Mark Meadows

The House Freedom Caucus now has an acting communications director as the outgoing flack takes a new position with Vice President Mike Pence.

The position adds to the long list of “actings” in President Donald Trump’s D.C. If you’re keeping count there’s an acting White House chief of staff, secretary of Homeland Security, secretary of Defense, secretary of the Navy, as well as the heads of the Small Business Association and the Office of Management and Budget.

State Rep. Greg Murphy has won the Republican nomination in North Carolina’s heavily red 3rd District, making him the strong favorite to succeed the late Walter B. Jones, who died in February.

Murphy, who was backed by the political arm of the House Freedom Caucus, defeated pediatrician Joan Perry in a low-turnout primary runoff that attracted more than $1 million in spending from outside groups dedicated to electing GOP women. With all precincts in, Murphy got 60 percent of the vote to Perry’s 40 percent, The Associated Press reported.

Voters in eastern North Carolina are heading to the polls Tuesday for a low-profile special election with a lot at stake. 

Regardless of who wins the Republican primary runoff, the 3rd District seat formerly held by the late Rep. Walter B. Jones will almost certainly remain in GOP hands after the special general election on Sept. 10. But the outcome of Tuesday’s internecine contest could say a lot about how the GOP approaches identity politics heading into 2020.

Winning for Women, an outside group that helps elect female Republicans, is launching its second ad in North Carolina’s 3rd District special election, accusing the male candidate backed by the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus of being an unreliable supporter of President Donald Trump.

Winning for Women supports pediatrician Joan Perry in the GOP primary runoff that takes place July 9. Perry represents the party’s best chance of adding another woman to its conference in the House, which is down to just 13 this year. All the Republican women in the chamber, as well as a growing list of men, are backing Perry. 

There is always a special congressional election somewhere. For the purposes of this particular Political Theater podcast, it is the upcoming Republican primary runoff in North Carolina’s 3rd District.

This is the seat that became vacant when longtime GOP Rep. Walter B. Jones died earlier this year. The April 30 GOP primary ended with two candidates heading to a July 9 runoff: state Rep. Greg Murphy and political newcomer Joan Perry. (The winner will face Democrat Allen Thomas, the former mayor of Greenville, in a Sept. 10 special general election to serve out the remainder of the 116th Congress.)

EMERALD ISLE, N.C. — The Republican candidate who has the best chance of adding to the party’s dwindling ranks of women in the House insists she’s running on her own merits, not her gender.

But in the GOP primary runoff for the special election in North Carolina’s 3rd District, pediatrician Joan Perry subtly argues that her gender is an important part of why she’s the real outsider candidate running for Congress. 

Rep. Justin Amash is an outlier among congressional Republicans according to the party's leader in the House.

“Justin Amash can determine his own future, but I think in philosophical basis he’s probably in a different place than the majority of the conference,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said to reporters on Tuesday, citing Amash's breaks from Republican-majority votes.

Matthew Green, a professor of politics at the Catholic University of America, argues in his new book, “Legislative Hardball: The House Freedom Caucus and the Power of Threat-Making in Congress,” that the House Republicans who conspired against Speaker John A. Boehner in 2015 pioneered something new in American history.

Here’s an edited transcript of his interview with CQ Roll Call.

The runoff in North Carolina’s 3rd District is dividing the House Republican Conference between one powerful man and more than a dozen women.

It’s North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows and the political arm of the House Freedom Caucus versus the Republican women in the chamber — all 13 of them — plus another male lawmaker from the North Carolina delegation.