With the long list of deals that Kevin McCarthy made so he could advance to become Speaker of the House, a number of House committee chairmanships are going to conservative members, and one important one saw Rep. Dan Crenshaw lose his Homeland Security Committee Chairman bid to conservative Mark Green.
Crenshaw, who made a splash as a conservative when he first got elected to Congress from the 2nd District in Texas in 2018, has since made some turns toward the establishment that have annoyed many conservatives.
In fact, during the four-day Speaker vote fight, Crenshaw actually said the conservative holdouts who were seeking concessions from McCarthy were “traitors.”
He later tried to walk that back by calling it just a “turn of phrase” and insisted in hindsight that he didn’t really mean traitors, exactly.
With his blatant support for McCarthy, Crenshaw, who was a United States Navy SEAL officer, was looking for the plum job of chair of the Homeland Security Committee. The Homeland Security Committee oversees border security and cybersecurity. It is also the main oversight committee for the Department of Homeland Security.
But it wasn’t to be.
Despite his loyalty to Speaker McCarthy during the four days of voting, on Monday House members elected Tennessee’s Mark Green to the position, the Washington Examiner reported.
Green, who is a member of the House Freedom Caucus which held up the Speaker vote, is also a combat veteran who served as a special operations flight surgeon through several tours during hostilities in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s. He was first elected to Congress in 2018.
The gentleman from Tennessee now serves on seven other committees and subcommittees.
On Monday, Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas — also a member of the Freedom Caucus — celebrated his fellow caucus member taking the important Homeland chairmanship.
“Congratulations to fellow Freedom Caucus member @RepMarkGreen on becoming the new Homeland Security Committee Chairman,” Nehls tweeted. “He’s planning to have staff stay at the border and work with CBP. BIG WIN!”
Congratulations to fellow Freedom Caucus member @RepMarkGreen on becoming the new Homeland Security Committee Chairman.
He’s planning to have staff stay at the border and work with CBP.
BIG WIN!
— Congressman Troy Nehls (@RepTroyNehls) January 9, 2023
Politico reporter Olivia Beavers noted that Green has said he intends to have staff stationed down near the border to be able to work in real time with the problems and issues there, as Joe Biden’s disastrous open border policies continue to endanger the country.
“Mark Green tells reporters he plans to have a permanent staff member staying at the border to work with CBP and other entities,” Beavers tweeted on Monday.
Mark Green tells reporters he plans to have a permanent staff member staying at the border to work with CBP and other entities
— Olivia Beavers (@Olivia_Beavers) January 9, 2023
“For the sake of our national security and homeland security, we must secure our border,” Green told Fox News Digital. “We have no choice. We will empower our brave CBP agents to do their jobs and hold President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas accountable for the crisis that they created.”
Along with the long list McCarthy gave conservatives, Green’s plan to have someone reliable on the border that can tell him exactly what is going on at any given time is going to be a nightmare for the Biden administration and the fumbling Deptartment of Homeland Security that has utterly failed to keep our border secure.
If Green plans it right, Congress will finally have actual facts about the border and not just Biden’s propaganda.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
