Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest.

Hello from somewhere in U.S. airspace! I (Tina) am headed to Des Moines for the Family Leadership Summit, the nation’s top intersection between evangelical Christianity, the 2024 presidential race, and Tucker Carlson. And then I’ll be in West Palm Beach where the MAGA Gen-Zers are congregating for Turning Point Action. Come say hi to the short blond Asianish woman if you see me!

In the meantime, my latest reporting on the historical drama roiling the House Freedom Caucus, where there’s a new rule afoot: you do not talk about Marjorie Taylor Greene. (So naturally, I will do so, since I find the dynamic fascinating.)

But first…

By Abby Livingston

• New York State of Mind: A New York appeals court gave a huge boost to House Democrats on Thursday, calling for the Empire State to redraw its congressional map. As the Times points out, the biggest losers are likely to be four Republican freshmen: Anthony D’Esposito, Mike Lawler, Marc Molinaro and George Santos.

  The Democrats needed a redistricting break. The 2022 midterms, after all, were a mild nightmare for New York Dems. The delegation lost a powerful committee chair in Carolyn Maloney, after she was redistricted and lost in a member-member race against Jerry Nadler. And Democrats lost four seats, including the one occupied by then-D.C.C.C. Chairman Sean Patrick Maloney (no relation to Carolyn).

  In retrospect, the 2022 losses in New York could have otherwise saved the party’s majority, depending on the day-to-day headcount in the House. Most frustratingly for New York Democrats, though, the electoral weakness there is in contrast to the state’s national power. Both chambers’ Democratic leaders, of course, are New Yorkers: Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. And so, winning in New York is personal. Moreover, Republicans are expected to pick up seats in a separate round of redistricting litigation in North Carolina, which would mean that putative gains in New York could be necessary just to maintain the status quo in the House margins.

  All that said, there is still more litigation ahead. Some informed legal brains following this matter whom I spoke with prior to the ruling were skeptical that the state’s highest court—which is where this case is likely headed—will be inclined to overturn the current map. We’ll see…

• Shutdown Odds Rising: It’s not uncommon around this time of year for Capitol Hill to chatter darkly about the potential for a government shutdown in the fall, amid the spending deliberations that proceed the end-of-September funding deadline. But the preparations are more like buying plywood planks ahead of hurricane season, rather than actually battening down the hatches. The solution is usually a “continuing resolution”—a short-term deal to continue funding the government at its current levels to provide more time for negotiations.

  This year feels different. Whereas past shutdowns I’ve covered, in 2013 and 2018-2019, both seemed to sneak up on the Hill, members are already talking openly about the high likelihood that negotiations will fall apart. “I am fearful … that we are on a trajectory, at best, for continuing resolutions,” Rosa DeLauro, the powerful Democrat on the appropriations committee, said at a Wednesday hearing, per Punchbowl. “And at worst, a government shutdown.”

  Language this specific and this early from the ranking appropriator is not normal. And it’s worth remembering, to put it bluntly, that government shutdowns suck. It’s not just national park closures ruining vacations—government employees risk missing paychecks, too.

  Smart people on K Street and on the Hill long ago gave up hope that this Congress will pass any legislation beyond the basic bills that keep the lights on. But the continued dysfunction in the House, in particular, has led many people I’ve spoken with recently—and now DeLauro—to say it’s time to start planning for the worst.

Apart from Chairman Scott Perry and its self-declared members, fellow travelers cannot be identified by any outward characteristics. Is Matt Gaetz, a close Trump ally and sworn enemy of Kevin McCarthy, in the group? (Maybe; I reached out to him and TKTK.) How about Thomas Massie, the small-government libertarian and Reason magazine hero currently heading the Weaponization of the Federal Government Subcommittee? (Surprisingly, he’s a no.) Meanwhile, for the past few weeks, Capitol Hill has been consumed by the internecine drama surrounding the status of MAGA darling Marjorie Taylor Greene. Was it true that she had been kicked out of the H.F.C. clubhouse, and if so, why?

Uncharacteristically, for a feud that’s been so high profile and catty, numerous members spent the week saying as little as possible about what transpired, telling me that they didn’t want to discuss the drama anymore. Granted, there’s something to be said about moving on to the next battle—in the Freedom Caucus’s case, that would mean stripping so-called “woke” policies and abortion care for military service members from the National Defense Authorization Act. But it did get me thinking about the political dynamics of the ouster, and how it serves as a snapshot of the MAGA movement during the Trump interregnum.

If Greene had more allies within the notoriously leaky organization—a hazard with any confederation packed with rampant libertarian-leaning individualists—she would have likely had more public defenders. But a well-placed source told me that, when it came time to vote, Greene was opposed by roughly 80 percent of the Freedom Caucus. “It wasn’t the Jewish space lasers, and it wasn’t hanging out with [white nationalist] Nick Fuentes,” the source said. “It was M.T.G. getting too close to Kevin McCarthy that did it for the Freedom Caucus—and that’s insane.” (A spokesperson for the Freedom Caucus declined to comment on internal discussions. Representatives for Greene did not return a request for comment.)

Indeed, McCarthy held a fundraiser for Greene this week, on the very day that her ejection from the Freedom Caucus was publicly confirmed. I’m also told that even though her enemies within the group had deemed her too impure, other Republicans in the House are still fans of Greene—partly because of her successful charm offensive on Capitol Hill, as I’ve written about previously, but mostly thanks to her knack for raising prodigious amounts of money. “[She’s got] small donors, but lots of them,” said the activist. This past quarter, she raised $311,000 for fellow House candidates, giving the max donation of $2,000 to at least 18 vulnerable Republicans.

The source familiar with the Freedom Caucus debates noted that even with Greene gone, there remains an internal strategic tension between older members from the Tea Party era, who would threaten Congress with government shutdowns, and newer members such as Chip Roy, Dan Bishop and Andy Biggs—MAGA purists who disliked McCarthy so much that they gummed up his election as Speaker, preventing Congress from even starting. “These new guys don’t understand how bad we had it under Boehner and Ryan. We didn’t even have a seat at the table when they were Speaker,” the source said. “Now, McCarthy is trying to bring H.F.C. into the fold and work with their ideas, but some members still don’t think it’s good enough.”

Nevertheless, the point of the Freedom Caucus—founded in the good ole pre-Trump days by Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows, Ron DeSantis and a slew of other libertarian-ish outsiders—was to strategically pose as a unified counterweight to the Washington establishment. And for all her MAGA credentials, Greene’s decision to openly embrace McCarthy at the expense of her ideological colleagues undermined the group’s purpose.

The MAGA movement, after all, had its genesis in the idea that all elements and institutions of Washington had failed the American people, necessitating an outsider in the West Wing to clean house. But the Trump phenomenon wasn’t just an indictment of the G.O.P. establishment—it also heralded the ascendance of personality over party. For all its norm-breaking, hostage-taking maneuvers and desire to gut the establishment like a fish, the House Freedom Caucus is itself another institution, of sorts, whereas Greene has transformed herself into a veritable brand—or, as she proudly described herself today, a “free agent.” Whichever the populist movement embraces may signal its future.