Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • The Atlantic

    How Trump Broke the Freedom Caucus

    Its members were once champions of ideological purity. But as their treatment of Justin Amash suggests, they’re now whatever the president wants them to be.
    by Elaina Plott May 23, 2019 5 minutes
    Source: J. Scott Applewhite / AP

    Back in February 2018, I sat down with two leaders of the House Freedom Caucus to discuss, among other things, whether fiscal conservatism had gone extinct.

    A few days earlier, with encouragement from his budget director, Mick Mulvaney, President Donald Trump had signed a budget deal boosting federal spending by nearly $300 billion. I told the leaders, Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan, that it seemed precisely the kind of deal that Mulvaney, a self-professed fiscal hawk and a founding member of the Freedom Caucus, would have railed against during his time in Congress.

    Meadows shrugged. “He wouldn’t have been supportive of it,” the North Carolina congressman told me. But “he’s got a different boss now.”

    [Conor Friedersdorf: A Republican congressman’s case for impeaching Trump]

    It’s been just over a year since then,

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from The Atlantic

    The Atlantic5 min read
    The Strangest Job in the World
    This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. The role of first lady couldn’t be stranger. You attain the position almost by accident, simply by virtue of being married to the president
    The Atlantic6 min read
    The Happy Way to Drop Your Grievances
    Want to stay current with Arthur’s writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out. In 15th-century Germany, there was an expression for a chronic complainer: Greiner, Zanner, which can be translated as “whiner-grumbler.” It was no
    The Atlantic6 min read
    There’s Only One Way to Fix Air Pollution Now
    It feels like a sin against the sanctitude of being alive to put a dollar value on one year of a human life. A year spent living instead of dead is obviously priceless, beyond the measure of something so unprofound as money. But it gets a price tag i

    Related Books & Audiobooks