A growing number of lawmakers are choosing to retire or resign early amid death threats, traffic jams, and a myriad of other reasons.
Marjorie Taylor Greene announces resignation from Congress
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has announced she is resigning from Congress following a months-long feud with President Trump and Republican leaders.
WASHINGTON – When Dick Durbin retires from Congress, there’s one thing he won’t miss. It’s an airplane.
Since the Democrat was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1982, he has traveled from the nation’s capital to his home state of Illinois. After serving seven terms in the chamber, he spent five more terms in the Senate, eventually rising through the ranks to assume the highest leadership position in the Legislature.
After 40 years, he will be leaving Washington next year. And he’s not alone.
More than 50 members like Durbin also have no plans to run for re-election in their current seats, according to data from Ballotpedia, National Public Radio and Axios. The bulk of the growing tally comes from the House of Representatives, where more than 40 members have indicated they intend to leave the chamber.
While this is not unusual, there are hundreds of voters on Capitol Hill, and defections for one reason or another “happen regularly,” Durbin said. In particular, the pace of defections in the House of Commons is at an all-time high compared to similar periods in recent years.
This exodus comes at a difficult time for Congress as an institution. If the longest government shutdown in history is any indication, the political impasse has reached its climax. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are increasingly worried about their safety, especially after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Widespread redistricting efforts are upending lawmakers’ understanding of the places they represent.
And despite passing major domestic policy legislation earlier this year, there is growing bipartisan frustration in the White House over efforts to wrest spending authority from the Legislature.
Some members of Congress feel it’s not worth it anymore.
“Simply put, what I have been able to accomplish in this increasingly unproductive Congress pales in comparison to what I was able to accomplish back then as a husband, father, and son,” Maine Democratic Rep. Jared Golden said in announcing last month that he would not seek reelection.
“toxic” environment
Like Mr. Durbin, Representative Michael McCaul has had a decades-long career in Congress. The Texas Republican has held powerful positions as chairman of House committees on both foreign affairs and homeland security. He announced in September that he would not run again.
“For me, it was a natural time,” he told USA TODAY. “I’m still young enough to have a second career.”
In the years since McCaul first came to the Capitol from Austin in 2005, he said the environment has become more “toxic” than ever before. He looked with interest at what he called the “reincarnation” of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican who has been a defining element of President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” brand for years.
Greene has since lost support from the president and shocked the political world when she said in November that she would quit her job in Congress permanently next January.
“This breeding ground of threats against me is fueled and fueled by some of the most powerful people in the world,” Greene said in her resignation letter. She bemoaned the current state of politics in general, saying, “No matter whether the political pendulum swings toward the Republican or Democratic parties, nothing gets better for ordinary American men and women.”
Mr. McCaul echoed Mr. Greene’s assertion that the tone of today’s politics has changed for the worst. Primaries are becoming increasingly bloody, he said. The parliamentary politicians he admired early in his career have left.
“We all say how we are Christians and men and women of God, but that rhetoric is completely un-Godlike,” he said. “The environment is very toxic. I wish we could go back, but we don’t know.”
Decline in parliamentary influence
The collapse of long-standing norms in Washington under the second Trump administration will not solve the problem.
While Congress has the power of the purse, giving lawmakers the power to decide where and how the federal government spends money, the White House has expanded its role in the process. Over the past year, federal agencies have repeatedly delayed or cut funding for programs in ways that lawmakers, judges and independent watchdogs have suggested are illegal.
Reaffirming Congress’s role in the budget process was a key sticking point during the recent historic government shutdown. But amid a record funding crisis, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) kept members of Congress away from Washington for an unusually long period of time.
For about two months, the House of Representatives was silent. There were no votes, hearings, or oaths for the newcomers. Lawmakers like Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) grew angrier as the recess dragged on.
“There’s a lot of frustration among members about the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of the House,” Kiley told USA TODAY. “If you’re someone who ran for parliament to achieve X, Y and Z, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to do those things, does that influence people’s decisions to remain? I’m sure.”
But this fall, one important piece of legislation crossed the finish line. This is largely thanks to recalcitrant members of the House of Commons. The Epstein File Transparency Act, which requires the Justice Department to release all legally available information about the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein later this month, was passed by Congress and signed into law by the president just before Thanksgiving.
Trump, who was once friends with the late disgraced financier and accused sex trafficker, initially opposed the bill, saying it did not fully protect victims’ privacy rights. But the president changed his mind after key conservative and liberal lawmakers came together to support the law.
For Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), one of the bill’s authors, this was a sign of hope in a difficult environment. He told USA TODAY that the vote on the Epstein file proved that Congress “still can get things done,” even as his friends (like Mr. Greene) were heading for the door.
“One of the reasons people leave is that being rubber stamped is demoralizing,” he says. “But I think we’re trying to beat that.”
Zachary Schermele is a Congressional reporter for USA TODAY. You can email us at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and on Bluesky at @zachschermele.bsky.social..
