Ron DeSantis

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation Friday designed to make it harder for undocumented immigrants to live in the state — thereby, he said, possibly deterring them from coming here.

The measures include driving without a license, “non-official ID cards,” and bumping up certain criminal penalties, all to highlight immigration restrictions just days before the state’s Republican presidential preference primary. (There’s no Democratic primary on Tuesday.)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Rep. Randy Weber, R-Friendswood, was kicked out of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus last week.

During a one-on-one chat that Caucus Chair Bob Good requested with Weber to address his sparse attendance to weekly meetings members are expected to attend, first reported by Politico, Weber said Good asked him if he had lost interest in the caucus. The Texas Republican said it wasn’t so much a lack of interest as a dislike for the “burn the house down” procedural tactics the rightmost flank has come to be known for. In response, Weber said Good told him he’d need to reapply for admission back into the caucus.

“It was a shock because I've disagreed with some of the Freedom Caucus chairs … but I've never had them tell me you need to get out of the Freedom Caucus,” Weber told The Texas Tribune.

Good did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday afternoon. The House Freedom Caucus declined to comment on membership and internal processes.

Weber said he still hasn’t decided whether he’ll reapply to the caucus.

“I’m going to wait, give it some time and see,” he said.

Weber was a Freedom Caucus member for nearly a decade. He said he has seen the group shift from being party rabble-rousers to playing a major hand in holding up budget fights and forcing an unprecedented Speaker election last year. The rightmost flank holds more weight now given House Republicans' razor-thin majority, dangling the threat of a motion to vacate or a government shutdown if leadership doesn’t concede to their hardline demands.

Weber said Good had been checking in with caucus members who had missed previous weekly meetings, but Weber is the only known member to have been removed altogether.

Weber said he had “no interaction with Bob Good” beyond the Freedom Caucus’ weekly meetings until he was called into his office last Tuesday.

Weber said he believes Good “had an agenda” and removed him from the caucus unilaterally. He said the clash over that strategy with Good and perhaps some bad blood left from the presidential Republican primary — Weber is a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump and Good initially supported Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — led the caucus chair to single him out.

The last email invite Weber received for a caucus meeting was Dec. 4 — nearly a month before Good succeeded Rep. Scott Perry as caucus chair.

Weber added he’s had conversations with Board of the Caucus members who said they were surprised by Good’s move.

“I know that there's bylaws about missing so many meetings, but there's a lot of people who've missed a lot of meetings and why it would be me singled out I don't know,” Weber said.

Weber said he missed the meetings to have dinner with his wife, who has started frequenting Washington, D.C., more. But he added his lack of attendance was also spurred by his disillusionment with the caucus’ tactics, like the motion to vacate that ousted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy with just one vote — a move Weber did not support because he said there was no strategy beyond “throwing a monkey wrench into the gears.”

Several Texas Republicans hold membership in the caucus, including Reps. Chip Roy of Austin, Keith Self of McKinney, Troy Nehls of Richmond and Michael Cloud of Victoria. Roy serves as the Freedom Caucus’ policy chair and declined to comment on Weber’s removal. A 2014 article in The Hill about Weber quoted him saying he didn’t see himself staying in Congress for more than a decade, but the recent dysfunction among Republicans has incentivized him to stay longer.

“If anything, it redoubles my resolve to stay here and try to make this place work because it is broken beyond belief,” he said.

The only other House Republican known to be kicked out of the caucus was Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. She was booted over comments she made about Freedom Caucus colleagues.

Disclosure: Politico has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

More than a dozen Florida lawmakers who favored Donald Trump over Gov. Ron DeSantis for president are fearful they're about to be hit by repercussions as their governor returns home from the trail.

Among their fears is that their hometown projects could get slashed from the state's annual budget, according to a report.

Elon Musk flew to Florida Sunday to huddle with a cash-strapped former President Donald Trump facing a presidential campaign and civil court rulings adding up to more than $500 million, according to a new report.

Sources told the New York Times Tuesday that Trump met with Musk, estimated to be worth about $200 billion, and several other wealthy Republican donors.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has spent over a year transforming the Sarasota-based New College of Florida into a prototype for conservative-governed, "anti-woke" higher education — but according to independent investigative reporter Jason Garcia, the GOP-backed legislature may be sending him a warning that he needs to stop messing around.

"Florida lawmakers may be growing skeptical of Ron DeSantis' attempt to turn New College of Florida into an explicitly conservative institution (and an easy landing spot for DeSantis administration allies in need of high-paying jobs)," wrote Garcia, who runs the "Seeking Rents" newsletter.

A federal appellate panel on Monday upheld a lower court's blockage of a key provision in Florida's law prohibiting employers from requiring workers to attend diversity, equity, and inclusion and other training that Republican lawmakers and GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis deride as "woke."

A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta said the workplace training provisions of the Stop Wrongs Against Our Kids and Employees (WOKE) Act—euphemistically rebranded by supporters as the Individual Freedom Act—violate the First Amendment.