Mark Meadows

During his legislative tenure, Meadows chaired the Freedom Caucus from 2017 to 2019. He was considered one of Donald Trump's closest allies in the House of Representatives 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 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.