Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, once known for being a MAGA diehard, has become a thorn in the GOP’s side.
The Republican lawmaker representing Georgia’s northwest has, in recent days, doubled down on her criticism of her own party, this time hammering in on the continuing government shutdown.
“I’m not putting the blame on the President,” Greene told CNN last week. “I’m actually putting the blame on the Speaker and Leader [John] Thune in the Senate. This should not be happening.” And she posted on X, explaining her party-bucking position on healthcare, which has become the primary sticking point between Democrats and Republicans in the shutdown fight, on Oct. 6: “I’m not towing [sic] the party line on this, or playing loyalty games. … I’m carving my own lane.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R, La.) told Fox News Sunday that he had a “thoughtful conversation” with Greene to sort out issues, adding that he “offered to have her come in the room and be a part of that discussion if indeed she wants to do that.”
“There’s a lot that can be done,” Johnson added. “But you have to build consensus in a large, deliberative public body like this.”
Other Republicans have been less understanding of Greene’s defiance. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R, W. Va.) slammed Greene for breaking with party leadership in her criticism of the government shutdown. “I understand the frustrations, but I think it’s totally unfair to say that Republicans have not entered in negotiations and Republicans are not having conversations,” Capito said in a Thursday appearance on CNN’s Inside Politics.
But the shutdown fight isn’t the first time Greene has broken from her party this year. She criticized the Trump Administration’s military intervention in Iran, has referred to U.S. ally Israel’s war in Gaza as a “genocide,” and has called for transparency in the Epstein investigation that the Administration and Republican leaders in Congress have tried to bury—prompting President Donald Trump to reportedly ask multiple senior Republicans, “What’s going on with Marjorie?”
Meanwhile, Democrats have seized the opportunity to highlight their unlikely new ally. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said last Tuesday: “I think this is the first time I said this, but, on this issue, Representative Greene said it perfectly … Representative Greene is absolutely right.” And Sen. Raphael Warnock (D, Ga.) told the Independent: “You are going to hear me utter words I never thought I’d say: Marjorie Taylor Greene is right.”
Greene’s growing independence
In a Daily Mail interview published in August, Greene signaled that she’s not sure whether she wants to be part of the Republican Party anymore should its current trajectory continue.
But her apparent alignment with Democrats is also limited. In one of her recent X posts, Greene responded to a video on X by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries that pinned the shutdown on Republicans: “DEMOCRATS created the healthcare crisis in America in 2010 by passing the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare,” she said.
The Georgia lawmaker, who was first elected in 2020, has repeatedly emphasized that she supports Trump, but she recently insisted that she is not a “blind slave” to him.
“I’m not some sort of blind slave to the President, and I don’t think anyone should be,” Greene said in an NBC News interview. “I serve in Congress. We’re a separate branch of the government, and I’m not elected by the President. I’m not elected by anyone that works in the White House. I’m elected by my district. That’s who I work for, and I got elected without the President’s endorsement, and, you know, I think that has served me really well.”
NBC News reported, citing unnamed Republican sources, that Greene “felt especially burned after the White House talked her out of running for the Senate,” after already being disappointed she didn’t get an Administration job.
But Greene denied her ambitions for the upper chamber. “I don’t want to serve in that institution. Look at them. They’re literally the reason why the government is shut down right now,” she told NBC News. “I think those are just attacks to try to marginalize me or try to sweep me off, so to speak. And I really don’t care.”
Her string of defections from the party line as fellow Republican lawmakers have become increasingly deferential to the White House have led some in MAGA-world to call Greene a RINO—“Republican in Name Only.”
“Don’t be surprised if she runs for president as a Democrat in 2028,” far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer posted on X on Sunday. “She’s trying to get the most anti-Trump, left leaning personalities to reshape her image and get the left to give her a chance. She wants revenge on President Trump because he didn’t endorse her Senate and Gubernatorial campaigns in Georgia. She wants to destroy MAGA because she isn’t the leader of MAGA.”
Others say she’s carving a lane out even further on the right. “What’s more MAGA than being true to your populist, anti-establishment and anti-elite roots?” Politico analyzed.
Either way, Greene’s growing independence poses a risk to Republican power: with a thin majority in the lower chamber, every non-party-line voter could upend Trump’s and the GOP’s agenda.
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