome to Hogwarts’

Even before taking the oath of office, the Democratic rising stars are bringing change to Capitol Hill. Ocasio-Cortez, who at 29 will be the youngest woman ever to serve in Congress, has used social media to bring followers behind the scenes of freshman orientation.

“Welcome to Hogwarts,” she said in an Instagram story, spinning the camera to reveal the soaring architecture of the Capitol.

On Twitter she vowed to pay her interns $15 per hour, after learning that most members offer unpaid internships. “Time to walk the walk,” she tweeted, and then spent time answering questions from online users about how her operating budget would work.

This week, she and Tlaib used Twitter to criticize the Harvard conference for including lobbyists and business executives but not labor organizations or activist groups.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 6 December. Photograph: Charles Krupa/AP

“Lobbyists are here,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted from the closed-door event. “Goldman Sachs is here. Where’s labor? Activists? Frontline community leaders?”

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Ro Khanna, a progressive who ousted a Democratic incumbent to win his Silicon Valley district in 2016, said of the newcomers: “They are demystifying the halls of Congress on social media and giving ordinary Americans a view on how their democracy truly functions.

“Most important, they are restoring a sense of idealism to politics – reminding all of us that the only reason to come to Washington is to try to do big things for our country.”

Elizabeth Holtzman, a former congresswoman from New York who in 1972 shocked the political establishment when she upset a 50-year House veteran and became the youngest woman ever to serve in Congress, at the age of 31, recognizes their desire to shake up Washington.

But she offered a cautionary tale in getting what you want, based on her own “inauspicious start”.

She arrived in Congress determined to avoid the House judiciary committee. But the Democratic leaders ignored her protests and she begrudgingly accepted her assignment.

More than a year later, Holtzman realized her good fortune when she took a seat behind the dais at the start of hearings on the impeachment of Richard Nixon.

“I lost my first legislative battle,” she said. “But I was thrown into the middle of history. Sometimes it’s good that you don’t get everything you wish for.”