Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s plan to leave Congress early next year should be taken as a warning sign for her colleagues.
“She’s almost like the canary in the coal mine. And this is something inside Congress they’d better wake up to, because they are going to get a lot of people retiring, and they’ve got to focus,” the former Republican leader said in an interview on Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime.
Greene, a three-term Republican from a deep-red district in northwest Georgia, a prominent MAGA figure and strong ally of President Donald Trump, announced Friday night that she will resign from the House.
Her announcement followed a very public rift with Trump over several high-profile issues. In both her written statement and video message, she delivered a sweeping critique of the president and of her own party.
Greene is one of nearly 40 sitting House members who are either leaving before their current two-year terms conclude or have already said they will not seek re-election in next year’s midterms.
The growing number of exits could shape next year’s elections, when Republicans will be trying to defend their narrow House majority.
“We’re above average,” said David Wasserman, a senior editor and elections analyst at the non-partisan handicapper The Cook Report, noting the fast pace of retirement announcements this cycle.
“And we’ve still got five weeks left until the calendar hits 2026,” he added.
Retirement waves often crest in the final month or two of the year before a congressional election, as members weigh their futures during the holiday season.
So far, the partisan split among those departing stands at 16 Democrats and 22 Republicans.
Some of the Democrats stepping down are in their 70s and 80s and are concluding long House careers. The most prominent among them is 85-year-old former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
But in a continuing sign that the harsh political climate has made the House an increasingly unpleasant place to serve, many of the members choosing not to run again are much younger.
Among those exiting is 53-year-old Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, chair of the House Budget Committee, who first shared his decision with Fox News Digital.
“I have a firm conviction, much like our founders did, that public service is a lifetime commitment, but public office is and should be a temporary stint in stewardship, not a career,” Arrington said.
Also bowing out is moderate Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, 43.
“After 11 years as a legislator, I have grown tired of the increasing incivility and plain nastiness that are now common from some elements of our American community — behavior that, too often, our political leaders exhibit themselves,” Golden wrote this month in an op-ed for the Bangor Daily News, where he revealed his surprise decision.
“I don’t fear losing. What has become apparent to me is that I now dread the prospect of winning. Simply put, what I could accomplish in this increasingly unproductive Congress pales in comparison to what I could do in that time as a husband, a father and a son,” he added.
Pointing to Golden’s remarks, Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said, “He said something I was feeling. The thought of winning was unattractive this cycle. If it feels like it’s a little bit depressing to win, then better let somebody else run.”
“I think that’s where this hyper-partisan ugliness fits in. The thought of winning and going through another two years of this was not a fulfilling thought,” said Bacon, who announced earlier this year that he will not run for re-election in 2026.
Bacon, a retired Air Force general and a moderate Republican representing a swing district anchored in Omaha, Nebraska, told Fox News Digital last week that “the fire wasn’t there” anymore, despite having survived nine competitive primary and general election contests over the past decade.
Former Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster of New Hampshire, who left Congress a year ago after 12 years in the House, said the growing dysfunction was “definitely a factor” in her choice to step away.
“It had gotten so much more difficult over 12 years to work across the aisle,” Kuster told Fox News Digital. “It had gotten much more fractured, partisan, less congenial.”
A major consideration, she said, was that “most of the moderate Republicans that I worked with all the time had left Congress. The people who were coming in were more hard-right partisans.”
Bacon, who describes himself as a Ronald Reagan-style, old-fashioned Republican, joked that he was “stuck in the middle” with “crazies on the right and crazies on the left.”
While some members, like Bacon and Arrington, are stepping away from politics altogether, many of those not seeking another House term are instead vying for statewide offices next year.
Wasserman said that “on the Republican side, there’s a sense that not much will get done beyond OBBBA in the next two years of Trump’s presidency.”
OBBBA — the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — is the sweeping Republican domestic policy package passed along party lines this summer by the GOP-controlled House and Senate. It serves as the centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s second-term agenda.
“They’ve made the heavy lift and now there are opportunities to be more impactful elsewhere,” Wasserman said.
The bruising partisan clash over OBBBA was yet another example of the toxic political climate on Capitol Hill.
That confrontational atmosphere only intensified during this autumn’s standoff between Democrats and Republicans over the federal government shutdown.
Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., who, like Greene, has clashed with House GOP leaders, pointed to Greene’s departure in a post on X and wrote, “I can’t blame her for leaving this institution that has betrayed the American people.”
