As Spending Fights Loom, Freedom Caucus Is at a Crossroads
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia was voting on the floor of the House on the morning of June 23 when she saw her name trending on Twitter.
Ms. Greene, a high-profile, right-wing Republican who is no stranger to trending online, flicked through her feed and learned from the internet that two hours earlier, her colleagues in the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus had voted to remove her from the group. Just then, an emissary from the caucus, Representative Ben Cline, Republican of Virginia, approached Ms. Greene. He asked if she would attend a one-on-one meeting with its chairman, Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, who had been waiting to officially announce her ouster until he had spoken to her in person.
Ms. Greene balked. She couldn’t make the time, she said, because she had a meeting with Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s staff to discuss her legislation to ban transgender surgeries for children, an issue, she told Mr. Cline pointedly, “which the Freedom Caucus doesn’t care about.”
Ms. Greene and Mr. Perry never spoke.
The expulsion of Ms. Greene, perhaps the most famous hard-right rabble-rouser in Congress, from the group that has long styled itself as the rebellious voice of the extreme right in the House reflects something of an identity crisis within the Freedom Caucus even as a slim G.O.P. majority has given the group more power than ever.
Source: The New York Times
