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Retirement Watch 2026!

It’s no fun serving in the House these days, even (or perhaps especially) in the G.O.P. majority. A wide-ranging conversation with Leigh Ann Caldwell about the red team’s congressional blues.

Mike Johnson, Republicans
"[Republicans] can’t agree on how to address healthcare. They can’t even agree on whether affordability is an issue that they should discuss. They literally have no agenda right now. There are lots of complaints that leadership has to appease and deal with people who make a lot of demands on the right, like the Freedom Caucus. Then there’s the critique that leadership isn’t letting people legislate," says Leigh Ann Caldwell. Photo: Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Peter Hamby
December 12, 2025

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The House G.O.P. is staring down a slow-motion crack-up, and the people inside the Capitol Building know it. With as many as 20 Republicans expected to call it quits in the coming weeks—not flame-outs like Marjorie Taylor Greene, but planned retirements at the end of their terms—the party’s governing majority seems to be breaking under the pressures of dysfunction, infighting, and, of course, Donald Trump. Even in power, Republicans feel powerless: They have no agenda, little to legislate, and no independence from a White House that treats the preeminent branch of government as a nuisance.