Freedom Caucus Conservative Republican Group, Tactics, Donald Trump, & Kevin McCarthy

Table Of Content

• Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-
• Information for candidates
• Mike Johnson Finally Found the Gumption to Stand Up to the Freedom Caucus. It Could Cost Him His Job.
• The Founding Fathers Couldn't Have Foreseen Trump—But They Immunized Him
• GOP megadonors finance major campaign against potential House rabble-rousers
• Jim Jordan (OH-

She could activate a vote at any time so Johnson should know he is skating on thin ice. According to Politico, this group will make sure that no other Republicans try to rush through changes that would make it harder for lawmakers to oust Johnson from power or that would strip three Freedom Caucus members of a powerful perch they all hold. The publication reported that the Freedom Caucus does not expect any such maneuvers but is remaining vigilant just in case any of their colleagues try to be silent but deadly to their cause. This is what the Freedom Caucus members—even the ones who previously hadn’t supported an ouster of Johnson—confronted Johnson about on the House floor on Thursday. No sweetener, however, can satisfy the hard-right Republicans who’ve made abandonment of Ukraine a top priority. The most conservative voices are getting shut out, and the House Freedom Caucus, ironically, has made sure of it.

Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-

The Fund's other endorsements in 2018 included Russ Fulcher in ID-01, TN-06's Judd Matheny, TN-07's Mark Green, and TX-21's Chip Roy. All were conservative candidates running for open seats in likely or safely Republican districts. The 118th Congress hadn’t even officially gotten underway before the House Freedom Caucus began exercising its influence. Nearly all of the 20 or so Republican House members who threatened to torpedo Kevin McCarthy’s speakership bid belong to the Freedom Caucus or are closely aligned with it (though more than half of caucus members and allies did back McCarthy from the start). Not all the races with candidates backed by the House Freedom Fund have been decided.

Information for candidates

But Democrats may be willing to swallow it if that’s what it takes to re-arm Ukraine. To avoid giving stubborn minorities disproportionate power, the Republican Conference (like majorities in legislatures everywhere) has strong norms requiring members to vote with the leadership on certain types of procedural votes. But in June, a block of 34 conservatives, including several HFC members, defied the leadership on a procedural vote that would set up the rules for debating Trade Promotion Authority — legislation that would help Obama negotiate international trade deals.

Mike Johnson Finally Found the Gumption to Stand Up to the Freedom Caucus. It Could Cost Him His Job.

Suppose Congress passes legislation funding all of the government except for Planned Parenthood, and Obama vetoes it. Obama would describe that as shutting down the government to defund Planned Parenthood. But conservatives say it would be just as accurate to say that Obama shut down the government in defense of Planned Parenthood. The Republican Study Committee, founded in 1973, is a conservative caucus of House Republicans that promotes a limited government and strong national defense. Another congressional member organization, the Tuesday Group, is more centrist and was established in 1994. In the third round of voting on Tuesday, all 20 of the lawmakers defying Mr. McCarthy voted for Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio instead.

The Founding Fathers Couldn't Have Foreseen Trump—But They Immunized Him

Comparatively, fewer than two-thirds of House Republican incumbents were objectors. Ryan was to become one of the youngest speakers of the House in modern history. Ideologically speaking, they’re among the most conservative of House Republicans, though not all are on the rightmost end of the spectrum. Ballotpedia features 486,932 encyclopedic articles written and curated by our professional staff of editors, writers, and researchers.

'Silent but deadly': Far-right caucus mocked over new group with unfortunate acronym - Raw Story

'Silent but deadly': Far-right caucus mocked over new group with unfortunate acronym.

Posted: Thu, 18 Apr 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]

GOP megadonors finance major campaign against potential House rabble-rousers

But since the moment they threw their support behind Mr. Johnson, these hard-liners have encountered the reality that they’re irrelevant to the governance of the House of Representatives. Virginia Republican Bob Good, also a Freedom Caucus member, told NPR the group will continue pushing for "meaningful cuts and spending reductions." Good also joined the Republicans who tanked the Tuesday vote. Texas Rep. Chip Roy, who was part of the rebellious GOP group, met with McCarthy Tuesday evening alongside fellow Freedom Caucus members.

Now, with the GOP holding just a narrow majority in the House, the Freedom Caucus can wield its unity and antagonism to even sharper effect. As the vote for speaker demonstrated, a group even half the size of the Freedom Caucus can hold the chamber hostage for days. Part of what makes the Freedom Caucus a unique intraparty faction is also its greatest strength. If 80 percent of its members agree to a position or action, everyone has to be on board. That’s different from other groups throughout American history, according to Matthew Green, a professor of politics at The Catholic University of America and the author of a book about the Freedom Caucus.

The caucus was pushing Boehner to defund Planned Parenthood, even if it meant forcing a government shutdown. Boehner, tired of the infighting, announced he would abandon the post and quit Congress altogether. According to analysis from the Pew Research Center, the Freedom Caucus was almost unanimous in opposing the January 2021 certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Of the 40 members identified as Freedom Caucus members or its strong allies, 38 objected at least once to the counting of electoral votes for Biden. By Thanksgiving 2014, Fleming and a handful of other members were at their wits’ end, so they decided to form their own group.

And the group’s decision not to back House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy prompted McCarthy to pull out of the race and positioned the Freedom Caucus as a kingmaker. Most of them served in that long stretch when their party held the majority for four decades. The most recent Democrat, however, is Nancy Pelosi, still a House member and the House speaker emerita. She comes in at fifth on the longevity roster, having served one day shy of eight years from 2007 to 2011 and again from 2019 to 2023. Prior to that, the last Republican speaker had been Nicholas Longworth of Ohio, who died in 1931.

The next two Republican speakers would be John Boehner, elevated to the job by the GOP recapture of the House in the "Tea Party" election of 2010. Boehner worked hard to fashion budget deals with both a Democratic President Barak Obama and a Democratic Senate. But his efforts alienated some in his own ranks who in 2015 formed an insurgent group known as the House Freedom Caucus. Increasingly exasperated with his untenable predicament, Boehner simply resigned in October of that year. Johnson has gained stature and won bipartisan praise for letting the whole House vote on the aid package.

The funders backing the new super PACs also typically donate to leadership-aligned super PACs and party committees. But while most of these donors have given to groups tied to McCarthy, a source close to the former speaker said he is not involved in this effort. Over the weekend, McCarthy and the White House announced that they’d finally reached an agreement. Congress would raise the debt ceiling for the next two years, and the White House would agree to some six hundred and fifty billion dollars in cuts over the following decade.

At the same time, he didn’t sound open to compromise on the Freedom Caucus’s bill. Republican leaders viewed this as beyond the pale, and they struck back at the rebels. Three members of the HFC were booted from the whip team, which is in charge of rounding up votes for legislation supported by the leadership. Another rebel, Mark Meadows (R-NC), was stripped of his chairmanship of the Government Operations Subcommittee. That means that if the HFC's members vote as a block, they can deny the Republican leadership the votes they need to pass legislation without Democratic help. And that potentially gives the group a lot of leverage to push the Republican Party's legislative agenda to the right.

"I think we need to look at all of the spending bills and see what are the areas of opportunity to cut, unnecessary wasteful spending, unjustified spending or actual spending that is harmful to the American people," he said. "We think he gave the farm away," he told NPR of the debt deal, adding McCarthy has other avenues to "show his conservatism" going forward. McCarthy repeatedly shrugged off questions about the fate of his speakership on Wednesday — saying he's not concerned about a threat to his gavel.

The torpedoing of the bills was done as apparent retribution for the recent debt ceiling deal brokered by the speaker and President Biden. Gingrich managed to restore many of the powers of the speakership but clashed repeatedly with Clinton and even with Republican leaders in the Senate. In 1997, in his second Congress as speaker, he barely survived a largely covert challenge from within his own leadership team. And just shy of his fourth anniversary in the job, he was voted out by the full House Republican conference in December 1998. The debt ceiling deal's spending provisions were among those that violated the January agreement, Buck said.

The Greene controversy illustrates the group’s struggle to define itself with Trump out of office. Greene quickly allied herself with the rabble-rousing caucus when she got to Washington in 2021. She, Gaetz, and Boebert were especially tight, forming the core of a “MAGA Squad” of pro-Trump ultraconservatives.