Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), the current chairman of the anti-Trump House Freedom Caucus, who is facing a challenge in Virginia’s primary from a pro-Trump senator, introduced significant rule changes to the House Freedom Caucus’ bylaws this week that will take the group in a direction that is clearly different from the intent of its original founding.
Several sources in the Freedom Caucus familiar with the information Goode has circulated about proposed changes to the House Freedom Caucus rules are alarmed by what the chair has included in the document and passed on to other members. They worry that Goode’s actions are intended to strengthen his own power and distract from the Freedom Caucus’s core mission of promoting conservative policies. Sources who spoke to Breitbart News described the contents of the document but did not provide the actual document out of concern that Goode had purposely created a different version of the proposed document to help identify possible leaks (like this one) related to an alleged power grab.
The proposal that Good sent to his fellow Freedom Caucus members includes four major rules changes. First, the proposal seeks to prohibit House floor chairs from being voting members of the Freedom Caucus. It is unclear whether the proposal would also apply to subcommittee chairs, but there are two floor chairs who are currently Freedom Caucus members: Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Homeland Security Chairman Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.).
Jordan also served as the group’s founding chairman more than a decade ago, in 2013, when House Speaker John Boehner was working with then-President Barack Obama and other Democrats against the wishes of conservatives and Republicans. Boehner lost his speakership two years later in the fall of 2015 when future Freedom Caucus chairman and now former White House Chief of Staff Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), first popularized the “speaker removal” technique. Although Meadows never called a vote on his motion, the proposal stunned the public and galvanized Republican opposition to Boehner, leading to his resignation. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) used a similar tactic against former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy a few years later, actually forcing a speaker removal vote that led to McCarthy’s removal. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) recently forced a vote to remove current House Speaker Mike Johnson from his position, but the move was blocked when Democrats voted to keep Johnson in the position. Johnson did not have enough Republican votes to stay in the position, so he relied on House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi to keep him in the position.
Stripping the Freedom Caucus of voting rights because people like Jordan and Greene are House chairmen is a major departure from the intent of the group’s founders when it was formed, who sought to increase the power and influence of members by appointing them to committee and subcommittee chairs and acquiring powerful committee positions. In fact, a major reason the Freedom Caucus was formed was because Boehner had stripped conservatives of their committee positions in late 2012, and a major reason Meadows pursued the effort to oust Boehner was because Boehner had stripped them of their subcommittee chair positions after Meadows voted against the rules on the floor of the House.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty)
While that in itself would be a major change for the Freedom Caucus, Good’s proposal to other members also includes a provision that would give the Chair the power to publicly announce Freedom Caucus membership or the full membership list at any time. This would be another significant change for the organization, because in the early days of the organization, members like Jordan and Meadows intentionally kept their membership private and secret unless they wanted to publicly identify themselves as members of the House Freedom Caucus. As members made clear on multiple occasions, these confidentiality clauses are important because some members who support the Freedom Caucus’ mission and the promotion of conservative causes preferred to remain anonymous about their membership to avoid pressure from congressional leadership or other undesirable outside forces that could get in the way of advancing the conservative agenda.
The third change in the proposal Goode circulated would make it easier for the chair to expel Freedom Caucus members from the organization by including “virtual meetings” in the list of meetings that must be attended. Currently, Freedom Caucus members can only miss three meetings of the group without a “good reason,” but the proposal would change that to include “virtual meetings.” It’s another significant change, and one that the Freedom Caucus office with knowledge of Goode’s proposal expressed great hesitation to Breitbart News, especially in light of the organization’s move last year to expel Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. The group expelled Greene after some members disagreed with her on how to handle differences with leadership.
The fourth change included in the proposal circulated by Rep. Good seeks to increase the amount of money that lawmakers must pay in dues to the Freedom Caucus from their Member Representation Allowance (MRA). Every elected lawmaker receives a set amount of taxpayer money for their office, known as an MRA. This money can be used to pay dues to groups like the Freedom Caucus, as well as for more general representative expenses. Groups like the Freedom Caucus use the dues collected from lawmakers’ MRAs to hire staff as shared staff.
Harry Fornes, a spokesman for Goode and current communications director for the Freedom Caucus, is one of those staffers. When asked by Breitbart News for comment on the matter, Fornes referred to a joint statement from Reps. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), Andy Harris (R-Md.), and Michael Cloud (R-Texas), who are members of the Freedom Caucus’ charter committee. The committee members said they drafted the proposal Goode circulated to members. They did not object to any of the specific proposed changes detailed above, but maintained that the proposed changes Goode circulated do not violate the original intent of the Freedom Caucus. However, they said the group’s charter has not been significantly changed since 2015.
“HFC does not typically comment on internal matters, but the anonymous source’s allegations are so inaccurate that we want to set the facts straight,” Ogles, Harris and Cloud said in a joint statement. “The House Freedom Caucus Board of Directors appointed us to a ‘Bylaws Committee’ to update our group’s rules, which have not been substantially updated since 2015. The Board unanimously approved sharing our recommendations with the entire group, and we look forward to discussing them with HFC members. Any claims that this process is a departure from the House Freedom Caucus’ founding principles or that this is an attempt to consolidate power are complete nonsense. This is an internal oversight that will make the House Freedom Caucus an even more effective group in the fight to defend our conservative values and the Constitution.”
Good, who became chairman of the Freedom Caucus this year, supported Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over former President Donald Trump in last year’s Republican presidential primary. Good did so on the day Trump was indicted by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, before DeSantis had even entered the race. That wasn’t the only anti-Trump move Good has taken this year. He was also caught on camera slamming Trump, and frequently criticizing the former president, which led Trump’s top adviser Chris LaCivita to openly support Virginia Sen. John Maguire over Good. Trump himself has yet to endorse him in the race, and it’s unclear if he will, but Maguire was in Trump’s motorcade earlier this month as Trump headed to his trial in New York. Good, who has since tried to give the impression that he is not anti-Trump, appeared outside the courthouse with several fellow lawmakers on the same day.
Rep. Bob Good, a DeSantis ally, told me last month, “I hope you or anyone else finds my criticism of Donald Trump.”
Appears Good was secretly recorded doing just that. https://t.co/PZPcPIhlUH
— Olivia Beavers (@Olivia_Beavers) December 8, 2023
In a recent interview with Breitbart News on Saturday, Maguire called Good a “traitor Never-Trumper.”
“That’s why I call him a Never-Trumper. Let’s fast forward to 2022… he begged Trump for his support. And when you’re in a tight spot, you know, when you’re in a tight spot, that’s when you find out who’s on your side. When you’re in a tight spot, when you’re indicted on this ridiculous case that Trump is currently dealing with, he endorsed DeSantis this week,” Maguire said, adding that Good had “been going around the district for eight months saying Trump is not pro-life, he’s not pro-gun control, he’s not a conservative and he’s the only person who could lose to Biden.”
The rule changes that Good sent to the Freedom Caucus office are just suggestions for now, but some conservatives worry that Good might call a meeting to rush through the rules. Rules can be changed at any Freedom Caucus meeting with a two-thirds majority vote, meaning Good could call a meeting quickly to make the changes on the spot.
