Mark Meadows facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Mark Meadows
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Meadows in 2018
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| 29th White House Chief of Staff | |
| In office March 31, 2020 – January 20, 2021 |
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| President | Donald Trump |
| Preceded by | Mick Mulvaney (acting) |
| Succeeded by | Ron Klain |
| Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee | |
| In office March 12, 2020 – March 30, 2020 |
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| Preceded by | Jim Jordan |
| Succeeded by | Jim Jordan |
| Chair of the House Freedom Caucus | |
| In office January 3, 2017 – October 1, 2019 |
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| Deputy | Jim Jordan |
| Preceded by | Jim Jordan |
| Succeeded by | Andy Biggs |
| Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from North Carolina's 11th district |
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| In office January 3, 2013 – March 30, 2020 |
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| Preceded by | Heath Shuler |
| Succeeded by | Madison Cawthorn |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Mark Randall Meadows
July 28, 1959 Verdun, France |
| Nationality | American |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse |
Debbie Meadows
(m. 1979) |
| Children | 2 |
| Education | University of South Florida (AA) |
Mark Randall Meadows (born July 28, 1959) is an American politician who served as the 29th White House chief of staff from 2020 to 2021. A member of the Republican Party, he also served as the U.S. representative for North Carolina's 11th congressional district from 2013 to 2020. During his legislative tenure, Meadows chaired the Freedom Caucus from 2017 to 2019. He was considered one of Donald Trump's closest allies in Congress before his appointment as chief of staff.
A Tea Party Republican, Meadows was a founding member of the Freedom Caucus. During his time in Congress, he was one of the most conservative Republican lawmakers and played an important part of the United States federal government shutdown of 2013. He also sought to remove John Boehner as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.
Meadows resigned from Congress on March 31, 2020, to become White House chief of staff. As chief of staff, he played an influential role in the Trump administration's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He pressured the Food and Drug Administration to adopt less strict guidelines for COVID-19 vaccine trials, and admonished the White House's own infectious disease experts for not "staying on message" with Trump's rhetoric. In October 2020, Meadows said it was futile to try "to control the pandemic", emphasizing instead a plan to contain it with vaccines and therapeutics. As the virus spread among White House staff in the fall of 2020, he reportedly sought to conceal the cases, including his own. After Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, Meadows participated in Trump's failed effort to overturn the election results and remain in power.
On December 14, 2021, Meadows was held in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with the January 6 Select Committee. He is the first White House chief of staff since the Watergate scandal and first former member of Congress to have been held in contempt of Congress. The contempt charge was referred to the Justice Department, which declined to prosecute him.
On October 26, 2022, a South Carolina circuit judge ordered Meadows to testify before a Georgia grand jury investigating Republican efforts to reverse the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia. The grand jury was empaneled by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who said the inquiry is examining "the multistate, coordinated efforts to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere." On August 14, 2023, he was indicted along with 18 other people in the prosecution related to the 2020 election in Georgia; Meadows is the second White House Chief of Staff to face criminal charges, after H. R. Haldeman.
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Early life and education
Meadows's mother was from Sevierville, Tennessee, and his father from Pine Bluff, Arkansas. He was born at a United States Army hospital in Verdun, France, where his father was serving in the Army and his mother worked as a civilian nurse.
Meadows grew up in Brandon, Florida, and described his upbringing as "poor". He has said he was a "fat nerd" who went on a diet after a classmate rejected him for a date. Meadows attended Florida State University for one year in 1977–78. It was reported that Meadows held a Bachelor of Arts from the University of South Florida for many years in his official biography maintained by the Office of the Historian of the U.S. House of Representatives. In actuality, he graduated from the University of South Florida with an Associate of Arts.
Early career
In 1987, Meadows started "Aunt D's", a small restaurant in Highlands, North Carolina. He later sold it and used the proceeds to start a real estate development company in the Tampa, Florida, area.
While living in Highlands, Meadows served as chairman of the Republican Party in Macon County, and was a delegate to several state and national Republican conventions. Meadows was on North Carolina's Board for Economic Development in Western North Carolina.
In 2011, he moved to Glenville, North Carolina. He is the owner of Highlands Properties, which specializes in construction and land development.
U.S. House of Representatives
In Congress, Meadows had an ultraconservative voting record. He signed the Contract from America, a set of ten policies assembled by the Tea Party movement. Meadows was a founding member of the Freedom Caucus.
Meadows voted against disaster relief spending for October 2012's Hurricane Sandy, which struck the Northeastern United States and caused severe damage. He was one of several Republicans who claimed the funding bill contained pork-barrel spending that had nothing to do with hurricane relief, a claim the bill's supporters denied. Meadows's opposition to Sandy relief was recalled in 2017 news accounts after he and many Republicans who had opposed it voted in favor of disaster aid following Hurricane Harvey, which caused massive damage in Louisiana and Texas that August. Critics alleged that Republicans were hypocritically opposing spending in states with Democratic majorities while supporting it in Republican states. Republicans, including Meadows, claimed the situations were different because the Harvey spending bill contained no "pork". A Congressional Research Service review determined that the Sandy spending bill's funds were almost all devoted to recovery from Sandy.
Meadows served as chair of the Subcommittee on Government Operations up until June 20, 2015, when fellow Republican congressman Jason Chaffetz removed him from the position. A member of the House Republican leadership, Chaffetz removed Meadows due to Meadows's vote against a procedural motion the Republican leadership presented. Meadows was one of 34 Republicans who voted against the motion, which allowed for consideration of President Barack Obama's request for fast-track authority on trade agreements.
Meadows served as ranking member of the House Oversight Committee for 18 days, until he assumed the office of White House Chief of Staff.
Meadows was a member of these committees:
- Committee on Foreign Affairs
- Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations
- Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa
- Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
- Subcommittee on Government Operations (chair)
- Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Job Creation and Regulatory Affairs
- Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
- Subcommittee on Aviation
- Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management
- Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment
Meadows was a member of these caucuses:
- Congressional Western Caucus
- U.S.-Japan Caucus
- House Freedom Caucus
- Second Amendment Caucus
2013 federal government shutdown
Meadows has been described as playing an important part of the 2013 United States federal government shutdown. On August 21, 2013, he wrote an open letter to Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor encouraging them to "affirmatively de-fund the implementation and enforcement of Obamacare in any relevant appropriations bills brought to the House floor in the 113th Congress, including any continuing appropriations bill." The document was signed by 79 of Meadows's colleagues in the House. Heritage Action (which opened operations in North Carolina in January 2011), ran critical Internet advertisements in the districts of 100 Republican lawmakers who failed to sign the letter. The letter has been described as controversial within the Republican Party.
The New York Daily News said Meadows put the federal government on the road to shutdown, saying calls to defund Obamacare through spending bills languished until Meadows wrote his letter. Meadows downplayed his influence, saying "I'm one of 435 members and a very small part of this." CNN described Meadows as the "architect of the brink" for his letter suggesting that Obamacare be defunded in any continuing appropriations bill. Meadows said that sensationalized his role.
John Ostendorff of the Asheville Citizen-Times wrote that Meadows "said it's best to close the government in the short term to win a delay on 'Obamacare', despite the potential negative impact on the economy." Ostendorff wrote that Meadows said he was doing what Tea Party members in Western North Carolina wanted him to do. Meadows said his constituents wanted him to fight against Obamacare "regardless of consequences." Jane Bilello, head of the Asheville Tea Party, said Meadows "truly represents us" on the issue of Obamacare. Meadows reportedly held conference calls with members of the Asheville Tea Party, telling them what was going on in Congress and about challenges he faced promoting their agenda.
In public comments, Meadows said he was working on a compromise that involved passing appropriations bills that would fund only parts of the government, such as a bill to fund the National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, National Gallery of Art, and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and a bill to fund the National Institutes of Health. But partial or "mini" funding bills were rejected by the Democratic majority in the United States Senate.
Resolution to remove Speaker Boehner
On July 28, 2015, Meadows filed a resolution to vote on removing John Boehner as speaker of the House. If the resolution passed, the House would then vote to elect a new speaker. Because he filed it as a nonprivileged resolution, it was sent to the House Committee on Rules for a vote first, rather than the House floor. The Committee on Rules was considered to have many members who were loyal to Boehner, so the resolution was seen as unlikely to move forward.
White House chief of staff
In December 2018, Meadows was vocal about his desire to work in the White House as Chief of Staff upon the January 2019 departure of John F. Kelly. Until December 2018, Meadows claimed to have received a Bachelor of Arts degree. When questions about his credentials arose during media speculation that he was under consideration to serve as White House chief of staff, Meadows amended his official House biography and other sources to indicate that his degree was an associate, not a bachelor's.
On March 6, 2020, Trump named Meadows the next White House chief of staff, succeeding Acting Chief Mick Mulvaney. Meadows resigned from the House on March 30, 2020, and began his new role the next day.
Meadows and his wife allegedly committed voter fraud in 2020 when they registered to vote at a mobile home in North Carolina where they did not live. They voted by absentee ballot from that address. Two years later, North Carolina removed Meadows from the voter rolls while it investigated.
Efforts to overturn 2020 presidential election results
After Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, and Trump refused to concede while making false claims of systemic and pervasive fraud, Meadows aided Trump in his efforts to overturn the election and to pressure election officials in Georgia to overturn the results of the election in that state (which Biden won) based on Trump's baseless claims of fraud. He urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn the certification of Georgia's election results in a "spirit of cooperation and compromise". In a taped phone call during which Meadows was present, Trump attempted to pressure Raffensperger into recounting Georgia's votes, claiming he had won the state.
Alongside Trump's son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner, Meadows conveyed to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that the Trump administration would pursue all possible avenues in a bid to overturn the election results. Meadows also connected Trump to Mark Martin, a former North Carolina judge who advanced the radical claim that Trump's Vice President, Mike Pence, could refuse to count the electoral votes from states Biden won.
Meadows also repeatedly pressed Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen to have the Justice Department investigate unfounded conspiracy theories claiming fraud, including one that posited that people in Italy used military technology and satellites to tamper with voting machine and turning Trump votes into Biden votes. The claim was one of several outlandish claims circulating online in the days before a pro-Trump mob attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Career after White House
Meadows became a partner at the Conservative Partnership Institute in January 2021 as Biden took office. The group has aimed to elect conservatives, particularly using dark money, and changing voting rules.
Political positions
Economics
While in Congress, Meadows advocated for a balanced budget amendment to the United States Constitution. He supports a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget has been balanced. Meadows opposes any cuts to military spending levels.
Meadows opposed the federal stimulus spending during the Obama administration; as Trump's White House chief of staff, he supported Trump's fiscal stimulus proposals, and was Trump's lead negotiator on stimulus legislation, pushing for $1.8 trillion in federal stimulus spending, a number some Senate Republicans resisted. Meadows has signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, and he opposes raising any taxes, including the income tax. He supports a flat-rate income tax for all earners and a repeal of the raise in the capital gains tax. He also supports eliminating the estate tax.
In 2016 Meadows wrote Trump a letter demanding the repeal of the federal "prevailing wage" requirement, which requires that laborers and mechanics on public works projects be paid the locally prevailing wages. The rule was initially made to protect traveling black workers in the South from being paid far less than local workers. It evolved into a protection for union workers, ensuring that non-unionized competitors would have to pay the same rate, making it difficult to underbid for work. The letter also demanded the repeal of the overtime rule from the Obama administration, which said people making less than $47,000 a year must be paid extra for overtime hours, compared to the previous requirement that those making over $23,000 a year could be denied overtime pay if the worker's duties could be considered "managerial". The letter also demanded the end of regulations requiring federal contractors to be paid for sick leave.
COVID-19
As chief of staff, Meadows played an influential role in the Trump administration's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He pressured the Food and Drug Administration to adopt less strict guidelines for COVID-19 vaccine trials and admonished the White House's own infectious disease experts for not "staying on message" with Trump's rhetoric. In October 2020, Meadows said it was futile to try "to control the pandemic", emphasizing instead a plan to contain it with vaccines and therapeutics. On November 4, 2020, Meadows tested positive for COVID-19, but only disclosed it to a small group of people who were asked to keep it quiet, thus preventing others who had interacted with Meadows from taking take proper precautions and hindering contact tracing. Within the administration, Meadows advised Trump not to openly embrace mask-wearing, saying, "The base will revolt." He admonished Anthony Fauci, one of the administration's leading experts in guiding the response, for not "staying on message". He impressed upon Fauci, Deborah Birx and other government public health experts not to comment on restrictive measures for dealing with the virus. While interacting with reporters, Meadows refused to wear a mask.
In October 2020, when asked about the lack of face mask usage at Trump rallies, Meadows said it was futile to try "to control the pandemic" and that the focus would be on getting a vaccine. Public health experts, including those in the White House, have pointed to face masks as one of the most basic precautions that have been proven to halt the spread of COVID-19.
While chief of staff, Meadows pressured the Food and Drug Administration to adopt less strict guidelines for COVID-19 vaccine trials. He criticized FDA commissioner Stephen M. Hahn as too heavily influenced by the FDA's scientist staff. During coronavirus relief negotiations, Meadows argued against giving additional funding to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
On November 6, 2020, it was reported that Meadows had tested positive for COVID-19; per the Trump administration, he tested positive on November 4. Meadows did not issue a statement after he tested positive and did not make it widely known to administration staff. A small group of people were informed and told to keep it quiet. This caused consternation among other administration staff, as it hindered contact tracing efforts and endangered staff.
Environment and energy
In December 2016 Meadows gave Trump a wish list of regulations to be repealed. It included a demand to get rid of federal funding to study climate change. He also requested Trump repeal several environmental regulations, including the Renewable Fuel Standard, end the prohibition of drilling oil on federal lands, and pull the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement.
Meadows opposes cap-and-trade emission policies and supported off-shore oil and gas extraction.
LGBT rights
Meadows opposes same-sex marriage. In March 2013, he said that if the Supreme Court ruled gay marriage bans unconstitutional, it would be a "huge invasion into states' rights" and cause a constitutional crisis.
Regulations
Meadows opposes any restrictions on gun purchases and opposes a national gun registry that would list detailed information about firearm ownership.
Meadows opposes regulations that require all internet providers provide internet at equal speeds to all parties. In 2016 he gave Trump a list of regulations to repeal that included net neutrality regulations by the Federal Communications Commission.
Health care
Meadows opposes the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and has said that it should be replaced by private enterprise.
Less than a year after entering Congress, Meadows wrote the letter that initially urged House Speaker John Boehner to shut down the government unless the ACA was defunded. Some constituents have criticized him as responsible for the 2013 government shutdown; The Washington Post called him its "chief architect". His district lost up to $1 million per day during the shutdown because the national parks were closed.
In January 2017, Meadows voted for a budget resolution that initiated the process of repealing Obamacare. On May 4, 2017, Meadows voted for the American Health Care Act (AHCA), which would partially repeal and replace Obamacare.
After the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released numbers about the AHCA's effects on Americans in 2017, there were several reports that Meadows became emotional after reading about the AHCA's likely effects on those with preexisting conditions. Others reported he cried only after bringing up his family members who had dealt with preexisting conditions, including his sister who had died of breast cancer, and his father who had died of lung cancer. Meadows said he wouldn't "make a political decision today that affects somebody's sister or father because I wouldn't do it to myself." When asked about the CBO numbers, Meadows said Trump was "committed to making sure preexisting conditions are covered in principle and in practice, which means that funding has to be there to make it work."
Foreign policy
Meadows is a strong supporter of Israel. He said that the Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai and Gaza did not bring peace, but rather "In many ways, ... made [the situation] more difficult." Meadows has opposed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel.
Meadows was among 60 Republicans to oppose condemning Trump's action of withdrawing forces from Syria. Along with Matt Gaetz and a handful of Republicans, Meadows broke with his party and voted to end Saudi assistance to the War in Yemen.
On December 8, 2019, Meadows claimed that Trump never asked a foreign leader to investigate a political rival, despite a transcript of the July 25, 2019, phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky where Trump asks Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and in spite of Trump's October 3, 2019, public calling upon China to investigate Hunter Biden's business activities there while his father was vice president. Meadows said he would be "OK" with a Democratic president doing what Trump did: "We have Democrat Senators who have done just that."
See also
In Spanish: Mark Meadows para niños
