Meadows Officially Resigns from Seat in Congress, Fully Committed to White House

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Former Congressman Mark meadows formally resigned his seat in Congress effective at 5:00 PM Monday. The popular and influential co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus surprised many when he announced he would not seek reelection in 2020, but he promised to continue his work for his western North Carolina district until the very last moments of his role as representative. He did that, and also found synergy in carving out his new role with the White House to help usher the enormous Coronavirus relief package through congress.

The roles are not necessarily synchronous, yet Meadows fought to block what he could of the Left’s pork and policy being stuffed into the bill while also working with congressional leaders across the House and Senate to get the bill across the finish line and to the White House for expeditious signature.

From NSJ/AP:

“[…] In a highly unusual arrangement, Meadows pulled off a balancing act, simultaneously maintaining his seat representing North Carolina in the House while also acting as the de facto White House chief of staff during one of the biggest crises faced by any president in modern history. Meadows resigned his seat effective at 5 p.m. on Monday.

Meadows’ efforts over the last two weeks shine a light on his likely role going forward. While Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and White House legislative affairs director Eric Ueland did much of the heavy lifting for the White House, Democrats and Republicans said Meadows played a key role in the late stages. The co-founder of the conservative House Freedom Caucus shuttled between Capitol Hill leadership offices and meetings with top Democratic negotiator Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Meadows’ role as a compromise-seeker on a bipartisan package marked an unlikely change of roles for a lawmaker who made his name in Congress as the man who toppled Republican former House Speaker John Boehner in 2015. The Freedom Caucus declined to back the $2 trillion stimulus bill, but it didn’t oppose it either, a testament to Meadows’ ability to soothe GOP objections to the big-spending bill.

In the view of one top Democrat, he was “the closer” who knew what was needed to get the bill past the finish line and deliver on the most important variable: ensuring the deal was something Trump would agree to sign into law.

Schumer gave a shout-out to Meadows by name on the Senate floor along with Mnuchin and Ueland ahead of Wednesday’s late-night vote on the $2.2 trillion bill. […]”

While praise from the likes of Chuck Schumer for bipartisanship usually doesn’t inspire confidence from the likes of conservative voters, the unusual praise from the other side of the aisle speaks to his effectiveness as a leading force in accomplishing the goals of the Trump administration. The chief of staff position has been an infamously hot seat in the White House since 2016, with turnover indicative of the obvious differences between conventional Washington D.C. practices, and those of Donald J. Trump.

Meadows, however, had engendered himself to President Trump long before getting tapped for this role. As leader of the Freedom Caucus, Meadows instigated the threatened removal and eventual resignation of establishment House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and, while the reign of subsequent Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) was hardly ideal, the Freedom Caucus’s growing leverage paralleled the movement powering Trump. Meadows consulted with the president often throughout this first term, earning a reputation in DC as the ‘Trump Whisperer.’

Read more here about Mark Meadow’s crescendo in Congress, the respect he’s earned while lifting off for higher heights, and the legacy he’s leaving for the 11th District.